#this post is brought to you by the fucking bullshit going on at the holocaust museum today

[hussyknee]

I do, in fact, hold the Jewish community collectively responsible for Zionists.

Individually? Of course not. Anti Zionist Jews exist as individuals. Many individuals are shut out of their own religious community, especially those of colour.

But as a community where Zionism is so socially and institutionally entrenched that the minority of dissenters are disowned and ostracized?

The global community of which only a handful of organisations openly advocate for Palestine, and even most of those paternalistic and co-opting Palestnian voices with liberal Zionist sympathies?

The western majority that institutionally benefits from white colonization and imperialism and silences its non-Jewish Black and brown critics?

The same majority that will never own their privilege or culpability or complicity in the colonial project before and after the Holocaust?

That helped the West exceptionalize it to cover up their exponentially larger and more enduring colonial crimes?

That distanced themselves from their white colonial privilege at the expense of BIPOC by insisting theirs was not a religious marginalization but a racial one, and continues to punish us for not treating them as racially oppressed?

Whose very demand to be automatically exonerated from the Palestinian genocide is reflective of their white and Western privilege?

That successfully broke the ties Jews of colour have to their own racial communities through Israeli ethnic cleansing and Zionist propaganda?

That uses JoC as shields, tokens and weapons against all the above charges?

The JoC that have purchased the privileges of Zionism and enfranchised themselves by betraying their own races?

The community that has used the charge of antisemitism to police Black and brown folks for decades, making it a knife against our necks?

I absolutely, 100% blame the global Jewish community.

The Global South will not forget. We will not forgive. All people with white skinned European descent are our oppressors. All people nourished on the teat of the imperial core are the foot soldiers of white supremacy, no matter what their race. We owe you no exoneration.

[newnitz]

I saw your whole post about "Dominating the indomitable" and like no, it's that Jewish people act like they are literally the only group who have ever been oppressed, and how all other forms of oppression are actually antisemitism, and how as a result of this Jewish people can never ever perpetuate oppression against other groups. Horrible things have happened to Jewish people in the past therefore any criticism of the actions of Jewish people now is antisemitic, and even TALKING ABOUT the groups who were affected on a smaller scale during The Holocaust is antisemitic, actually. Jewish people, particularly in online spaces, demand solidarity with other minority groups but *insist* that your problems are the only ones that matter. And yet - False accusations of Antisemitism are constantly deployed en-masse, particularly with regard to Israel, to justify doing heinous fucking shit and to treat genocide as though it's in some way complicated. I'm from the UK, and for twelve years we had upper class asshole politicians saying every racist thing you could imagine about Muslims and literally nothing came of it. Then we had a left wing candidate for Prime Minister who criticised Israel ONCE, and the accusations of Antisemitism that followed instantly killed his career. While Antisemitism is real and is a problem a lot of Jewish people are perfectly happy to allow the Right Wing grifters who perpetrate Antisemitism to weaponise it in their name against people they don't like. You deny that you have ANY privelige relative to other religious minority groups and yet accusations of Antisemitism are the only kind that seem to be consistently taken seriously, even when they're overtly bullshit. But it's also the fact that as minority religious groups in the west go a LOT of Jewish people are rich white people, and the Jewish community as a whole refuses to in any way acknowledge the privelige that comes with that because "I'm not white I'm Jewish" as though you can't be both. Like literally right now, a nation of Jewish people are slaughtering a nation of Muslims on the grounds that being Jewish just makes them inherently entitled to the land those Muslims are on. We're seeing Jewish people commit horrific acts of violence and dehumanisation against the people of Palestine on the basis of their religion - we're seeing Israelis posing with dead or dying Palestinians, laughing at them as they bleed out in the street. But everyone in the west is willing to treat the situation as complicated specifically because the Israelis are Jewish and the Palestinians are Muslim - and yet people like you still feel comfortable acting as though Jewish people could NEVER possibly commit imperialism, could NEVER do anything wrong, could NEVER fall into the same sort of colonialist, bigoted attitudes as other groups, because unlike those other groups you simply know better. And Jewish people are STILL acting like they're the ones most affected by what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, like this is a bigger problem for some white American jewish person than the people actually LIVING in Palestine right now, because a few people are using the situation as an excuse to be Antisemitic.

So in this anon we have, in order of appearance:

"Jews talk about their oppression too much"

"Jews weaponize antisemitism"

Holocaust universalization

Holocaust inversion

"But whatabout the antisemitism on the right???"

"Jews are just a religion"

"Jews are white"

"Chosen people(derogatory)"

And you don't think there's a cultural antisemitism problem? Worst of all, you don't think you're part of the problem? You just exemplified it with this word vomit made of the copium you take as a culture to justify your millennia-long attempt to exterminate us. Because this shit did NOT begin with the Holocaust. It began with us being stolen from our land, with almost a million of our ancestors' brothers and sisters genocided in the attempt, brought to Europe as Roman slaves, then running from place to place to flee the attempts to finish us off, all the while your holy wars with the Muslims saw our tiny remaining population massacred and dispossessed under most management, with our ancestors funding their return to their own cities, with what little money they could scrounge up between their own escapes and expulsions, because no one else would.

Now, to deconstruct your rancid takes:

"Jewish people act like they are literally the only group who have ever been oppressed, and how all other forms of oppression are actually antisemitism" - That is factually, demonstratively false. Jews as a whole do not claim anti-Black racism or the genocides perpetuated against the indigenous people of Turtle Island are because of antisemitism, because while those two occurred concurrently neither fueled the other. They existed independently. The Holocaust was perpetuated primarily against Jews and Roma. No other group lost >50% of their population under that. Jews were more loudly hated because we greatly outnumbered and still greatly outnumber Roma. There was ethnic cleansing of Poles in some places but no concentrated effort of extermination, as those who cooperated with the genocides of Jews and Roma were safe. You cannot genocide an identity outside an ethnic group or race(which in most cases is a derivative of an ethnic group), but the crimes committed against queer people and political rivals were a much lower priority than the extermination of all Jews and Roma. The Holocaust IS about us and to say otherwise is both antisemitic and anti-Romani.

"how as a result of this Jewish people can never ever perpetuate oppression against other groups." - That is a fringe opinion, and there are massive intracommunity discussions about how we as a whole can and should do better towards other marginalized people, show solidarity unconditionally and so on. It's just not visible to you because the only time you engage with our community is as a threat to our existence.

"Jewish people, particularly in online spaces, demand solidarity with other minority groups but *insist* that your problems are the only ones that matter." Again you are factually incorrect. Jews have been overrepresented in the Civil Rights movement and have been part of the left for centuries at this point. We demand "solidarity" in not perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes, i.e not being actively racist against us so that we can feel safe backing them up as they combat racism against them, which should be the bare minimum. And we've been failed repeatedly as the left and right take on the same flavor of antisemitism.

"False accusations of Antisemitism are constantly deployed en-masse," Who are YOU to say which accusations are false? Which other minority group is assumed to lie about racism until it's proven beyond any shadow of the most unreasonable doubt to be telling the truth?

"particularly with regard to Israel, to justify doing heinous fucking shit and to treat genocide as though it's in some way complicated." There is no genocide. Killing tens of thousands of combatants and civilians in a 1:1 ratio out of a population of 2 million is not a genocide, it's a war. And considering the hellish medium of urban warfare, it's an exceptionally well-managed one. Most importantly, it's a war Israel has been actively avoiding for 17 years until the 7th of October.

"Then we had a left wing candidate for Prime Minister who criticised Israel ONCE" Jeremy Corbyn did more than that. He didn't "criticize Israel" he buddied up with Hezbollah ffs

"While Antisemitism is real and is a problem a lot of Jewish people are perfectly happy to allow the Right Wing grifters who perpetrate Antisemitism to weaponise it in their name against people they don't like." And you're pretending these grifters aren't called out? It's called a "broken clock", and every accusation of antisemitism needs to be investigated. Right now you're excusing your own leftist antisemitism with whataboutism.

"You deny that you have ANY privelige relative to other religious minority groups" - We are not just a religious minority. Jews are an ethnoreligious minority, with most Jews coming from at least one Jewish parent. Outside the US and countries with very small Jewish populations, most Jews come from two Jewish parents, and before the 60s it was almost all Jews. Intermarriage in the US only began with the state-led push towards assimilation following the end of WWII.

"and yet accusations of Antisemitism are the only kind that seem to be consistently taken seriously" Really? Because I haven't seen them being taken seriously by leftists.

"a LOT of Jewish people are rich white people" Whiteness is not conditional. Whiteness does not depend on passing yourself off as something else. Whiteness protects you from having your name, facial features or accent be a reason for lynching, being refused job offers or interrogated by security forces for going about your everyday life. Rich people of many other ethnicities are privileged in comparison to the rest of their community, and that doesn't make them "white". And do you even know how many Jews are rich and white-passing? Especially in countries where Jews didn't assimilate, didn't intermarry?

"Like literally right now, a nation of Jewish people are slaughtering a nation of Muslims on the grounds that being Jewish just makes them inherently entitled to the land those Muslims are on." Again factually false. Israel is counter-attacking the terrorist organization who invaded its territory, raped and murdered men women and children and took hundreds of hostages, and since said terrorist org hides among civilians civilians get killed in the crossfire. It's about religion from Hamas' side, which is what I referred to in the post. There's no "belief that we're inherently entitled", there's a fuckton of archeological evidence showing that we've been living in that land for thousands of years and we want the self-determination that was stolen from us, and Muslims, with their need to dominate the entire Middle East, don't vibe with that.

[hellyeahheroes]

I goddamn hate the X-men

Any X-men writers or fans come at me for this. Fine. You can ignore my hate for this franchise because honestly, I will never be a fan of this series. Everytime this franchise is mentioned or even brought up in conversation around me, I will be the wet fucking blanket because honestly, it was a concept that never appealed to me or will never appeal to me.

Against my better judgement, I decided to pick up the New Uncanny X-men because I tried. I read and like the post Ultimatum X-men and I guess I am the only person in the world that did. I read and loved the New X-Men series that you just dropped off the face of the Earth for...nostalgia of everything I hate about this franchise.

So I figured that since my good online pal @majingojira loves the X-men and the admin of this blog @filipfatalattractionrblog constantly posts about what is going in comics in general and @newx-menfan has introduced me to the only X-men content that I actually respect is actually despondent about what is going on with you writers. I decided to pick it up and see what is the fuss about.

And my god, we are ten issues in and yeah, I now really hate your series, writers and fans.

I hate the concept of the X-men. I hate that they base themselves around the Civil Rights movement but most of the core characters are white. You want to know what really did it for me? When Wolverine lectured Luke Cage for not understanding the mutant plight.

I will never like the concept of allegorical racism in narrative form in a contemporary when most of the characters are non-people of color. And I sure as shit won’t like allegorical LGBTQI oppression and hatred in a narrative form when most of your characters are coded straight. This is why I tend to like the X-books that stray away from that mutantphobia bullshit or apply whole universe wide so it at least makes narrative sense why Firestar is hated while Johnny Storm is celebrated(and if you didn’t pick up on that reference, post-Ultimatum X-men or the Ultimate Universe in general, super powered people aren’t just not liked in general).

Because if you want to write about racism, maybe you should just use a character of color. If you want to write about LGBTQI issues, maybe you should write an LGBTQI character. The cognitive dissonance is so thick in this fandom that it is an actual commonality where there are X-men fans that are MAGA supporters. Build the wall the lowly tumblr jackass says with Cyclops leading a mutant resistance in his header while touting Magneto is right.

I’m a bi-black man and as of late, I don’t feel particularly empowered or represented in a series that uses the United States History of the Civil Rights movement as it’s core theme. That is depressing. If only Black People created a paramilitary peace keeping taskforce?

Whoops.

And it’s not like you fucking jackasses aren’t aware of the social commentary. The Champions make social justice their core theme and you fuckers do nothing but whine about it, but when the X-Men do it, it is high fucking literature because all of the characters are white. Could you imagine a super powered Black Panthers, Young Lords, Brown Berets, or Yellow Peril? I don’t hate the X-men because it is an outdated metaphor for racism. I hate them because it is a misplaced concept for racism or oppression in general.

So I pick up this series and honestly,  I have to ask this question. Who exactly is this book for? 

It is not for kids as you will literally send kid characters to the sewers and treat them as lesser X-men.

Okay, Jean, your super power and what you are pretty much known for other than dying is pretty much nuclear temper tantrum. You don’t get to call anyone out for being childish, especially since you do not treat any of these kids with respect yet you demand it out of them. Oh and look, here are the few panels where Ororo actually speaks and  says something and isn’t the token black person in the core X-men.

@filipfatalattractionrblog, the admin of the blog, had the right metaphor for this series as it is pretty much baby boomers rule and millennial and Gen Z drool the comic book version. Because outside of Laura who is doing her best Logan impersonation, there are no other young folks and X-23 really does not say anything of substance other than just be the distaff Logan. 

This entire comic book is nostalgia gate keeping. If you aren’t familiar with X-Men lore, then you are lost from the get-go. For example, the chief villain for this series is the alternate universe son of Jean Gray and Scott Summers.

...are you fucking serious?

First off, it shows a lack of commitment. You could have just made them have a kid and kept it in Universe but no, we have the added convoluted layer of alternate dimension for a villain that calls himself X-Man. That’s decades of obscurity and history that you just expect comic readers to grasp and accept as soon as you pick up a book.

And don’t get me started on using older characters that can’t possibly function as gateways for new reader. X-Men is probably the most narcissistic reading experience I’ve seen in comics. And no, not all comics are like this. Spider-Man, if recall correctly, has the highest number of issues in marvel but at any given point or at least at the beginning of an arc, you can pick up a Peter Parker Spider-Man book and don’t have to be familiar with past convoluted plot points especially in the fucking first issue of a new volume.

Your characters are overwritten like reading through the history of Jean Grey is like literary acid trip. Comic books get this reputation of being hard to get into but I don’t think there is a franchise that exemplifies this more than the fucking X-Men.

And it is a quick and easy fix. Use newer characters. I could have picked up the New X-Men comic and binge read all 40 issues without having to know the complicated history of the X-men. And it is not like the old guard weren’t around. It was more that the old guard weren’t crucial to the story. And that is important.

And finally, the nostalgia wankery just turns me off. How many times can you sit there and rerun the same plots from Claremont? You know what I like to do?

When there is a super team being made and I want to come up with a dream roster, I literally go TV Tropes X-Men page and just read up on 2000s and on X-characters. Why? Because they are rarely used and obscure enough to not be weighed down on X-bullshit. I actually get mad at X-Men fans who want to make Kamala a mutant. Say what you want about the Inhumans but at least they diversified and made newer characters and made them a staple. The X-Men’s greatest success since 2000 was X-23 and that was not even something the comic writers made but the cartoon show did. It’s 2019 and Magneto, a Holocaust survivor is still using that as his main motivation to why he hates bigotry?

Don’t listen to me. I hate this franchise and it fills me with glee that the misplaced nostalgia will be the death of you all. Every other Marvel property adapted but the fucking X-Men. I mean fuck, the Fantastic 4 are now the Fantastic 6 with 3 of the 4 married and Johnny Storm wanting to settle down and get married. Fucking Peter Parker had an entire series being married with child. And yet, it appears your characters are in a perpetual state of 80s. God.

@ubernegro

[morpekoed]

alright a general rule of thumb for this blog. cause you know what its about high time i fucking address this like ever. this is only for my friends and people that want to write with me to know. i’m very VERY fucking tired of this game. this is one of the MANY reasons why i am not in the pkmn rpc ( or any RPC for that matter ).

you are allowed to say whatever you want on this blog / to me when you are interacting with in IC. You will never EVER have to be afraid to say something that MAY sound racist towards me, i will NOT take any offense. it may sound like a very ‘white’ thing of me to say. but allow me to fucking explain. 

TLDR: i don’t really fucking care about IC interactions. i know that most of the time its a joke, and we’re here to have fun and i know you’re not attacking me. if you are worried about something, you can ask. i sometimes ask before i post. cause sometiems, you never know. and i just want to make sure something is okay. but you don’t need to censor anything with me because i won’t find it offensive if you weren’t trying to make it offensive. I will never be offended by an ‘inappropriate comment’ made in an IC or crack reply. 

why? cause i give people the benefit of the doubt and don’t think they were INTENDING to do anything wrong. and really if I do find something ‘offensive’ i come to YOU directly. 

Also, if I ever write something that YOU find offensive, tell me. I will be fine with you telling me. Anybody who knows me will know i will apologise profusely and fix it cause i don’t want to hurt people. Just know that deep down in my heart, i never actaully do try to offend people. it’s not in my nature to make anybody here nervous with me.

For those who want to know what subjects i have an issure with, it’s under the read more. fair warning: triggering content below. tread lightly.

the only deragatory term/racial slur i have a problem with is gypsy. don’t ever use that term to describe me, the mun, that. do not call me a gypsy. my mother was called this -- and obviusly by default, i was called this, along with term whore and thief ( by my father’s side of the family ) so yea. i have a problem with this term. 

on my father’s side -- cause you don’t know, he escaped the yugoslavian war that was another holocaust itself that nobody really knows much about cause history in america fucking sucks. i didn’t learn about this is school, i learned from my fucking father who lost friends in this war due to what they were. I have been called muslim -- i look middle eastern, so its probably something that people assume cause some slavic people are muslim. I am not muslim. my father is not muslim. and my father takes offense to this because muslim people bombed his grandparent’s neighborhood and killed men, women, and children alike. but his sister’s husband is, what you would say, ‘the other side’ and they get along just fine. in fact, he prefers his brother-in-law cause they are just straight up super fucking chill. but heaven forbid you bring up the war cause everybody is affected by it equally. you don’t know what i am talking about? look up the Yugoslav wars. You will come to find a lot of horrific shit between the countries that came out of Yugolsavia. not many people know about these wars. i only know what my father told me and thats only ONE story. 

my mother had a chance to visit the countries there but my dad told her, ‘when we are in croatia, do NOT bring up anything that is related to serbia cause the people here hate serbs’ ( and vice versa ). 

why am i bringing this up? because i have nothing against anybody. you want to use the term gypsy in an IC interaction? by all means, i don’t really care. You want to like.... pull out some serbian / bosnian joke, i will not care. 

its 2020, if you take something offensive, then please communicate with the person directly. im really tired of people having to censor shit. people are getting overly sensitive for no god damn reason. most of the time i notice its white poeople getting fucking offended. grow up and act like an adult. 

i hope y’all realise that at work, nobody gets offended. we all say jokes all the fucking time. and my coworker took a whole year to admit to me that she was trying to guess my ethnicity cause yea, i don’t look american. ( she was afraid that i would get offended but i really didn’t ).

i have a fucking problem when WHITE people make an effort to point out that i am not white. straight up i was looking for roommates and two white men ( a couple no less ) were like, oh i bet you don’t go to this town cause its predominantly white and racist. and i straight up looked at them and said. that town has less than 30 people and my father and i go there all the time to camp, who the fuck cares, nobody talks to you. and we give them business. check your facts. 

i have have latino and black roommates in the past and its fucking WILD that none of them brought up the race card? why? cause it really doesnt fucking matter. I am very fucking capable of living and coexsiting with other people of colour. I’ve had more issues with people just not haveing any respect as a human being. 

FYI: i have been racially profiled by cops and TSA. I almost had a gun pulled on me. so fuck off with any slur that you want to call me after i post this. thanks. 

sorry to sound an asshole about it, but im really tired of this bullshit. if you think im being racist, im too fucking tired to say anything. im not, and i don’t need to fucking prove jack shit. if you find anything offensive, i will obviously try to correct it but i also dont want to fucking walk on eggshells anymore. 

Maybe its cause i have thick skin from playing a moba and dealing with a toxic community for 8 years but you know, quit crying over spilt milk. stop using people’s words against them and you know... actually talk to them directly. talk to me directly and communicate. I am not gonna jump the gun. and neither should any of you. 

[skorpiontongue]

I’m lowkey tired of your Reactionary bs and claims that the left is closer to fascism than literal fascists lol??? My main point on here was to come in and defend Che, and you ignored literally every point I made simply because you did not want to hear it. That’s the only point I wanted to make. Since we degraded to name calling, I’m not gonna try to be nice to you, especially with some of the shit that you’re just up and saying now?

Anyways whatever,

1a.Arsenic fella isn’t me, I got that response while I was sleeping, idk how they stumbled across our little debate, they were probably scrolling across the Che Guevara tag(because let’s be real, no normal person on tumblr scrolls through actual political tags unless they want a headache), that’s how I found your bullshit post about “Commiefornia”

1b. I literally debunked the Che “murderous commie dictator” bs, you clearly didn’t want to read so don’t tell me I’m being a lazy bastard for not reading your long list of actual bs. Plus… I have Jewish heritage… you’re a little fucked up for suggesting I’d defend hitler and deny the holocaust? Congrats you used another speaking point to look good on the internet but only hurt the community you were “trying” to “support”

2. What the fuck are you on about??? You keep bringing up shit that we weren’t even talking about, and I’m gonna be so real with you man I didn’t bother to read your entire right-wing mindfuck spiel. Like i said, you’re shooting guns that haven’t been loaded

3. For the love of god, wanna know why I used Terry crews for the analogy?? I was watching old spice ads for the sake of nostalgia HES LITERALLY FUCKING JACKED I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM ME??

4. Lol this is so out of order atp, but sorry for stealing your format?? Do you want royalties on it you capitalistic loser try copyrighting it next time🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 Idk I thought it was a clever way to get back at you and it also segments things off nicely?? I can simply tell you’re clutching at straws trying to tear me down because of that

5.Wikipedia is not a reliable source anyone can edit it whatever whatever whatever, yknow people who edit it without accounts have their IP visible and false information gets an account banned??? Also man idk just look at the sources listed at the bottom of the page?? Like me personally as a self-proclaimed historian, I know a lot about Georgia(the fucking country), and I’ve read the 1907 Tiflis Bank Robbery wiki page and idk man that shits pretty accurate. Also you call conservapedia a reliable source when it has THIS article on it

Also you just denied CRT

I think that alone speaks volumes, and I think it’s very obvious who the racist here is

6. Ughhh this AntiFa bs again, you ever heard of one bad apple doesn’t mean you throw out the whole crate?? I’m sure you have bc you reactionaries love to use that when the topic of police brutality gets brought up- “But ohh I hate police brutality there’s clear issues” congratulations but I am inclined not to believe you because you believe in something WORSE than horseshoe theory you literally believe in CIRCULAR THEORY

Like, you can tell this was made by a conservative

So what fascist trying to distance themselves from Nazis made THIS?

7. I don’t like China; it’s abusing human rights, most East Asian countries are racist, I recognize that and I hate that. I also don’t recognize China as any form of communist or socialist country, not because “ohhh it’s different” but it’s literally capitalist. It’s a revisionist country at best. Once more don’t know much about Cuba’s current struggles, use that against me but I never brought it up that Cuba was a flawless and wonderful country, I only said that I admired the l country for being able to face off against America while being so damn close to it

Anyways yeah please go talk seriously about equal rights and liking gay people whilst sourcing conservapedia and also denying critical race theory

I’m legit just gonna block your ass now, it’ll spare me gray hairs. Neither of us are gonna convince each other that the other is wrong, take this as a win if you want but I’m gonna take it as a win myself since I made you use whataboutism along with just ignoring what I’ve wrote several times and leaving out parts and context. Also you diving into name calling once I could bite back is a very good way to rep your ideologies!

Keep arguing at the wall and getting singular notes on your posts from people reblogging you and proving your glue and bandaid arguments wrong.

Byeeeee fascist!! I’m sure I’ll occasionally unblock you when I’m in desperate need of a good laugh

Debating a LYING braindead idiot

So it looks like he wasn't done looking like an idiot, he had to continue playing defense for Che and Communism. It reminds me of when I debated against an idiot who defended Hitler and Nazism. The murderous history of Hitler, Che, Stalin, Mao, Nazis, and Commies should be enough reason for any sane individual to be against Nazis, Commies, and murderous dictators. But apparently, neither he nor the Nazi I've argued against are sane. So let's begin with this idiot (@skorpiontongue) complimenting himself, thinking I wouldn't notice he's using an alt account.

Chapter 1: Alt Compliments

I've seen this type of action before where a Leftist would use an alt-account to complement himself on Tumblr, Discord, Twitter and other social media sites. The one on Discord was the easiest to spot because it came from a new user who joined the discord. How sad and pathetic does one has to be to compliment himself in a short amount of time? He did it on the same day of his post. As if he were impatient to wait a day or two. He was likely trying to get my attention as soon as he made his post, while I was away from my computer. I'm usually either working, spending quality time with my girlfriend or on my phone doing my thing on social media. Anyways I think he does this for attention, because he sure as hell ain't getting it at home(most likely living in his parents basement due to commies being "anti-work") or at the public library where he is most likely accessing the internet.

"ur so based fr"? You ain't fooling anybody.

Chapter 2: Projection

The one thing The Left are caught doing all the time is accusing people of the very same things The Left are guilty of doing themselves. He thinks I'm a "wolf in sheeps clothing". Which is completely false because unlike him, I've always fought against totalitarian and extremist views. It did not matter which side of the political spectrum the totalitarians and extremists come from, I condemn them all for their horrible actions. For example I've always been against Nazis and the KKK for their evil actions. Ever since learning about them in history class, I've always condemn Nazis and the KKK. I condemn Commies and Antifa for the very same reasons, due to their violent and murderous actions, especially since Antifa killed innocent black people in their CHOP/CHAZ zones such as Secoreia Turner, Horace Lorenzo Anderson Jr, and David Dorn. Want to know how I heard about their deaths? Through Newsmax, Steven Crowder and other conservative media. They will not talk about them in Left-wing news media because their deaths go against their narrative and it makes them look bad. The real wolf in sheep's clothing are the Left who pretend to care about black lives and yet ignore the innocent black lives who were murdered by Antifa/Commies/BLM members. The Left in your eyes can do no wrong. Luckily for me, I'm not so blind to the truth. I'll speak against both the Left or the Right if I disagree with them and their actions. For example I'm against Bush for invading Iraq and falsely claiming that there were weapons of mass destruction. I'm also against Bush for initiating the Patriot Act and I'm against Obama for continuing the Patriot Act. I recognize the corruption in both parties and right now the only politicians who are actually trustworthy are MAGA Republicans and Tulsi Gabbard(a former Democrat turned Independent). Tulsi Gabbard was slandered and lied about by Democrats who falsely accused her of being a "Russian Asset", even Mitt Romney was slandering her. She was also censored by Big Tech. Which reminds me, Biden falsely accuses Trump of corruption and yet his deals with Ukraine(before the war) and Hunter Biden's Laptop story being covered up by the mainstream media and social media made it quite clear to me that Biden is the corrupt one. Not that you would be smart enough to figure that out since you're a braindead commie who can't even come up with an original format, copying my chapter format in this debate.

Speaking of Commies, he goes on a nonsensical rant defending a murderous commie dictator(Che). At this point he may as well defend Hitler and deny that the Holocaust happened. But since I've already destroyed his argument on Che, we'll move onto the next chapter.

Chapter 3: "I swear I'm not a racist" - Said the commie.

Your lack of reading comphension and understanding the context of what I'm saying, shows just how braindead you are. I brought up the Democratic Party for one reason. Their claim of the "parties switching" and comparing it to your claims of Che "changing". It's not that hard to figure out numbnuts. If you look at Trump's history, he was the first in the state of Florida to allow blacks and Jews in his club. The Democrats history on the other hand created the KKK, tried to continue slavery in the Civil War, shot Abraham Lincoln, they voted for a racist President(Biden), as well as voting for an anti-semitic bitch(Ilhan Omar). So of course you would vote Democratic because you're either a dumbass believing in their lies or you agree with their racism/anti-semitism and don't give a shit if they're lying, covering shit up to protect themselves through censorship and trying to deplatform conservatives along the way. Best choice my ass.

Your racism comes from stereotyping big strong black men as "violent", using Terry Crews as an example, which makes no sense due to the fact that he's a classy guy and not at all as how you perceive him as(a violent big strong black guy). If you're going to use a strong big black guy who is violent or may have violent tendency, Mike Tyson would have been a better example, he's had a history of beating up people(in a professional sport), as well as biting off the ear of a fellow boxer. Or a fictional character like Major Payne(one of my favorite movies from my teenage years), since he's badass enough to kick anybody's ass without breaking a sweat and he would have been a more positive example due to his badassery.

It does not surprise me that you're uninformed about Cuba. People's rights are being violated, hence the protests. The people in Cuba want liberty. Something Commies or The Left in general has no true understanding of because if they did, they wouldn't actively censor people they disagree with, nor would they try to ban guns or deplatform conservatives. Diversity of thought, freedom of speech and gun rights is what the Left are actively fighting against. Without diversity of thought, without freedom of speech, without the right to bear arms, you're unable to speak freely against tyranny and you're unable to defend yourself against rapists, murderers and thieves. You think you're against rapists, murderers and thieves, yet you defend the Left who would not go after the trans who raped a teenage girl at a school restroom, you defend the Left who murdered an innocent 8-year-old black girl(Secoreia Turner) who was at the wrong place at the wrong time at a burned down Wendy's and you won't condemn the Left's actions of stealing from a Walgreens in San Francisco. So I don't expect you to condemn a communist country that are violating people's rights in Cuba and China. Heck I don't even expect you to condemn Communist China for banning black people from renting a home or going to a restaurant, in which they used the "virus" in 2020 as an excuse. How do I know all this? I stay informed by watching Newsmax, a channel that CNN & Democrats wants to deplatform from Cable and Satellite. Gee I wonder why? Oh I know, it's because they're exposing the Left of their lies and corruption.

Chapter 4: His lies continue!

Your lack of reading comphension and understanding the context of what I'm saying, shows just how braindead you are. I brought up the Democratic Party for one reason. Their claim of the "parties switching" and comparing it to your claims of Che "changing". It's not that hard to figure out numbnuts. If you look at Trump's history, he was the first in the state of Florida to allow blacks and Jews in his club. The Democrats history on the other hand created the KKK, tried to continue slavery in the Civil War, shot Abraham Lincoln, they voted for a racist President(Biden), as well as voting for an anti-semitic bitch(Ilhan Omar). So of course you would vote Democratic because you're either a dumbass believing in their lies or you agree with their racism/anti-semitism and don't give a shit if they're lying, covering shit up to protect themselves through censorship and trying to deplatform conservatives along the way. Best choice my ass.

Your racism comes from stereotyping big strong black men as "violent", using Terry Crews as an example, which makes no sense due to the fact that he's a classy guy and not at all as how you perceive him as(a violent big strong black guy). If you're going to use a strong big black guy who is violent or may have violent tendency, Mike Tyson would have been a better example, he's had a history of beating up people(in a professional sport), as well as biting off the ear of a fellow boxer. Or a fictional character like Major Payne(one of my favorite movies from my teenage years), since he's badass enough to kick anybody's ass without breaking a sweat and he would have been a more positive example due to his badassery.

It does not surprise me that you're uninformed about Cuba. People's rights are being violated, hence the protests. The people in Cuba want liberty. Something Commies or The Left in general has no true understanding of because if they did, they wouldn't actively censor people they disagree with, nor would they try to ban guns or deplatform conservatives. Diversity of thought, freedom of speech and gun rights is what the Left are actively fighting against. Without diversity of thought, without freedom of speech, without the right to bear arms, you're unable to speak freely against tyranny and you're unable to defend yourself against rapists, murderers and thieves. You think you're against rapists, murderers and thieves, yet you defend the Left who would not go after the trans who raped a teenage girl at a school restroom, you defend the Left who murdered an innocent 8-year-old black girl(Secoreia Turner) who was at the wrong place at the wrong time at a burned down Wendy's and you won't condemn the Left's actions of stealing from a Walgreens in San Francisco. So I don't expect you to condemn a communist country that are violating people's rights in Cuba and China. Heck I don't even expect you to condemn Communist China for banning black people from renting a home or going to a restaurant, in which they used the "virus" in 2020 as an excuse. How do I know all this? I stay informed by watching Newsmax, a channel that CNN & Democrats wants to deplatform from Cable and Satellite. Gee I wonder why? Oh I know, it's because they're exposing the Left of their lies and corruption.

Chapter 5: "My source is wikipedia because I'm too braindead to look at legitimit sources that won't bullshit you!"

When I was younger, I probably would have used wikipedia as a source, I used to vote Democrat until 2008 when I went Independent before voting Republican for the first time in 2020. I also used to hate Trump and believe in every lie said about him back in 2016. But I've learn from my mistakes and realized that the pro-establishment politicians, big tech, and the mainstream media are the ones who can't be trusted. But I am older, wiser and I don't fall for such dumb shit. Wikipedia is as unreliable as the mainstream media, fact checkers on social media and Democrats claims about Tulsi Gabbard being a Russian Asset or Trump being a racist or a rapist. I don't fall for the lies like you do. So if I wanted to learn about Qanon, I'll go straight to the source(their website), not take the words of an idiot(you) or wikipedia, since wikipedia has been known to be politically bias and it shows with their description of Parler.

Every lie, every slander said about Parler has been accounted for with what I underlined in that screen shot. It also showed how heavily bias wikipedia was in their description of Parler, all of it was untrue. I posted about it months ago, or maybe even a few years since I haven't been on Parler in a long time now since I am more active on Elon Musk's version of Twitter. The point is that you can't trust wikipedia to tell you the truth on anything. That's why conservatives created "conservapedia" to combat the lies of wikipedia.

Want to talk about conspiracy theories? Your on the side that spews it all the time such as Critical Race Theory, Radical Gender Theory, Black Queer Theory, and The Parties Switching Theory. They also make up other conspiracy theories such as Tulsi Gabbard being a Russian Asset, Trump being a white supremacist, all conservatives being Nazis, or Trump stealing the election in 2016. None of that turned out to be true, but you Leftists continue to spew that nonsense anyways. See unlike you, I went straight to the source whenever any claims were made about Tulsi, Trump, Trump Supporters or anyone else the Left doesn't like. What I found out was that nothing of what the Left said was true at all. For example the kids at Covington, Kentucky were accused of being racist. That turned out to be false when I saw the full video of the whole event. The actual bigots in that event were the Black Hebrew Israelites using a homophobic slur against Trump. The Black Hebrew Israelites also used other bigoted language that the Left seems to ignore. They only care about making Trump supporters look bad, no matter how unreliable their "evidence" is, such as Nick Sandmann smiling at an Indian, calling him a racist because he had a "smirk" on his face. That is just ridiculous. You would have to be braindead to believe that bullshit.

Chapter 6: If you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it!

And yet you support a group that had some of their members pose as the opposing side to make them look bad, since Antifa members have been caught doing it. That's why they attacked Andy Ngo. They are not rational and they are not very bright, which is why Antifa are full of white beta male dumbasses with bad haircuts and faces so ugly that you could tell they're on meth. They remind me of the Juggalos I used to feud with, they weren't very bright either. I use to expose them of pedophilia, violence, murder and rape. But my feud with Juggalos ended because I realized not all of them are like that. It just happens that I know many of the bad ones who lived in my city.

The fact that you defend Antifa, shows you're on their side rather than just outright condemning them of their actions(which I pointed out a few chapters ago). See you think they're nothing like the KKK, but you'd be wrong. Both are violent, both are murderous, both are full of white beta male idiots, both were created by Democrats and both pretend to be the good guys, despite the crimes they've committed such as murder, rape, theft, violence, riots, burning down churches, burning down blacked owned businesses and both wear a mask to conceal their identity from the cops, even though the cops let them get away with their crimes anyways, especially in Democrat run cities. Conservatives has consistently condemn these actions, liberals/leftists has not. If you were really against fascism, you would oppose the Democrats, Nazis and Commies all at once because true Anti-Fascism is Anti-Totalitarianism. Unfortunately for you, I am the real anti-fascist.

Antifa está repitiendo las acciones del KKK, no importa si dicen hacerlo por la justicia social, estúpido peluquero fascista.

P.S. This Twitter violation was before Elon Musk took over.

[evilwickedme]

The Holocaust Movie and the Goy

Alright, gather round kids, because we're going to talk about Jewish represention.

This isn't my first essay about Jewish representation in Hollywood, but while that one focused on the development of Jewish characterization in television and especially in media set in modern times, this one will focus on the role Jews play in Holocaust related narratives.

I will focus specifically on Holocaust movies, that is, movies that take place in territories in belonging to Germany or experiencing German occupation led to any of the deaths included in the six million figure. While one might be tempted to include movies taking place during the war (anything from Casablanca to Captain America: The First Avenger), their relevance to an essay about Jewish representation in their own narrative is minimal at best, as the Western narrative of World War II centers on the West (specifically, the United States and Britain) and its defeat of the Germans.

What do I mean by Jewish representation in their own narrative? The Holocaust is a historical event, not a story, after all. However, collective memory associates the Holocaust with the Jews - and for good reason. The Jews were the main target of the Nazi regime, and although exactly when the Holocaust began is hard to determine - did it start with the first concentration camp, the first anti-Jewish discriminatory law, or the rise of Hitler? - there is no question that not only were more Jews murdered than any other group targeted by the Nazis (the second largest group to be targeted while under German rule were the Poles, not including the Soviets, at an estimated 1.3-3 million victims, while famously, as I previously stated, six million Jews died {although I'd argue that the Romani population, which lost a much larger percentage of their total population, were more affected by the Holocaust, and numbers can be misleading}), but also, in addition, Jews faced public restrictions not shared by other groups - "no entrance for dogs and Jews", the ghettos, etc, were all reserved for Jews (not to say that no other group faced humiliation, just that the Jewish one was the most prevalent, early, and widespread).

So the Jews were the main targets of the Holocaust, and the historical narrative - our collective memory of the Holocaust - tends to reflect that. And yet, the stories actually bring told about the Holocaust, specifically and especially in Hollywood movies, aren't at all about Jews.

Take the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, for example. The tragic story of a German boy who discovers a concentration camp near his house, befriends a Jewish boy, and one day sneaks in and (spoiler) ends up being gassed. Or Schindler’s List, the touching story of a man who, although starting the movie as a ruthless capitalists, ends up saving 1200 Jews. The Book Thief, about a girl adopted by a German family who hide a Jewish man in their basement, her friendship with a boy who joins Hitler Youth, and her relationship with Death.

Beginning to see a pattern?

This isn’t to say that there are no Jewish narratives out there. A notable exception is The Diary of Anne Frank, who was a real Jewish girl writing in hiding about her thoughts and feelings as a teenager. But this is type of exception that proves the rule - after all, Anne Frank doesn’t exemplify the Holocaust as we think of it - humans treated worse than animals, slaughtered in the millions. The Diary ends before we could get to the part. It doesn’t discuss the horrors that Jews experienced, but the supposedly universal experiences of a teenage girl, no matter that - and perhaps despite the fact that - she happened to also be Jewish and in hiding the entire time.

Jews aren’t allowed to express our own grief over the Holocaust. We must be seen through a filter - specifically, through the heroism of “The Good Gentile”, and at times, “The Good Nazi”. We are taught to be sympathetic not to the often dehumanized or minor Jewish characters, who are background, the backdrop for the true heroes of the story - not the survivors or victims, but the goyim.

The worst aspect of this is The Good Nazi trope. Where Hands Touch is a very recent and horrifying example of it, about a biracial (half black!!!) girl falling in love with a Nazi’s son. I genuinely cannot imagine a worse story to be telling right now, with racism and antisemitism on the rise. This insistence on humanizing the Nazi is born not out of good will, but a fascination with them. Literally romanticizing the Nazis is a bad thing - it creates an image of a state that was filled with unwilling Nazis, people who were simply there to survive.

Only that’s bullshit. There’s a reason we can count the Righteous Among the Nations - because they were rare. We’re talking about a culture in which antisemitism was so ingrained, not only did people not object when sanctions against Jews were enacted, but they cheered. “The Jews taking our jobs, engineering our fall from former glory...”

Sound familiar?

They were buying newspapers with racist cartoons, posting signs in their windows saying “no entrance for dogs and Jews”, vandalizing Jewish property, beating Jews in public, kids mocking and bullying their former classmates... They were active participants every step of the way, even if they didn’t vote for Hitler (although a great deal of them did). They were sending their children to Hitler Youth, indoctrinating the next generation in the same drivel they were being taught - in movies, in books, on the radio, on the backs of fucking cigarette cartons, they were all being taught to hate Jews, and they did. They believed that Germany was being brought to its former glory, that Hitler was doing it, and that the Jews were at fault for their fall and defeat in WWI in the first place, so all of this was justified. And in case you were wondering, people knew about the camps. They always knew - it’s mentioned in letters and diaries. People knew about the horrors, and they went on with their normal lives. Jews would come to them for help and they would report them. The would loot the houses of their Jewish neighbors, even just move in because, well, the Jews probably stole the money used to buy it, so why not steal it back? It’s not like they were returning to take it back from them.

And yes, they went about their ordinary lives. They had jobs, and friends, and hobbies. Many of them were “nice people”. Except that they were Nazis. And they were teaching their children to be Nazis. And we don’t need stories about them being good people. Especially not now.

We need stories about Jews and Romani people and all the other victims. We need to focus on the stories of those who the Holocaust changed, to the point that you can see it in their DNA. We need to stop looking at the Holocaust through the eyes of the perpetrators, and start looking at it through the eyes of the people who’s stories we keep dismissing.

Stop erasing Jews from our own fucking narratives, is what I’m saying here.

[prudencepaccard]

some absolutely primo discourse from Facebook

OP is like “some conservative pundits have been citing the fact that classic Xmas music is written by American Jews as evidence that Xmas is universally compatible with every religion and culture and that basically everyone celebrates it even when they don’t [note: I think that Xmas CAN be divorced from Christianity, but this is illustrated by stuff like Japanese Xmas, not the cultural products of people who don’t observe it; I also think that the songs in question say a lot about both Jews and Christmas in commercial and cultural modernity but nothing about the compatibility of Christmas *celebration* with American Jewish culture] but this is bullshit because the composers of those songs just needed to get paid and that’s what sold.” This statement would have been interchangeable with “they wanted to write music and that’s what people wanted to hear,” as the emphasis was not on the remuneration but rather on the lack of investment in Christmas per se, but *some fucking guy* had to come in and be like “excuse me but did you say that a Jew at some point desired money in any capacity??? problematic!”

below the cut; please excuse my attempt at transcribing gifs

OP: A STATEMENT ON THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

There was a video ad before the youtube clip I wanted to watch from PragerU about the war on Christmas, and how saying Happy Holidays, and not Merry Christmas, is damaging to America. Part of their argument was that all religions appreciate Christmas because it's a federal holiday. And this is demonstrated by the fact that many Christmas standards were written by Jewish people. which is...dumb. Jewish people wrote those songs because, in the period where most of them were written, that's how they made money. Jewish people writing Christmas songs is not an example on how Merry Christmas is as American thing. Jewish people writing Christmas song celebrates a completely different American value: Capitalism. Happy Holidays, Bitches.

Aggro woke oneupsmanship dude: To clarify: Jews write Christmas songs because they’re interested in money? Whatever your response is: as a writer, I’d think that you’d foresee the nuances of anything you write for public consumption—and attempt to head them off. Your posts/writing need work.

[I'm already reaching for the popcorn and/or grain alcohol at this point of course]

OP: ...so I was supposed to bring up the fact that they needed to make money to survive in a period where European anti-semitism were killing their people en masse and their best route to survive was to write what people were buying to keep themselves alive? Sure, we could bring the Holocaust into this. Not sure we have enough space for it though.

AWOD: Bringing the Holocaust into the discussion when I never mentioned anything of the sort is a kind of dog-whistle in and of itself. As much as I enjoy making sport of your comment, your post is an oversimplification and fails to make any distinction between European and American Jews. Your attempt at making a pithy comment on Facebook is not an excuse for a lack of complexity. Don’t use some Wikipedia-light version of Judaism to build a “woke” case against Christian conservatism.

OP: My issue right now is you're asking for nuance in a complex thing that's one section of a bigger thing. I made an observation and pointed out how a point of view was offensive and simplistic, and in doing so, you are calling my point of view offensive and simplistic. And now the debate is what I'm saying, and not what I'm reacting to. I'd rather something be brought to the argument instead of a critique of the argument.

AWOD: Fabulous. Your contribution to this argument is woefully simple, underwhelming, and (ultimately) detrimental to that bigger picture. I’m not engaging after this post, so feel free to refute anything I’ve said. My point is that the world would be better off without this contribution. #latergator

Some other guy: *gif of Oprah making a "buhhh?" face as she leans back in surprise/confusion*

Some other guy: Guuuurl!

AWOD @ some other guy: I don’t know your political, social, or cultural leanings. I only pray you’re on MY SIDE. *purple devil emoji*

Other guy: I'm only here for the shade!!!

AWOD @ some other guy: fab. We agree.

Me: Oh ffs AWOD, I love you but you are going to tear your rotator cuff with that reach. OP's point was "it's a living," i.e., the songs were written as a job. The emphasis on monetary compensation was just a different way of phrasing it. He made no specific association between Jews and money, let alone intimated that the Jewish songwriters were more motivated by it than anyone else would be.

*AWOD likes my comment*

AWOD: *thumbs up emoji* 

Me @ AWOD: ...have you changed your mind or is sarcastic agreement now a thing?

AWOD: *thumbs up emoji* (sarcastic agreement)

Me @ AWOD: *”uh, okay” gif*

AWOD: *gif of Jack Nicholson making sunglasses slide down from his forehead into place by raising his eyebrows*

Me @ AWOD: See you at Marie's ;) *diva-y gif of Ursula from The Little Mermaid*

AWOD: *other diva-y gif* 

and now I honestly feel dumber for having participated in this

[thekelleyofalexandria-blog]

Tragedy

CW: Mass shooting, language

The rain fell in a steady mist on an October Saturday. My husband and I were driving to a friend’s baby shower and listening to My Brother, My Brother, and Me, our favorite podcast. I absentmindedly checked my phone (Zak was driving) and saw what would be the first of a steady stream of posts about an anti-Semitic shooter who killed 11 people as they worshipped in The Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.

My brain screeched, and my stomach dropped.

PITTSBURGH.

More people killed as they practiced their faith.

SQUIRREL HILL.

Another mass shooting. Another hate crime.

FUCK NO, not my city, not my friends, not the street I walked by a hundred happy times, NOT THESE PEOPLE, NOT HERE.

Part of me feels like I have no business writing anything about this. I moved away from Pittsburgh after finishing undergrad, and although my dream is to get a house in Squirrel Hill or Shadyside someday, that future is still years away. I’m also not Jewish, and I can’t know how this feels for that community right now. Writing about having Jewish friends or living in Pittsburgh feels so fucking futile. I’m adjacent, rather than directly, affected.

The flip side of that is that I have Jewish friends that I love. I have Pittsburgh, the city I still love the most. And I have a lot of thoughts crawling up the insides of my skull, so maybe writing will give them a space to exist in a healthy way.

ANGER

THIS is why I got into a tearful shouting match with a friend of a friend the weekend that Charlottesville happened. She was defending making nice with the “Unite the Right” marchers, not alienating them, listening to their point of view. And of course, “they have the right to free speech, too.” How was it suddenly a bad thing to wholeheartedly condemn any ideology that comes at the cost of a group of people? How were my extended family defending the existence of Neo-Zazis? How was the president of the United States in 2017 claiming that there were “very fine people on both sides?” By not speaking out explicitly, you imply that these genocidal ideologies are permissible. Maybe you didn’t plant the seeds, but you have created the soil conditions for hate to grow instead of uprooting every weed.  

This is also why I get – pardon the term – so up in arms about the sale of automatic weapons too. Zak commented that it was crazy the gunman was able to shoot so many people, including four policemen, so fast. Hunting guns don’t do that. Guns created to mow down as many humans as possible do.

It seems an obvious equation to me. Hate speech + guns that shoot a lot of people quickly = deadly hate crimes. And to people who claim there’s nothing we can do, I claim bullshit. Vote for sensible gun control; firmly denounce anything that even whiffs of white supremacy; protect minority groups with your vote and voice and body; and fiercely love your neighbor – ESPECIALLY the ones who look and worship and love differently than you – as yourself. This is what we can do, especially the white Christian majority right now.

And God help me the next time I hear someone claim the Christian faith is “under attack” in this country. I have no patience for it right now.

GRIEF

There aren’t really a lot of words for this one. Just something in my soul that makes sort of a guttural scream to the heavens. I’ve taught Night by Elie Wiesel, made lessons to introduce teenagers to the Holocaust, graded papers about how dehumanizing people leads to racial violence. One of the victims was alive during World War II and just…to be reminded that hate can never really be defeated. It’s extremely discouraging.

And the grief over hate crimes and mass shooting is compounding in me. There’s a line from “The Green Fields of France,” an Irish anti-war ballad, that’s been playing in my head: “For young Willy McBride, it will happen again. And again. And Again.” Although in this situation, the victims were not of traditional war but still of needless and hateful violence, and they were parents and grandparents rather than kids, the sentiment echoes a deepening sadness and despair about the frequency of hate crimes and mass shootings in this country.

LOVE

The reason I fell in love with Pittsburgh and the people there is because of the many communities shaped the city. When I was 18, I had basically only known one type of people my whole life up to that point, and I wanted to meet as many different people as I could and learn about what mattered to them and what their life was like. My curiosity was met with kindness and honesty, in particular from Jewish friends and professors.

There were a lot of memories brought up this weekend – how comfortable I always felt with the guys from the Jewish fraternity on campus, how I’d have these long talks in the office of my favorite professor about how his cultural history informed his theatre practices, how much I enjoyed chatting about faith with both religiously practicing Jewish friends and culturally Jewish friends. I haven’t kept in good touch with a lot of the people I knew in undergrad, but I’ve been thinking about one friend who I still talk to regularly. Back in college, she didn’t seem to be an especially religious person, but she invited me to her synagogue a few times. It wasn’t the Tree of Life, but it was a 5 minute drive away from Squirrel Hill.  After the services, I remember feeling gratitude, and peace, and appreciation to be included. All of these memories seem consistent with the work Tree of Life is doing in their community that incited such hate – bringing people in, helping refugees, educating, feeding, LOVING.

And even now, that love has begotten love: Muslims have raised more than $100,000 for Tree of Life. Several headlines are making the connection to this tragedy occurring in Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, with his famous quote: “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” There are people helping, and loving, and it gives me hope for the future. I feel powerless to help the people and city I love, which is a legitimate feeling, but it’s also not true. My vote, my voice, my time, my relationships, my ears, my brain, my heart – all of these things that we all have been given are things we can use to help.

Because I’m me, and somewhere along the way Lord of the Rings kind of became my religion (that’s a joke, but also sort of truuuuuue), I’ve been thinking about the scene in Helm’s Deep at the end of The Two Towers. It’s right before Sam’s famous speech, and before Gandalf charges down to save the day. It’s actually when Theoden King is at the height of his despair. “What can men do against such reckless hate?” he demands. And Aragorn tells him: “Ride out with me.” That exchange starts some of my favorite orchestration from all the movies and builds to the epic cavalry charge down the mountain as the sun rises.

I know real life doesn’t always have satisfying conclusions like that, and there’s not really any satisfying conclusion you can make in writing when shit like this happens. The grief and anger aren’t going away, but for myself, I need something to combat the hopelessness right now. So I’m reminding myself that I can ride out every day, meet the forces of hate head-on wherever I can, and make this an hour where we draw swords together.

[aces-to-apples]

It happened again: "I'm A Bully Co-Opting The Language of Social Justice Movements In Order To Exert Control Over Others 2: Electric Boogaloo"! Now with bonus "Using The Holocaust And Jewish Peoples As A Gotcha", doubling down on "Orientalism Is The Same As Representation, Actually", and an extra-spicy helping of "Using Fanon "Space Scotland" Stewjon As A Strawman To Prove That People Are Erasing Obi-Wan's ~*~East Asian Heritage~*~"!

Now, I'm not doing this again. I already lost my damn mind in the DMs of the person who brought it to my attention, and despite how "exhausting" it is to use scare-mongering tactics to bully other fans into kowtowing to your personal preferences, it is infinitely more exhausting to subject myself to this drivel. I have grey matter leaking out of my ears, I swear to fucking god.

Suffice it to say, nothing has changed, this person is still ignoring actual racism in fandom in general and Star Wars specifically in order to set themselves up as some kind of supreme authority of what other people are and aren't allowed to create, and people are still buying into it.

I'm willing to believe that some people aren't kissing up to this asshole out of malice, they're just getting suckered in by the fact that this author masterfully employs pathos and ethos in their writing to convince ignorant white fans that pretty much any of this horseshit is true. Or even makes any fucking sense.

But the fact of the matter is, I simply don't care. I'm a mean, petty, spiteful person and I don't care if people are throwing their critical thinking skills into the garbage because they're so afraid of even appearing racist. That's just white fragility, babes, and I don't have the patience for it. If you've noticed recently that you've been blocked by me and don't know why, there's a good chance it's because I saw you buying into this person's, and their cult-y friends', bullshit.

In the interest of being, and I do so hate to use this term, brutally honest: use your fucking brains, people.

My condolences, once again, to both the people who hate this post already and the new people who just followed me and are seeing it for the first time. I won't be offended if you nope out because of the fandom wank, but I also won't be impressed or sad to see you go if you nope out because you actually agree with this person.

Racism is an actual fucking problem, especially in the Star Wars fandom, but these works and this person are using that fact as a bludgeoning tool against naive fans in order to fulfill their fantasies of being a high school bully. I'd implore you all not to fall for it, but frankly, that's not my fucking problem. I'm not nice, I'm not lenient, patience has never been my strong suit, and I utilize my block button with great frequency and enthusiasm.

I only wish AO3 will roll out a block function soon, because I am so fucking tired.

✌

Your Reputation Precedes You

A response to “On Fandom Racism (and That Conlang People Are Talking About)” because lmao that cowardly bitch just hates getting feedback from people that she can’t then harass into oblivion

i.e. God I Wish I Could Use The Tag Fandom Wank Without The Titty Police Nerfing My Post

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To be frank, I’m not here because I think you or any of your little cronies are going to change your minds. If the ‘name’ wasn’t a giveaway, your group of ~likeminded individuals~ have quite the reputation for espousing ableist, antisemitic, and, yes, racist views under wafer-thin the veneer of “calling out racism.” I think we both know that what you’re actually doing is using the relative anonymity of the internet and progressive language to abuse, harass, and bully fans that you personally disagree with. You and your group are toxic, hateful, and utterly pathetic, using many peoples’ genuine desire to avoid accidentally causing harm and twisting it into this horrid parade of submissiveness to You, The One And Only Arbiter Of Truth And Justice In Fandom. Never mind that you have derided autistic people as lacking compassion and empathy, that you’ve used racist colonizer dogwhistles to describe a fictional culture based heavily on real live Maori culture, that you’ve mocked the idea of characters having PTSD, or that vital mental health services are anything more than “talking about your feelings with friends uwu.” Let’s just ignore that you have ridiculed the idea of adults in positions of power exerting that power over children in harmful and abusive ways, that creating transformative fan-content that doesn’t adhere to the spirit of canon or wishes of the original author garners derision and hatefulness from you, and that you’ve used classic abuser tactics in order to gaslight people in your orbit into behaving more submissively towards you in order to avoid more verbal abuse.

Let’s toss all of that crucial context aside in favor of only what you’ve written here.

What you’ve written here is nearly 3,000 entire words based on, at best—though, admittedly, based on your previous behavior, I am actually not willing to extend to you an iota of good faith—fallacious reasoning. You posit that a constructed language, to be used by a fictional religious group located in an entirely different galaxy than our own, is othering, racist in general, and anti-Asian specifically. This appears based in several suppositions, the first being that a language unknown by the reader will, by nature, cause the reader to feel alienated from the characters and therefore less sympathetic, empathetic, and caring towards the characters. That idea is patently ridiculous and, I believe, says far more about your ability to connect to a character speaking an unfamiliar language than any kind of overarching truth about media and the human condition. New things are interesting; new things are fun; the human brain is wired from birth to be fascinated with new things, to want to take them apart, find out how they work, and enjoy both the process and the results.

The second supposition this fallacy is based upon appears to be that to move away from the blatant Orientalism of Star Wars is inherently anti-Asian. While I find it… frankly, a little bit sad that you cling so viciously to the Orientalist, appropriative roots of Star Wars as some form of genuine representation, that’s really none of my business. If you feel that a Muslim-coded character bombing a temple and becoming a terrorist and a Sith, a white woman wearing Mongolian wedding garb, a species of decadent slug-like gangsters smoking out of hookahs and keeping attractive young women chained at their feet (as it were), a species of greedy money-grubbers with exaggerated features and offensively stereotypical “Asian” accents, and an indigenous people wearing modesty garb based on the Bedu people and treated by most characters as well as the narrative as mindless animals deserving of murder and genocide are appropriate representation of the many, varied, and beautiful cultures around the world upon which they were “based,” then that is very much your business. Until you pull shit like this. Until you accuse other fans, who wish to move away from such offensive coding and stereotypes, of erasing Asian culture from Star Wars. Then it becomes everyone’s business, especially when you are targeting a loving and enthusiastic group of fans who are pouring their hearts and souls into creating an inventive and non-appropriative alternative to canon.

Which leads into the third supposition, that a patently racist, misogynistic white man in the 1970s, and then again in the 1990s, intended his universe to be an accurate and respectful portrayal of the various cultures he stole from. I understand that for your group of toxic bullies, the term “Death of the Author” holds no real meaning, but the simple fact of the matter is that George Lucas based his white-centered space adventure on Samurai movies while removing the cultural context that gave them any meaning, because he liked the idea of swords and noble warriors in space. He based the Force and the Jedi Order on belief systems such as Taoism and Buddhism, but only on the surface, without putting any real effort into into portraying them earnestly or accurately. He consistently disrespected both characters of color and characters coded to be a certain race, ethnicity, culture, or religion, and likewise disrespected and stole from the cultures upon which he based them. He was, and continues to be, a racist white man who wrote a racist story. His universe has Orientalism baked into its every facet, and the idea that fans who wish to move away from this and interrogate and transform the text into something better than what it is are racist is not only laughable, but incredibly disingenuous and insidious.

As I said, I am not writing this to change your mind, because I truly believe that you already know that “cOnLaNgS aRe RaCiSt” is a ridiculous statement. The way you’ve comported yourself in fandom spaces thus far has shown to me that you are nothing more than a bully who knows that the anti-racist movement in fandom can be co-opted for your benefit. If you tout your Asian heritage and use the right language, make the “right” accusations and take advantage of white guilt and white ignorance, you can have dozens of people falling at your feet, begging for forgiveness, for absolution. And I think that gives you a thrill. So, no, none of this will change your mind because none of this is genuinely about racism—it’s about power, it’s about control, it’s about fandom being the only space where you have some.

So I’m writing this for the creators of this wonderful conlang, which has been crafted by multiple people including people of color, who don’t deserve this nonsensical vitriol, and for the fans reading this manipulative hate-fest, wondering if they really are Evil Racists because they don’t participate in fandom the way you think they should.

Here it is: fandom has a lot of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism, etc. baked into it. Unfortunately, such is the nature of living and growing up in societies and cultures that have the same. The important thing is to independently educate yourself on those issues and think critically about them—not “think critically” as in “to criticize” them, but to analyze, evaluate, pick apart, examine, and reconstruct them again in order to come to a well thought-out conclusion. Read this well-articulated attack on a group of fans who have always welcomed feedback and participation, are open about their backgrounds, their strengths and weaknesses, and wonder who is actually being genuine.

Is it the open and enthusiastic group who ask for the participation of others in this labor of love? Or is it the ringleader of a group of well-known bullies who have manipulated, gaslit, and then subsequently love-bomb people who did not simply roll over at the slightest hint of dominance? The ones who spent hours upon hours tearing apart, mocking, deriding, and falsely accusing authors of fanworks and metatextual works of various bigotries and -isms, knowing that those evaluations were spurious and meant only to cause harm, not genuine examinations of the works themselves or even presumed authorial intent. The ones who made their own, quote-unquote, community so negative and toxic that even after the departure of a large portion of them, including this author in particular, that community still has a reputation for being hateful, toxic, and full of mean-spirited harassers who will never look critically about their own behavior but only ever point fingers at others. The ones who are so very determined to cause misery wherever they go that as soon as their usual victims are no longer immediately available, they will turn on each other at the slightest hint of weakness.

This entire piece of (fan)work is misinformed at the most generous, disingenuous at the most objective, and downright spiteful when we get right into it. The creators of Dai Bendu, along with various other works, series, and fan events that these people personally dislike, have been targeted because it is so much easier to harass, bully, and use progressive language as a weapon against them, than it is to put any effort into making fandom spaces more informed, more positive, more respectful.

As someone rather eloquently put it, community is not a fucking spectator sport. You want a better community, you gotta work at it. And conversely, what you put into your community is what you’ll get out of it. This author and their friends have put a lot of hate into their communities, and now they’re toxic cesspools that people stay well away from, for fear of contracting some terrible form of harassment poisoning.

Congrats, Ri, you’ve gotten just what you wanted: adoring crowds listening to you spout your absolutely heinous personal views purely to live out some kind of power fantasy, and the rest of us staying well away, because fuck knows nothing kind, helpful, or in good faith has ever come from Virdant or her echo-chamber of petty, spiteful assholes.

No love, bad night.

P.S. Everyone actually in the Dai Bendu server knows your ass got kicked because you didn’t say shit for a full thirty days and ignored the announcement that inactive members would be culled. You ain’t cute pretending like it’s because you were ~*~Silenced~*~ after ~*~Valiantly~*~ attempting to call out racism. We see you.

[sputnikscock420]

TL;DR: Every fall semester at my university there is a large six-sided billboard put up with a bunch of bullshit comparing abortion to genocide (it’s set up by people NOT affiliated with the university) but it’s okay because nobody wants it there and the students protest, get signatures for a petition to have it permanently banned from campus, and are brought together by their mutual disgust for the billboard and it’s affiliates.

Full story: So every fall semester at my university, these anti-abortion people come and put up this six-sided billboard thing in the quad (an area that typically has a high volume of students). It’s a horrendous atrocity covered in spelling errors, images of aborted fetuses (that many other students have told me are fake, however I have no way to prove that), real and very graphic images of genocides that have occurred throughout history including the holocaust, and ridiculous comparisons claiming that people making their own decisions with their own bodies are somehow akin to people like Adolf Hitler.

They have signs nearby that say “warning: genocide photos ahead” as if that’s in any way accurate. Also, it’s incredibly ineffective as a trigger warning considering the fact that the signs are no more than 10 yards from the GIANT FUCKING BILLBOARD.

The Dean of Students doesn’t agree with these people, but according to him not much can be done about it because if they try to do anything, the anti-abortion shitheads will take the university to court claiming that telling them to fuck off violates their freedom of speech. They’ve done this before and the court always rules in their favor.

I’m all for freedom of speech and in no way do I want to silence them because they should be able to voice their opinions just like anyone else, but the way they’re doing it is awful. They’re displaying horrifying graphic images in a populated area and not only is it giving offensive and incorrect information, but many students (especially those with PTSD) are seriously triggered and/or distressed by it. This helps no one, all it does is harm people. There are other groups that do similar things, but they have their bullshit in a tent of some kind so you can only see it if you choose to go inside and look. That would be totally fine, but these people aren’t giving us a choice in whether or not we see it. It’s absolutely awful.

But wait! There’s a bright side!

They do this every year, and every year it brings the students together. Very few students, if any at all, are okay with this billboard. Every time it’s put up, students IMMEDIATELY start a petition to get it off campus (the petition is for it to be taken off campus PERMANENTLY btw, we are all fully aware that their plan is always to take it down after two days but nobody wants it to ever come back - hence the petition).

They stand across from the billboard douchebags and peacefully protest, holding signs that say things like “My Body My Choice”, “Mind Your Own Uterus”, and “[University] is too Great for Hate”. They also go far enough away from the billboard that the images aren’t visible and hold signs that say “trigger warning: graphic images ahead”. A few students brought their dogs this year so people who were stressed about the billboard could pet the dogs to feel better (the doggos were so good, they’re all precious little cinnamon rolls❤️❤️❤️).

Planned Parenthood sets up a booth nearby with free information pamphlets, buttons, pens, stickers, condoms, and candy. There’s also a Pride booth and a booth for our Gender Equity Center that also give free goodies and *correct* information. The booths don’t even really protest, they just set up near the billboard and students flock to them not only for free goodies and information, but to tell them they’re great and appreciated and to have a wonderful day. My best friend even went outside and gave hugs to every single booth volunteer and protester (with their permission, of course). Nobody really says anything to the billboard people, we just make a point to give obvious support to the protesters and booths. It really brings our university together, it almost makes it kind of nice.

Also sorry there’s only one pic of the billboard itself, by the time I could take pics they were taking it down (everyone cheered when all of it was down btw).

I didn’t have the chance to look super closely at some of the sides of this hexagonal atrocity, but if you’d like to know what I did see: there was a picture of a concentration camp labeled “The Final Solution” next to a (possibly fake) picture of an aborted fetus - I don’t remember what exact label the second picture had but it was something with the word “solution” in it; they were trying to say that abortion is as bad as Hitler’s plan to brutally execute an entire group of people for no reason. Which is awful for many reasons but the main reason imo being that using a horrible, tragic event such as the holocaust to further your own political agenda is a dick move. They also had another very graphic image labeled “Cambodian Genocide” next to another (again, possibly fake) image of an aborted fetus labeled “American Genocide”.

These people are just awful, but my university is an all-inclusive school built on respect, love, and intelligence. We don’t have time for hate and fear-mongering bullshit.

P.s. I would say the name of the university because it’s an amazing university, but I didn’t for the same reason I covered the protesters’ faces. I don’t want any negative repercussions for these wonderful people. But I hope you enjoy the moons covering their faces and my university name, as well as the trash can covering the face of one of the anti-abortion people. Sorry that this post is so long, but it’s important to me and I wanted to share how proud I am of the students at my university for making a very clear stand against this, but doing so peacefully. :)

[nihilistlover]

Splinch

(Thanks to @ladyoftheshrimp for all the poking and prodding. Her beta-ing. Her ideas. And her AU. You’re amazing! Triggers: Fucking Nazis (but they’re dead) POW, descriptions of injury, warfare, and mentions of the holocaust)

December 1944: Eastern Front, After Soviet Liberation

Status of The Second War: Active

Status of The Greater Good Revolution: Active

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Theseus was in the silent, pillaged streets of Romania when the Soviet soldier appeared. He was on the last line of a telegram, and then, his unit heard the crack. The privates rustled out their rifles, and they all stood still in the dry air.

A terrifying and complete apparition approached them. The soldier had flashed into existence suddenly strapped on his dark horse, a riding crop at his side, rifle across at his back. He cantered towards them. The hooves hushed in the layer of ash covered snow, faded gun smoke from artillery lashed at the lean legs of his Budyonny steed. In his high mount the Soviet soldier approached them in a frame of rubble and exposed supports. Closer, and the hollowed husks grew in size around the phantom.

Theseus handed off the telegram to a medical officer in the Field Division of the Graves Registration Company. He felt pulled, footsteps slow, an absence of constant gunfire enveloped him.

“Scamander, are you daft?” Theseus’ Chief of the detachment asked, his arms full of curtains and tablecloths. He passed them off to a Romanian soldier, who returned to cover the spread of lined-up bodies. All the while the Chief watched Theseus drift away, his heart heavy for the officer.

Theseus wasn’t daft. Not entirely. He was compelled, and transfixed. The Soviet soldier had stopped just under the branches of a lamp post, his Budyonny whinnied. A message for him and only him.

The Soviet soldier pressed the tip of his wand into his neck. “Lieutenant Theseus Scamander, would you come with me?”

He then quickly switched to the wand being at his temple, and waited, blue eyes a tired gaze. His ushanka pushed low, and telogreika synched tight. The horse shuffled, its breath huffed out in wisps of condensation from its nostrils.

“And how do you know I’m him?”

The Soviet’s eyes narrowed at the translation. He moved the wand back down to his neck.

“No bullshit, Scamander,” the Soviet brought his wand down. He took out a picture. A moving image of Percival and Theseus. He pointed to Theseus with a stubby mitt, it completely covered Percival. The Soviet soldier stashed the image, tugged on the reins with his left hand, and returned the wand to his neck. “You were a war hero once.”

“Once,” Theseus said, his breath wheezed out of his nostrils.The frost nipped at every inch of his exposed face. He pulled his scarf up higher over the bridge of his nose.

The Soviet pushed a heel into the Budyonny’s side. The horse turned, and exposed its chestnut neck to Theseus. The Soviet tossed the reins over towards the officer and patted at the horse’s shoulder. The soldier twisted his hand in the reins, and made a fist then let the black leather drop. He stared at Theseus. Theseus twisted his hand in the reins. They disapparated.

Theseus stumbled away when they re-appeared. He tugged at the reins at first, but he heard the horse. It keened and clacked at its bit. He let go, and fell into a post. He watched the the last few inches of hair cascade down from the horse’s tail. They had been splinched off.

“A whole horse, why would you apparate a whole horse?” Theseus pushed off the post. The greatcoat of his battledress snagged on gnarled barbed wire. The wire twisted around the post. It punched through the splintered network of holes. When Theseus pushed away; he saw how it created an unforgiving barrier at the edge of the camp.

At his post, the barbed wire was tangled up and around a support beam. It jutted straight out, like the branch of a light pole. On its end, a cut noose dangled. Barbed wire thorns gleamed in the braids of the empty noose, ice crystals collected on the metal points and rope hairs.

“Where are we?” he asked. But the Soviet soldier didn’t answer. His horse’s head dipped low. He looked down at the shrivelled and snow-covered bodies by the entrance of the long sheds. Theseus saw them too, and quickly came to an inevitable conclusion. The bodies were in striped gowns. They showed through the layer of gray snow that blanketed them.

Two men walked towards them, between their grip, hung a white stretcher. They placed the body on the pile. It was a child. Small, too small, her wrists bird-like, skin paper thin. Sewed onto her gown was a flipped purple triangle, right over her heart. Theseus stared into the black-edged bullet hole between her eyes.

He felt anger. A kind of anger that becomes misplaced, and in its wayward path, falls to the nearest conceivable entity of blame.

“After you liberated them, what did you do? Did you kill them?” he asked, and looked up at the Soviet soldier high on his perch. The Soviet soldier didn’t have his wand out. He just shook his head, and sighed. His breath turned to feathery tendrils.

One of the soldiers at the body pile tugged the white sheet from under the girl. She rolled away. He gathered and tucked the dirty sheet into himself. The silent soldier in front of him pointed towards the Soviet and Theseus. He turned. Theseus recognized the familiar fatigues that peeked out under the soldier’s long coat.

“Theseus,” said the soldier, his hands still clutched in the sheet. “Theseus Scamander.”

The Soviet nodded to Theseus, and pushed the side of his Budyonny with his heel. They turned to the left and sauntered off into the camp.

“You’re American,” said Theseus, looking back at the American soldier.

“Yeah, yeah, I am. I’m Cooper.” Cooper paused. The other man, the silent soldier, nodded, but didn’t say anything. He just bit his lip, his green eyes searched Theseus. Cooper continued, “we’ve got to show you something.”

“What is it? I have a unit waiting for me-”

“It’s pretty serious,” said Cooper. “We found both of them in one of the lower compounds. Underground types, down in the Nazis’ Mole Hole. I just.”

Theseus felt it. That tug again, like he was supposed to be somewhere else. “Who?” he asked, but it was quiet, sucked up by the cold air.

The silent soldier waved for him to follow. Cooper nodded, hands knuckle white on the sheet.

There was a series of compounds, connected in a long U-Shape. The double doors at the straight belly of the U were open. Three men drank cups of steaming coffee, cigarettes in-between their teeth. They cast jokes and asides at the Soviet who waited, still atop his horse, at the cusp of the two forks of the sheds.

The horse scuffed a hoof at the ground. It kicked its head back, eyes white and wide, directed at Theseus. He, Cooper, and the silent soldier approached along the Budyonny’s side. The Soviet calmed the horse, and watched them. His eyes on their boots, and hands. He looked to the doorway. The three men had stopped. They all looked at Theseus.

In the silence that rained down on them, soft and subtle as the snowfall, Theseus heard it. Whiplash voices that echoed into his ears, but held no present meaning. He needed a connection. A determination that things weren’t what they seemed, and the drawn faces that watched his reaction weren’t testament and witness to reality.

A spell, lightning quick, and just as strong as the comparison flashed bright white in the doorway. It fizzled out. Smoke, grayish-black curled out, and one of the three men stepped away. He took a sip of his coffee.

Theseus stood in the yawning doorway. His hands twitched. It smelled, overall, like the rest of the camp, but his sinuses were barely catching the full array of scents. Unable to smell the flowers. The shit, and piss, and blood. One descriptor in his head for the smell: dirty. He wiped at his mouth with his scarf, and finally tugged it down. The smell was stronger.

“Are there still Germans down there?” he asked.

“No, they all,” one of the soldiers with coffee gestured to his head. He mumbled around his skinny cigarette, a gun symbol to his temple.

Theseus looked to the wet stairwell, snow dripped down into the dark entrance. A desk was pushed to the side, right before the head of the stairs. On the table top there were abandoned logs. Stamps were kicked to the side, a pen still in an inkwell. Serving as a long dried up remanent of the near past.

“Right, I-” but Theseus didn’t finish. A butcher bird, somewhere on the trails of barbed wire, let loose its horrible cry.

Cooper put a hand on his back, “They’re down there. We finally got their names. From your brother, Newt, he’s the one who talked. I don’t know, P-”

“Merlin,” Theseus hissed out, interrupting Cooper. He looked back. The silent soldier had taken the Soviet’s horse by the reins. He lead him away. The three soldiers by the door started back up their chatter with one another. One kicked at the wooden door absently. It creaked. Theseus blinked, startled. He could hear Cooper again.

“I don’t have much for consolation, but you can go down. They’re the only ones we haven’t evacuated yet.”

“Are they hurt?”

Cooper breathed in, “Ah.”

“How bad?”

“We don’t know yet. Theseus, we can’t get a single god damn man close.”

A coffee drinker slipped into the conversation, “Yeah, the shorter one tried to hex my face inside out.”

Smoke puffed out of the soldier on the far left. He snorted, “Love to see that.”

Theseus shook his head, “Any medics?”

Cooper nodded, “I can work my way around a field dressing, sir. The Soviets too.”  

“Right,” said Theseus, and he toed towards the steps. A paper from the desk’s log fluttered in his wake. The icicles along the doorway dripped. A relentlessly cold drop wormed its way in the gap between his collar and scarf.

“Good luck,” he heard tagged on behind him as he descended.

It wasn’t all darkness in the hole. The farther he creeped down the steps the colder it got, and the closer he came to a light. A light that provided no warmth in the arid air, but instead softly lit the center of the Mole Hole.

There were tables. Rooms dispersed around the hollowed out setting. All of it concrete and cold. Filled with dirt, and grime, and the old smell of German roaches. A single candle flickered, too bright, and luminous. It dripped yellow wax on the long bows of wood. It cast a bright and strict halo of light.

Once Theseus hit the ground floor he functioned just outside of it. He traversed in the packets of light that tumbled over the boundary.

Then he stumbled across his first body. His boot hit it first, and he paused. He sniffed deep, and threw his scarf back over his nose and mouth. He gagged and coughed, and bent down close. The man had shot himself in the head with a rifle. Half his face was gone.

He stepped over it, and right up the next body, his foot just knocked against this one too. Ants crawled around the eyelets of Theseus’ boots. They had crawled out of the dead man’s nostrils, disturbed from their crowded hibernation inside the headspace. Little ants dripped over the dead man’s lips. Down over the green uniform, and swarmed slow and curious at the intruder.

This one had used a Mauser pistol.

Theseus saw the blood dried on the floor. The reddish species of Formica marched about in it and trailed back to their temporary residence in little lines. An Edible Dormouse petulantly squeaked, its little hands rubbed at the man’s cheek. Its dark eyes watched Theseus. It licked up a few ants before it hurried away.

Theseus looked, there were more shapes on the floor. Shapes and shadows, that twisted themselves into corpses. Iron crosses and silver eagles glimmered on all their chests. All of them glassy stares in the soft candle light. The bygone wardens’ weapons of destruction still next to their bodies.

Theseus stepped into the halo. His hand relaxed on the scarf.

Next to the candle sat an otherworldly, illuminated version of Newt. His ass on the table top, feet on the bench seat, he leaned forward. His eyes and lips and cheeks all hollowed out by the light shining by his side. The jacket on his shoulders too big. It was unbuttoned, and just draped there. The white gashes of the SS bright at the collar.

Theseus could clearly see the ways in which Newt was injured. The scratches and greening bruises, some purple, others yellow. Newt’s left eye was puffy, the lid pink and inflamed, pus leaked out. Theseus dropped his scarf entirely.

Newt squinted his eyes. Theseus could no longer see his blue irises, just the shadow of Newt’s lashes, and the way his hands twisted into one another. Newt’s shoulders shook minutely. Little rattles, like he tried not to show that he was cold. But Theseus clearly saw the jolts in his knees.

“Newt,” said Theseus quiet, very quiet. Whisper soft. If he spoke too loud and too soon the mirage in front of him would melt away in the candlelight.

“Theseus,” said Newt, he smiled, but his lips were so dry that blood dribbled out.

Theseus stepped forward, he shouldered off his frock coat. Newt’s eyes widened again, stark blue, his head tilted up.

Theseus’ boot rolled over a thin line of twine. The toe pulled at it, and he followed it with his gaze. It lead somewhere off behind him, running parallel to the tables.

Theseus heard Percival before he saw him. The quick gasped snarls and pried growls from the depths of a shattered ribcage. His voice bubbled, the nuances of a punctured lung.

Theseus turned, and met bared teeth, blueish fingers already clawed at him, and he tried to take a step back. But Percival fell onto him entirely.

They both collapsed onto the floor. Theseus’ head cracked against the bench of the table, his hair now pushed up against its foot. Newt sat and watched from above. Theseus’ hands flew out for purchase on the splinters and stained floor.

Newt spoke, his voice unshaken, flat and direct. “Percival, Percival, no, this one isn’t a trick.”

The candle flickered on. A hoarse backdrop to Theseus’ desperate scrabble for escape. Percival ripped and pulled at every inch of him. When Theseus felt hands at his throat he scrabbled for for his side holster.

Percival stared right at Theseus. The whites of his eyes red. His eyes distant, but very much close.

Theseus felt his own movements stutter, and sputter to a dead stop. He wheezed out a counter-spell, and ripped at Percival’s cold fingers.

He bent a few back, he cracked at the thumb, he pushed with his elbows. He was relieving some of the pressure. He craned his neck back. His boots made a too loud noise when they kicked out. Percival, who straddled him at the hips, turned to stare at Theseus’ boots.

Theseus pushed his head all the way back till he saw an upside down image of Newt. The golden version of him. The one entirely revealed by light. Bruised and maudlin, unmoving. A passive by-stander. Newt’s fingers were still clasped together in a firm embrace over his knees.

“New-,” said Theseus.

Newt just stared. Theseus mouthed a spell towards Newt’s direction. The candle went out. Newt disappeared.

“Accio,” Theseus held his hand out and away. Percival’s grip changed on his neck. The hands shifted down in the dark.

Percival made a noise that Theseus only registered as a yip.

A leg completely braced over his thighs, another twisted over his shins. Percival was laid down on top of him in the dark. His weight rushed down on Theseus’ ribcage, just when he could get a breath.  

Theseus felt the combat knife hit his hand. It cut the corner between his thumb and fingers. Percival had a sloppy grip at his lower jaw and pushed up against Theseus’ chin. Shadows and non-existent colors of the dark painted themselves into partial images of the scene.

After Percival had released his grip, Theseus had thrown his right arm in front of his neck. The combat knife held out and away in his other hand.

Theseus waited to strike, Percival did not.

Theseus heard a growl and hissed out a, “motherfuck,” when he felt Percival bite down hard. He kept his arm still. Percival twisted, he ripped into Theseus with his teeth.

Theseus moved then, swung his arm down. Percival didn’t stop the knife. So, Theseus rammed it into the nearest piece of the man.

Percival finally let go.

Newt climbed off the table calmly. The candle pulsed back to life.

Percival held the space where the knife was, blood trickled out around it, his arm limp. His eyes still red-rimmed, but his attention too divided now to care. Newt was there to console Percival. Theseus scrabbled out of Percival’s range, and from underneath his legs.

Newt looked over at Theseus then, cheekbones a skeletal memoir in the candle glow.

“What? What, Newt? I’m here to save you,” said Theseus.

Above ground Cooper and the silent soldier helped him heal the two. Percival and Newt didn’t say much. Newt at least said, “Thank you.”

No one said anything back.

Theseus gritted his teeth. The Soviet returned on horseback. With Percival and Newt’s wounds erased from the surface of their bodies, they were evacuated from the camp by disapparation.

Cooper smiled in the aftermath and took a cigarette from the silent soldier. Their work was done.

Newt and Percival waited with the Soviet under the four-crowned lamp post. A blanket wrapped around both of them. The dirty sheet from the camp placed over it for extra padding.

Theseus’ Chief was still on the same street. The unit had gathered more bodies. They would have to bury them close-by. Spades were already in Romanian and British hands.

The Chief took one look at Newt and Percival at the corner of the square. Then patted Theseus on the shoulder, his eyes as gray and placid as the ash on the street. “Thank you for your service, my boy.”

“Wait I-”

“Kent, write up a wire.”

“For what?” Kent had the fabric canopy of a parachute draped over one forearm. It trailed down his front.

“Lieutenant Scamander is to be honorably discharged.” Kent paused. The Chief continued a hand to his neck and said, “For medical reasons.”

“They just have to be evacuated, Sir.”

The Chief smiled, “Alright. You’re alright. Go help your brother,” he made a closed, “m,” with his hand, the thumb poked through.

Theseus sniffed in, quick and sharp, he nodded.

“God Speed,” said the Chief. He let his spade slide back down to his hand and called for the company to start carrying bodies to the burial site.

Theseus returned to the Soviet’s side. Percival’s eyes were locked on the snow. A foot peeked out, encapsulated by a delicate yellow heel. The rest of the body unfound. She was just an addition to the collection of rubble.

Newt blinked, and stared at Theseus. His hands twisted in the twined rope held between his and Percival’s hands. Together they were trapped underneath their thick canvas wrap, two thin spectres connected by twine. The horse shifted, and the rope tugged a little where it was knotted to a saddle bag. Newt’s eyes lingered too long on each and every footstep of Theseus. He tried to hide the gun-shot flinch when Theseus gripped his arm.

Theseus nodded to the Soviet. They disapparated again. He didn’t mention that he was no longer a soldier for the King.

They took the Floo Network to a stationary hospital on the mainland. It was a trail of back channels to England. One lead them to southern France.

There was fighting further to the south-west, but they were far enough out of the brunt of it. The flag of de Gaulle fluttered outside of the evac hospital. It was placed at the tail end of the Vosges mountains.

Theseus lead Newt and Percival inside, there was no door, barely any walls. It was just a permanent foundation and half a ceiling. The building as a whole was still strong.

Tarps were strung up in the blasted out vignette of a Lorraine villa. They overhung the filled cots. Medical engineers with clamps and splints milled about.

The low front walls of the hospital allowed some of the patients to peek out. “Soviet, Soviet,” they whispered past bandages and bullet holes. And the Soviet disappeared.  Slowly, away on his horse, into the mist and soft purple flowers of the far mountain’s edge.

A confined fireplace burnt low and steady inside of the hospital. It was at the back wall. The cots all lead back to the hearth. A nurse lifted the grate aside and walked off to a bedside. A radio, at the end of a cot, hissed out white noise when she passed.

Theseus was surprised the fire existed openly. It was cobalt, red edged and dim. It gave off no warmth. They were ushered towards it and given a scoop of floo.

“Bon Voyage,” said a healer. He nodded to them bent over a soldier blinded from an exploding bullet. They stepped into the flames, and left behind the blanket and sheet.

The healer would later take them out to better cover the bodies arranged under the shadow of the flag.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Discontinued: Operation Ys-Specialized Unit: MIA /KIA [insert status change] POW

Members of Unit Evacuated list cont.:

Graves, Percival G. 0-062-697

Scamander, Newton A. F. RAF Nr. 0-101-016

Camp: Dulag 0-5 / Outside of Geneva codes

Camp Status: Inactive

[omgktlouchheim]

Word Vomit Wednesday - Yearly Wrap-Up

 Welcome to Word Vomit Wednesday! A series of blog posts about a specific topic from current events that I, and sometimes the rest of the Internet, ruminate obsessively about. All thoughts/opinions/experiences are my own; I don’t claim anything that I write to represent anyone other than myself.

 This year has been a doozy. Where last year everything and everyone we loved seemed to drop dead every other day, this year has brought about us picking up the pieces and laying a foundation for the country and lives we want. It has not been easy. Between one natural disaster after another, being gaslighted by the president, white supremacists feeling emboldened, more mass shootings by white men with histories of domestic violence, to shitty politicians and policies (the repeal of Net Neutrality JUST happened. Fuck you Ajit Pai.), and tweets that could possibly set off a nuclear holocaust (and more!) this year has been stressful AF. We have had a constitutional crisis nearly every single day. And we're still fighting. Since the Women's March on Washington the day after 45's inauguration we have not stopped and because of that, real changes seem to be forming. We are in high-tide with no chance of slowing our roll in sight. Meeting, marching, voting, calling our representatives, and taking down the patriarchy has become a daily part of most of our lives and it's making an impact.

Tarana Burke's #metoo movement has begun to hold men accountable for their actions and complicity is in the oppression and subjugation of women while letting women and other victims/survivors of sexual harassment and assault know that they will finally be believed. Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought charges against high-ranking connections to the 45 Administration in his investigation of collusion with Russia. We voted in women, POC, and transgender folx into offices (firsts for many districts) that have traditionally been held by middle-aged white men. And, Alabama, voted in Doug Jones, a champion of civil rights, instead of an alleged pedophile and let the GOP and RNC know that they wont stand for their party over people bullshit. 

There will continue to be highs and lows in the coming year and as we head into 2018 midterms, but if 2017 is any indication, we're going in stronger and more determined than ever.

 On another note, I will be taking a few weeks off of posting WVW so I can focus on spending time with my family and resting over the holidays. I will be back in the new year with new posts and... the podcast! I'm really looking forward to getting that part of all of this going :) I want to thank everyone for their support and comments and DMs about the blog and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. 

 Katie Louchheim would really just like to be on vacation now.

[rissa-rey]

I ain’t even getting into it with you about that bullshit you tried to pull with Mere except to say it’s not her job to police fandom for you and you publishing private DMs was a pure dick move IDGAF what she said or didn’t say or saw or didn’t see. You publishing things she told you in confidence? Dick move. That reeks of desperation. The end.

As for the rest of your bullshit...

1. There is a valid argument to be made re: Daenerys Targaryen’s arc and the white savior trope. Do I think the Hitler comparison holds much water? No. But since someone associated with the show is the one that brought it up then it is perfectly reasonable to expect people to discuss it. Sorry it’s a problem for you—get a handle on your massively inflated ego, use your block button to ignore them and fuck the fuck off. But as a WOC I’m not about to let it pass without comment when a bunch of self-important white bitches say otherwise. Die mad about it.

(Also, pro-tip but if the Jonerys stans don’t want to see Dany=Hitler comparisons then maybe they shouldn’t defend the dumb as a bag of dicks fanfic author who thought writing a Jonerys Holocaust fanfic featuring y’alls fave as a concentration camp guard. My point? There are a bunch of shady assholes running around ALL OVER this fandom and none of you self-aggrandizing hoes have the market cornered on problematic or toxic bullshit). You wish you mattered that much—get over yourself.

2. I’m also not going to argue with you about the Jonsa fandom since I don’t ship it and IDGAF if they’re naughty or nice or just hateful to your sad ass (cause it’d be deserved). What I will say is that in my experience the discussion surrounding Daenerys and the white savior trope is nothing new and didn’t originate with post-S6 show fan Jonsas. I mean I wasn’t around here two years ago (which is apparently a prerequisite for having an opinion in your book) but I’ve been a part of the ASOIAF fandom for 20 years and we were tossing ideas back and forth about D’s arc and whether or not it fit into the white savior narrative for at least 15 of those 20 years...when we weren’t making fun of your sad little band of assholes for thinking because you wrote “edgy” Jonsa incest porn back in 2012 that somehow made you relevant or a BNF.

Tbh the funniest thing about her 65+ note screed against me is that two of her friends loving on her in the comments have advanced the Dany/Hitler argument on their blogs.

So. Lol.

[blvckmagicx-blog]

Problems Within the Black Lives Matter Movement/ the Black Community

This post is going to be slightly insensitive as I am black and have seen most of the things I talk about. I live in an area where things like this are common and if you want to see injustice all you have to do is step outside. First and foremost, i’m not some special snowflake SJW who’s just going to ignore the opposing sides of a story. There are problems and bad seeds within every group of people. There is also good found in every group of people. No one is ever 100% evil or 100% good. I will be upfront and recognize there are problems within the black community and the Black Lives Matter movement, but that does not mean the movement is invalid or that I don’t support it and my community.

Problem #1: Racism applies to all races.

Yeah, I know that probably pissed a lot of people off, but it’s true. Reverse-racism is not and will never be a thing and that is because any acts of racism is just racism. The definition of racism (via Google) is: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. Racism does not mean you have to have a larger number of people for it to work and it doesn’t mean you have to have been oppressed for it to happen. Racist views and action=racism. It’s pretty straight forward.

Many people choose to argue this point with “you can’t be racist towards white people as they are the majority.” My response is: yes, you can. Your numbers, your status, your race don’t take away from you being racist.

Problem #2: White people are not the root of all of your issues.

Don’t blame them for your car not starting or your boss being a dick because that makes you just as bad as those “thanks, Obama” assholes who should’ve let it go back in 2012. White people in history have done a lot of fucked up shit (Trail of Tears, Holocaust, Slave Trade, yeah, you get the picture) but you can’t blame them for every bad thing that takes place in the world.

Problem #3: The Black Lives Matter movement is being taken over by the thing it was set up to fight: racism.

The Black Lives Matter movement is a peaceful movement that advocates and fights for the end of social injustice targeting black people or people of color in general. It’s something I heavily advocate for and believe in, but it’s being corrupted by racist people who give the entire movement a bad name that discredits everything we’ve worked for. Just because you slap the hashtag #blacklivesmatter on something racist you do does not make it less racist or acceptable.

If you go under the blacklivesmatter tag on Twitter or Instagram and scroll for a little bit you’ll find a whole lot of racist shit like “wishing white people were dead” or “kill the crackers” or some other bullshit. Racism is racism (how many times will I have to say this for it to get stuck in someone’s skull), and if you are racist and try to defend your actions by saying it is a Black Lives Matter based action you are just as bad as the All Lives Matter supremacists who blame black people for police brutality.

Problem #4: Rioting in the streets will not end racism.

In the words of Martin Luther King Junior, violence won’t do shit, but make us all look bad. Setting stuff on fire and smashing in car windows won’t make you less oppressed, help you in the long-run, or make you anything more than a criminal. Don’t go to jail or catch a charge for being a dumbass.

Problem #5: Some Black Lives Matter (yeah, this about Yusra) leaders are nothing more than racist people.

Do I really have to mention the fact that a BLM leader wants there to be a white genocide, believes white people are a genetic defect, and that black people are a superhuman supreme race? Yeah, I guess I do. You know what that statement sounds like to me? Some shit a white man would say in the 19 fucking 40′s about the niggers living in poor neighborhoods full of slave houses that can’t read. It sounds like the same garbage that got Emmett Till killed. It sounds like the Holocaust. It sounds like racism. A leader of a movement to END racism is a racist piece of shit. How ironic. Here’s a link to Yusra Khogali once again being racist and garnering negative attention for the movement (I tried to find the most unbiased article possible…it was a hard search):

http://www.dailywire.com/news/13418/blm-leader-says-whites-sub-human-should-be-wiped-joseph-curl

There are many other problems I could’ve brought up. Maybe i’ll make a part two that gives more specific problems that aren’t so BLM based, but honestly, I just have a problem with the BLM movement in general right now and I was just ranting my anger out. Stay woke, from both sides.

Note: this post is not made to defend the racist actions of white people past, present, or future, the ALM movement, or discredit the BLM movement, but merely to show that there are issues the black community needs to fix within itself. I am not racist nor do I dislike the BLM movement.

Please leave me any questions, comments, concerns, or hate in the ask section. I don’t care if you leave hate, but if you do make sure you don’t do it anonymously