normalbrothers

[normalbrothers]

#at home w my friend

[normalbrothers]

do people treat you like you're weird (infantilized), weird (demonized), weird (dehumanized), or weird (fetishized)? i'm currently pulling all four and also some variations i've yet to decipher.

#infantilized #i think it's kind of my fault but also a bit of a vicious cycle

[normalbrothers]

The first rule of tragedy is to be yourself. The second of rule of tragedy is to be literally anyone else. The third rule is that however much you try, there is no escaping being yourself forever.

[normalbrothers]

first the holocaust was turned into the project of a sole madman who had an entire country under a spell, which suddenly vanished at the stroke of a pen when peace was signed, rather than being a continuation of centuries of scapegoating and antisemitism, enabled by western capital, direct funding to the Nazi party in some cases like the British aristocracy's, with the purpose of creating a massive slave workforce and to boost the German economy via looting, expropiation and a reduction in the worker population, an economy that had been reeling since WWI and propped up by directing all jobless people to work in the arms industry.

then, the (incomplete) victory over european fascism (don't look at Spain and Portugal and Greece) was methodically distanced from the true victors, the soviet people. They suffered an invasion and destruction of the majority of their industrial base, save for the industry relocated to the east, more than 20 million dead soviet workers who pushed the fascists from Moscow to Berlin, ending in an artillery barrage the magnitudes of which had never been seen, the symbolic raising of the red banner over the Reichstag and an enveloping of the city that forced many nazi officials to commit suicide. It was also forgotten how the Yugoslavs liberated themselves, managing to keep fascist forces constantly tied up during the war, how the Italian partisans captured Mussolini and hung him in public, the many uprisings throughout Europe and the concentration camps before the frontline reached them, the exiled brigadiers and republicans who first fought fascism in Spain and was later forced to fight fascism again, unable to return to their homes and under threat of being imprisoned. The indigenous resistance against colonialism in east and north Africa and southwest Asia, and the tens of millions Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Cambodian, Malaysians, Indonesians, Papuans, Thais, Bengalese, Indians, Filipinos, etc, who suffered both Japanese and western occupation. All of these struggles forgotten and erased, reduced to the USamerican, British, and sometimes French armies. Armies who advanced to witness a fraction of the suffering enabled and financed by their own states barely a decade prior. Even minor members of the western allies, such as Brazil, are often forgotten.

After the Holocaust was reduced to an unexpected and unprecedented event with no connection to reality, and after the struggle against fascism was reduced to the involvement of two or three countries, barely any fascists were punished. Anyone who wasn't a top official could claim to be simply following orders, even someone as important like Speer used this defence, he was allowed to live free and publish an autobiography in which he paints himself as the good Nazi, the mere architect caught up in a madman's rise. As if he ignored the plans for a future Berlin would be built by slave labor from the concentration camps, as if the minister of armaments from 1942 to the end did not know about the reliance companies like Krupp or Volkswagen had on slave labor. As if he didn't listen to Goebbels' speeches about total war and extermination and did not understand his armaments would be used. Some fascists were even integrated into the scientific and military spheres of the western allies, others given citizenship and a cushy home in places like Canada. Japanese fascists who had experimented on and tortured countless Chinese and Korean civilians and POWs to research chemical warfare were offered amnesty in exchange for the knowledge they gained doing these experiments. After German reunification, more eastern queer people were imprisoned than fascists were incarcerated or executed at the Nürnberg trials.

After fascists were exonerated and shamelessly integrated into the western states, and after some time passed, the war was turned into a cultural product. Countless war movies were produced, almost always showing usamerican soldiers in the European or Pacific front fighting a mindless horde with hakenkrauzs on their armbands all lead by a single man, or group of men, ontologically evil. It was too complex to examine the actual reasons for the war. Hitler was simply a charismatic devil who had duped Germany into following him (crucially, he was only charismatic for germans. No true American patriot fell for his tricks). Gradually, the figure of Hitler was transformed into a devil in human form who had appeared in München in 1932 to cause evil and fight freedom.

As a result, German fascism and the Holocaust are nothing more but a historical fact you look at with morbid curiosity, to feel disgust, maybe anger, and sigh in relief that it would never happen again. There is no reflection on how it was allowed to happen, how antisemitism was used, like it had commonly been used throughout history, to blame for economic downturn and how the expropriation of jewish property, the enslavement of other minorities alongside them (Slavs, non-jewish poles, homosexuals, roma, communists...) and the rapid stimulation of a military industry was used to save an recessing economy. No examination of how the Nazi party appealed to the German petit-bourgeoisie and monopolies like the aforementioned Krupp, Volkswagen, or IG Farben, by attacking communists and trade unionists, who were beginning to organize at a bigger scale and actually threaten german capitalists. Instead, some even try to paint the nazis as communists or as similar to them, through terms like totalitarianism, which was popularized by Hannah Arendt, a fascist sympathiser who also saw fit to label decolonial struggles as totalitarian.

Even more insidious than this is how Hitler has been mutated into a shorthand for evil, an entity beyond a single man who personifies the collective hatred of minorities by Europeans, a condensation of centuries of hatred and exploitation into an angry man between 1932 and 1945. By doing this we can rest easy knowing there will never be another Hitler because we are so civil now. It was Hitler's speeches that guided every SS member's hand to execute tens of thousands. It was Goebbels' propaganda that clouded the judgment of the millions of Wehrmacht soldiers who looted and massacred their way through Europe. It was Himmler's threat that coerced countless germans to spy and tattle on their neighbors. It was Göring who convinced the Luftwaffe pilots to bomb and terrorize civilians. It was Dönitz who made the Kriegsmarine target civilian ships and ruthlessly pursue trade convoys. And it was ultimately Hitler who controlled these men, and no German had free will or political conviction between 1932 and 1945.

The peak of this attitude I see most in the internet: Do you want to learn about Hitler's Bunker? Hitler's enormous artillery pieces? Hitler's train? Hitler's plans? Hitler's wife? Hitler's army? Hitler's rise through the party? Hitler's veganism? Hitler's dog? Hitler's car? Hitler's Germania? Hitler's camps? Hitler's possible escape? Hitler's military career? Hitler's architecture? Hitler's political maneuvering in the interwar? Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that Hitler was not omnipotent or omnipresent. He and his party was supported by German and western capital to oppose worker organization and to give an outlet to social tension around the inflating currency and failing economy. Just like in Italy and just like in Spain. Hitler is a cultural product sold to liberals so they can be reassured that they would never become evil. No liberal democracy has ever put an entire minority into concentration camps, no liberal democracy has ever used Zyklon B on dispossessed people, no liberal democracy has ever looted a conquered nation, no liberal democracy has ever killed workers for unionizing, no liberal democracy has ever used nationalism and supremacism to rally popular support, and a long etcetera.

[normalbrothers]

polly almost killing linda - the wife arthur abused - and being super non-chalant about is crazy to me. i genuinely think she wasn't for a single second lingering on the fact that this woman was desperate enough to kill him (given that she herself was once a woman desperate enough to kill the man who abused her). insane amount of mental gymnastics imho, but it makes sense that arthur would be protected like that by her, and that she feels this way about him (if one thing is true, arthur's always been very admiring and adoring of polly)

#had polly been there and the show could have turned out the way it was planned i really wonder how her and arthur's relationship would have #changed #for one i think arthur would have gone completely off the rails and you can ignore that only *so far* #it almost compels me more than what would have happened with polly and tommy #mainly though becaues it's so opaque to me #'forget linda find someone else to put your fires out' was just an unhinged thing to say hdhd

[normalbrothers]

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#the polly/arthur jr/arthur sr thing that exists in my head. man. #adopting her close in age nephew as her superior brother because the other one was such an awful waste of space #that protectiveness over arthur that comes with it too mh #but also that wilfull blindness to the way he is in fact like his father #self reblog /

[normalbrothers]

My beautiful Sharpe siblings commission from the extremely talented rngrn! :D If you haven’t checked out her artwork, please do. She’s phenomenal! 

#crimson peak #film #pretty!!!

[normalbrothers]

entire family has huge problems with alcohol, some of the point the alcoholism - me included - and there's some thing nasty how people who Do Not Drink talk about any of that

#yes alcohol makes you stupid and lowers your self-inhibition #yes this if awful first and foremost to the people doing the drinking and they know; it's such unwarranted judgment #unless you are like personally concretely harmed in some way because of it #i do respect people who don't do substance abuse out of their wish to preserve their health #this is not a moral highground though

[normalbrothers]

every day im more and more convinced that the quasi christian moralization of health is more or less inseparable from how people think about addiction disability and fatness lol

#it's really annoying

[normalbrothers]

JUAN BORGIA + smiling "My character Juan is the debauched black sheep of the family. He maybe isn't quite as switched on as the other ones but certainly knows how to enjoy himself a lot more than the others."

#big fan of the one of cesare and juan on either side of rodrigo's janus' mask #the borgias #tv

[normalbrothers]

s01ep01 | s03ep02

#peaky blinders #peakyblindersgifs #tvedit #tv #hdhd i actually tried to include tommy here because that's the opposing point of the triangle but it didn't work the way i wanted to #alas ... #that's polly's little guy. her poor little meow meow from the family etc #if polly's half of tommy arthur is the other half #i could use that as a working tag but i'm too inconsistent for that

[normalbrothers]

pixar's first femboy character

[normalbrothers]

antwithabindle.com/careers

#task to find a group of great warriors in order to free your hive from the oppressive rule of the grasshoppers #for example

[normalbrothers]

That one staring at its mama 🥹

(Source)

[normalbrothers]

reblog if you'd go on a roadtrip with your pfp

#honestly would be fine interpersonally i just don't think i'd want to deal with all That Bullshit that follows him around everywhere #not convinced it wouldn't kill me

[normalbrothers]

this is purely for fun and I've certainly been guilty of a few of these things myself in my years of fic writing. don't be weird in the notes and don't use this as an excuse to insult someone's writing.

#orbs #mainly because that one has become so memeified that you sort of just trip over it every time #It's distracting #the other ones aren't great either but it's manageable if the fic works for me overall

[normalbrothers]

the 500 days of sodom (120 weren't enough) vs the 100 days of sodom (the last 20 could've been an email)

#salo or the plus minus 120 days of sodom (they couldn't decide on the schedule)