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sleepynegress · 27 days

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*sigh* Featurism...

So, I woke up to this shit on the Twit app and I've only hit on this issue before, but today I'm digging in. Colorism is something that is not addressed often enough, but intersected within that and even more rarely spoken about, is the issue of featurism. The young actress above just got cast as Juliet in the latest big staged prestige production of Romeo and Juliet, opposite Tom Holland. And as usual the blue-checks, everybody else including "black", and even Black regulars are all-in on the cruelty.

...But I want to breakdown a nuance that is too often skipped over when this happens. The two people named with her, give away the featurism game, here; a particularly nasty form of often internalized racism. I guarantee if the young actress looked like this?

She'd definitely still get racist attacks, but the particularly nasty shit I'm seeing attacking her looks wouldn't come. In fact, I could see some people thinking they are defending her with "but she's pretty!" or more specific... "obviously she's mixed" comments. -Something pretty much every Black woman with features that don't align with a narrow perception of blackness hear often (and we'll get to why I specified women in a minute). And don't get it twisted...

These aren't exclusively nor standard white features either (see: the many ethnic features w/in white ethnic groups that also get hit to a lesser and non-racialized degree such as large "hook" and/or Romanesque noses for example, which is definitely about anti-semitism, anti-Romani sentiment, and other disparaged/discriminated against ethnic minorities in Europe) and yes, blue eyes are naturally occurring within non-mixed and dark-skinned Black people due to a mutation called Waardenburg syndrome. But there is a REASON why fetishizing even certain ethnic features within the African continental diaspora has been a thing for a long time...i.e. "the dopest Ethiopian" from the Tribe Called Quest lyric is pictured as this:

and this:

and not this:

...despite them all being Ethiopians of various tribal ethnicities.

A wide-nose, a tighter curl, coil, or zig-zag pattern of hair, fuller lips and often, but not always (because I've given examples above where features "mitigate" skin color) darker skin. Zendaya is grouped with Tracey and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, despite being both lighter in skin color and having a Black parent and a white parent because her nose isn't what has become the standard surgical look...that too many celebs have. This includes the ones who got so-called "ethnic" work or just a slight 'refinement'. No, her nose is born w/it, made for that good African air, as I call it. Nostrils prominent, nose bridge wide:

I went make-up free as well, because even make-up practices these days, go for that narrowing highlight technique i.e. just below it's subtle.

Sza is a an example of it taken to extremes, even with the Hollywood standard "ethnic" refinement she did get.

The thing is... I don't blame or attack her for that. Because you see above that is just a taste of what happens. Lil' Kim was relentlessly bullied by the men in her life for her ethnic features for her whole life...and that is why she is off-limits to this day for me when it comes to all the work she's had done.

...And this is where I explain why I specified men being mostly exempt. It's because "Blackness" including all the physical features associated with it, is by default masculinized. ...Which is why Idris Elba is considered one of the most handsome men in the world, w/o the caveats that even Lupita Nyong'o often gets. Nobody calls Samuel L. Jackson ugly. He is even idolized and fetishized by a specifically white male gaze for how culturally "Black" he is perceived to be for all the wrong reasons, his signature "motherfucka" for example (and I could go off on a whole other tangent here, but digressing). All this to say... Featurism sucks. It's not talked about enough. Blackness in all variations is Beautiful. Tracy Chapman looking as young she does?? Hell, mark it down to both her dark skin (a natural UV protector) and not messing with her given features (and being a lesbian, men will age you. lol -I got jokes-):

P.S. THANK GOODNESS for Tems and her rising prominence as a beauty as well:

P.P.S. Even Jay-Z the billionaire rapper has had the comments over the years about his lips and nose, hence that lyric in Beyonce's Formation.

#featurism #I only just scratched the surface #but man this shit needed to be scratched #colorism #racism #meta #tom holland #romeo and juliet #tracy chapman #lil kim #tems #jay z #sza #zendaya #francesca amewudah-rivers #francesca amewudah rivers

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naliya · 1 year

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If you see a Goblin, a European folklore creature that has existed since the middle ages at least (because that type of creature has existed in folklore for longer even if under another name), and see Jewish people, YOU ARE THE ANTISEMITIC ONE. YOU are the problem. YOU!

As usual, I don't give a shit if you hate JK Rowling, for reasons that are yours and might or might not be valid in your eyes; but I'm sick of people using increasingly ridiculous reasons such as this one to justify their hate when all it's ending up doing is trivialising a legitimate issue that send people to death camps by the milions on my continent not even a century ago - and still kills people to this very day. You need to stop this. It's incredibly offensive (and for once, this word is warranted).

And as usual, I can't help but notice that out of the thousands of fantasy writers that have used Goblins in their works since before most of you people where ever even just sperms in your fathers' testicles, the one writer you chose to go after for this is the female one. How incredibly convenient. She who simply used a common European folklore creature (in the same way she used werewolves, unicorns or centaurs) to anchor a hidden world she imagined existing parallel to ours without any ill-thoughts - and if you believe she had them you either need help or you are a bad faith actor, either way, touch grass.

Where is your outrage at Tolkien you bunch of hypocritical asshats? Nowhere to be seen despite the fact that there would be far more matter to call out prejudice in his work than you will ever find in Harry Potter, a bunch of children novels you all can't move on from.

(Tangentially, if you were trying to write actual academic essays about how Goblins might have been used as an imagery to further anti-Semitic tropes at various points, that would be one thing, and that could be interesting, but you're not. You're just trying to use it to harden your hate boner, you are not being genuine at all, and anybody with a brain can see it from a mile away. Otherwise you would NOT be broaching the subject with that little of a care and you fucking know it.)

PS: The Goblins weren't slaves and have never been implied to be in HP, you are conflating them with the House Elves.

#harry potter #go outside and read another book already #im done #jk Rowling #stop this nonsense #i dont know what point you are trying to make but i assure you that you are not helping it with this horseshit #antisemitism

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gloombeauty · 2 months

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This is what Halsey posted the other day in her instagram stories. I posted it on my page, sharing my opinion how I didn't think Columbia Records would be happy to see this kind of anti-semitic messaging coming from one of their own artists. The entire Halsey fan community on this platform attacked and bullied me. I had to stop following them and block them. People who I thought were my friends. Horrible backstabbing anti-semitic monsters. All I stated were facts. The CEO and COO are Jewish. The A&R person at Columbia is Jewish. Clive Davis is the founder and is also Jewish. Halsey's manager is Jewish. But according to Halsey fans on here, that makes me a racist because I stated the fact these people working on Halsey's career are Jewish. It got so bad I had to change my name. Maybe you have better luck posting the facts.

First of all, you should never delete your opinion on your blog. If people don't like what you have to say, they can easily skim past your page or you can make them fuck off by blocking them.

I have no problem telling Halsey fans to go choke on a baklava before I click on that block button. The fact that Halsey fans in general lack their own personality and decided to be one of those "they/them" and "bi" this or that or whatever - just because their idiotic hero is all those things, is very telling. These people aren't even teenagers anymore. They are in their mid 20's - early 30's. They grew up with Halsey. The hilarious part of all this is that Halsey isn't any of those things. She's not bi and she sure as hell isn't a "they" but you know how annoying Millennials and Gen Z are. They find a problem and drama for everything. Halsey's whole brand has always been the annoying loudmouth obnoxious social justice warrior. You would think that having a kid would stop all that foolishness but no - she's chooses to be a one of those "they" people. Even after popping a baby out of her actual vagina.

In my opinion, Halsey is plummeting fast when it comes to her music career. She's lucky her makeup line is doing very well because as far as her music? That is a dead on arrival effort. I don't think Columbia will be able to pull a Capitol Records - taking an almost two year old song (Without Me) and throwing it into a new album (Manic) and stealing the hit single's successful streaming numbers and sales. That's how Manic didn't flop. But does anyone (outside of her psychotic fan base) truly gives a crap about Manic? Hell no. The reviews for that album were mostly negative. Pitchfork even said what an awful album it was and she went on Twitter wishing the basement where Pitchfork is located would crumble. What she didn't know is that Pitchfork is located at the Freedom Tower in New York City. That's the same location the Twin Towers use to be. The same Towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001. How stupid did she look saying something like that? Very. She hasn't used Twitter/X as much as she use to after that. She was too busy exploiting Evan Peters on her IG at the time.

She had the gift of Trent Reznor and Atticus Finch producing her album and it bombed. Usually, everything Trent touches turns to gold, but what he produced for Halsey flopped. It flopped hard. A first in Trent Reznor's career. That means a lot of people just don't like Halsey. Imagine had it been Amy Lee instead of Halsey? It would have made a big difference.

Now, as much as Halsey's fans like to ignore this fact (or stay stupid - your pick) the people running her music career now are all mostly Jewish. Ron Perry, the present CEO for Columbia Records is Jewish. Halsey's manager, Jason Aron is Jewish. When Jason was posting about supporting Israel, donations, his family in Israel, etc. - Halsey's psychotic fans came into his IG page and started threatening this poor man's life. They were calling him an evil Zionist and other disgusting choice words.

Halsey's fans are demonic and yes, they are all antisemitic. Except maybe for a very small percentage like 0000.1% of the fanbase. The only Halsey fan that I seen on Tumblr that is normal, sane and not antisemitic is you. I'm sure out there, on other social media platforms there's more nice fans like you. The thing is, they aren't obnoxious or demonically loud as the antisemitic ones who scream "Free Palestine!!!" on every Halsey post.

That's why I feel Halsey posted this disgusting Gaza/Palestine propaganda garbage on her IG. To appease her disgusting fan base, who are 99% antisemitic. She's going to need them to buy/stream her new music. If she doesn't do well, Columbia will drop her in a heartbeat. The same way Capitol chose not to renew her contract. Capitol are dicks for what they have done to Katy Perry and Sky Ferreira, but look at all the money they spent on If I Can't Have Love, I want Power. Close to 25 million dollars - and it flopped! The next single she released So Good flopped. That's why they refused to renew her contract. I don't blame them at all.

So now, more then ever, she will need all her little antisemitic fans to support her new music.

Also, knowing that her manager is Jewish, why would she ever post something so disgusting against his people? I'm sure Ron Perry didn't celebrate that IG story either. He's probably sitting somewhere regretting that he signed her.

Do yourself a favor and block every single Halsey account on Tumblr. Trust none of them to be "your friend" because they aren't anyone's friend. Get a real friend in the real world. Finding friends on Tumblr isn't it.

#halsey #evan peters #i stand with israel #i support israel #trent reznor #anti woke

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theroadtofairyland · 1 year

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Before anyone judges my tone or behavior, I'd appreciate it if you'd take into consideration that in the last two weeks I've made one sale. It was just enough to keep the internet on. I'm way behind and I've suddenly realized why it's been so hard. I have had to spend two hours of every day reporting spam messages where people thank someone for the opportunity to spread things I, better than anyone know the lies in. I've seen two particularly vicious users create an indefensible mythology me. They started telling people I was a scammer they made this wild blog that immediately got taken down but they then sent as proof to confirm their own lies.

And they've done it again and again. They've skewed everything I ever say...I say the show I'm proposing is at a venue that books two years ahead so I may not have a show until 2025, which become, "she wants you to give her enough money to pay all her bills until 2025" spammed into inboxes.

I asked what is the scam? The scam is that I sell art. Every time I explain why I've drastically reduced prices based on financial hardship it's maligned as e-begging.

I realized as I dug into what the people I had blocked in the last decade had been saying in the margins. It turns out someone is big mad that I called them an anti-Semitic bigot when then said "Israel deserves to be blown off the fucking map" in 2016 and had such a fragile ego they can't let it go still and are determined to make me pay by whatever means necessary in 2023.

I hope you will consider how it would make you feel to read thousands of responses to spam that's sole purpose was to force your community to ostracize you. Imagine how it would feel if people who had thanked you for your sensitivity about deadnames on payment info and how it related to shipping swallowing what to me seems like their personal interaction should have caused them to be absurd.

The only reason I still have a place is that they want to tear down this 1905 Victorian and don't want to enter into a new lease, which a new law demands. I'm looking at being three months behind in rent, I'm so scared about utilities being shut off and I'm hindered by lack of materials. I'm not blaming loss of income on a stalker's harassment because I have no other excuse. I read people who had been regular customers for years promise never to purchase again to my stalker. People who had talked about their plans to buy a work or a deposit stated outright they canceled their plans. I'm hurt, a feeling so wronged, attacked, and really scared.

As all of this shitstorm created for the purpose of alienating my fans, I have this paradox that I see that no one else seems to, there is a person who has copypasted a message into 1000 inboxes of blogs combed from notes on my paintings "Kate doesn't have a stalker and she isn't being harassed." Think about how frustrating that is, to have spam sent to a 1000 people to tell them you're lying about being targeted for harassment.

#art #artists on tumblr #artist harassment #havekat #spam #harassment

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hjellacott · 1 year

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An immigrant's view of Britain and its racism (prompted by the Markle debate)

When I say the issue Britain had with Meghan all along had nothing to do with colour, I also don't mean to say Britain isn't racist.

I've been in Britain for years. I love this country, who in spite of Brexit, has gone from a deeply racist, imperial past to an incredibly diverse, welcoming, highly-multicultural society, most specially here in London and in other big cities like Manchester, Liverpool or York. I'll be the first one to point out many faults of the country, mainly its politicians, and as a female immigrant who really doesn't look British and who has a multi-cultural, multi-racial descendency, I'm no stranger to Britain's occasional bouts of xenophobia, racism, sexism. I've never felt as unwelcome here as I felt immediately after Brexit happened, and even then, for every arsehole who was racist or xenophobic or sexist towards me, for every mouth that called for me to go home, there were ten times more people thanking me for coming, wishing me luck, welcoming me with open arms, giving me oportunities I could've only dreamed of in my own country.

I cannot not love and be grateful for Britain, even now, when it lives its worst times in regards to the treatment of foreigners. My wildest dreams have come true in my few years here, and I've acquired a little chosen family here, and many good friends. So when someone like Meghan Markle makes people think of Britain as this evil country of racists... It does make my blood boil. I'll be the first to admit British society is very particular (and it truly has a ton of very odd, somewhat picky and even slightly shocking behaviours, customs and ways of working, that will shock any foreigner who has regular contact with Brits, such as the constant need to apologise for everything). It's a very specific culture. It's very specific kind of people. But it doesn't make Britain, or Brits, bad.

Britain is so specific that, even when London was, since childhood, my dream city to live in, I became seriously depressed within six months here. And my cultural shock wasn't even that big. It was everything, from the contrast between my overly warm home society to the rather colder British society (in appearance), the weather, the cold, being an outsider... I can't even begin to imagine the even bigger shock it must've been for Meghan, but she had Harry and many friends to help. I came here with nothing.

It took me 2 years to feel 100% adapted to Britain. 100% at home. To truly miss it when I returned to my actual home country. And now, it's home. Now I know the day being an immigrant forces me out (hi Brexit you bitch) I will be sincerely, deeply sad, because this is home too, now. And so, I feel sincerely sad for Meghan, who in spite of three years here, didn't really feel at home. I think she would've been much better off if she'd spent a couple years here before joining the royal life, as a normal citizen.

Like I said, there is sexism, racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and so on in Britain, like there is everywhere else. But it's all rooted in bigotry, and in a self-acknowledgement that Britain is a very specific place with a very specific culture, isolated in its little island, developing very differently from the rest of Europe, and that outsiders will not understand. Very often, we indeed need years to even come close to fully understanding these weirdos. That's what made people apprehensive to Meghan Markle, but not her colour.

London, where she was mostly living, has a tremendously large black, multi-racial, and POC population. TREMENDOUS. Also multi-religious. Diversity here, in the city Markle turned into a second home for a while, is huge. Racism is, mainly, in institutions such as the police, and is hugely frowned upon. British society sustains itself on the basis that nothing is worse than offending others, which pushes them to spend half their life apologising for everything (I dare you to spend one day out in the streets of London without receiving at least a few apologies for God knows what) and afraid of causing hurt or offence. Because of this, racists have a tendency towards hiding a bit, and racial attacks are not really frequent, unless the racist bigot is in a position of power (and even then, they'll be too afraid about losing their power that they'll be very discreet about their racism).

Because of this, I guarantee you the Royal Family would be the last place for one to feel serious racism, never the less because Britain had Queen Charlotte, of German descendency, who was heavily rumoured to be about as black as Meghan, based not on her actual colour (which was probably like Meghan's and covered in white make up) but on her large nostrils and other physical traits and family history research. And if there was a single racist person, indeed in the Royal Family, I guarantee you it'd be so incredibly frowned upon, that that person wouldn't dare to open their mouth and say anything remotely racist. It could cost them their job, as it just happened to one working royal.

It's far more likely, and perfectly plausible if you know Brits, that if someone inquired about Archie's skin colour it was more something like "you think he'll be black or redheaded?", in a rather clumsy, but not ill-intended way, probably moved by curiosity due to Harry's hair colour and Meghan's. Brits do, indeed, have a tendency to be socially clumsy and insecure, hence the constant apologising and fear of aggravating someone. And the people who are likely to make a comment like that and accidentally cause offense are, precisely, those who aren't racist. Because if you are a racist and a royal, you're not going to do the slightest thing to risk people figuring out you're a racist.

So overall... I do believe that Meghan being American AND an actress were problematic things for many Brits, but her claims of racism? I think she's really misunderstood the situation. British racism is the police arresting you for no reason, or someone outright calling you a racist slur. Trust me, if someone here has a problem with you they'll be very clear as to what the problem is, won't leave you doubting. What Meghan experienced in the Royal Family was unlikely to be racism, and way more likely to be social clumsiness, specially coming from a family well-known to be incredibly socially stupid and to have very poor social skills between them, with relationship problems and drama flaring up with some frequency.

Yes, there's racism... But Meghan Markle wouldn't be one likely to be the target of it. Ask the teenage, very obviously black kids, around London. They'll tell you about what it really feels like to experience racism.

#Royal Family #Britain #British Royal Family #Racism #Meghan Markle

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akaraboonline · 1 year

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7 Harsh Truths About Dating Someone of a Different Religion

I assumed that religion would make things more difficult, but boy, was I wrong — especially if one of you (him) comes from an extremely religiously observant family. 7 Harsh Truths About Dating Someone of a Different Religion In light of the many compromises, strange conversations, and awkward moments we've had in the last two years, I'm dropping a few truths on you in case you find yourself at a bar/on Match.com/being set up/accidentally falling in love with someone who doesn't share your religion. 1. Your parents may be more (or less) okay with it than you think When I told my father I was seriously dating a Jew, he was skeptical and chose to dance around the issue, expressing his feelings through silence that eventually led to reluctant acceptance. My mother, on the other hand, was overjoyed that I had finally found someone who pushed me and kept up with me. He could have been an alien from the planet CrazyBoyfriend and she would still love him, accept him — and, more importantly, accept us. Alex's parents, on the other hand, refused to meet with me for a year, but that's another story. 2. Prepare to answer the hard questions early The ones you don't even touch until three or four months into the relationship because you're afraid of looking like a psychopath? Yeah. On our second date, we got those bad boys out of the way. Alex: Would you ever become a Christian? Me: What are your thoughts on Christmas? We both drew our lines in the sand early on, and while it was uncomfortable, we both knew that if this relationship was going to stand a chance, we needed to see if we could agree on The Important Things. Thankfully, we did, for the most part. 3. One of you thought it was a fling Alex revealed about a year into the relationship that he never thought this relationship would last - our differences were simply too jarring - and that he planned to end it when he returned to Israel to finish medical school. That is, until he realized he couldn't physically. He adored me far too much. (I apologize for embarrassing you!) Because I've seen far too many rom-coms, I pushed any doubts to the back of my mind, preferring to romanticize us as star-crossed lovers. 4. One of you will backpedal on the aforementioned Important Things Remember when I said Alex and I mostly agreed on the important stuff? Know that it's far easier to make concessions (Yes, my love, I am completely open to keeping kosher) when you're in the throes of a courtship, lusting after each other so hard it makes you dizzy. You feel as if you would go to any length for this person — until you don't. Until you're a little more at ease, and then, wait a minute, this kosher thing is really, really hard, and I feel like I'm compromising more than you are, and HOLY HELL, WE'VE OPENED PANDORA'S BOX. 5. Say sayonara to your dream wedding I break out in hives just thinking about a wedding involving both my and Alex's families. The customs officers! The kosher chef! The fusion dancing! At this point, I'm more inclined to make a visit to the Justice of the Peace to eventually make it official, but then I think: Hey, wait a minute, why do I have to give up MY childhood wedding dreams just because our families might be super-weird together? Sigh. I hesitate. 6. You'll be forced to confront your own prejudices I'm ashamed to admit that before meeting Alex, I made a few crude Jewish jokes; the same goes for him and Catholics. But we're much more sensitive now, and we're much quicker to call out racist and anti-Semitic remarks disguised as "humor." When there's a face behind the caricature, things quickly become less amusing and more personal.

7. You will be brought together by guilt.

As Alex always says, Jews invented guilt, and Catholics perfected it. A part of me will always feel as if I'm not staying true to my roots (even though I had given up on Catholicism in high school). And a part of me realizes that by choosing to be with Alex, I'm making things more difficult for my family, my future children, and myself. Read the full article

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cyarskj1899 · 2 years

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D.L. Hughley condemns Kanye West's antisemitic remarks: 'He sounds a lot like a white supremacist'

Stephen ProctorThu, October 20, 2022, 12:04 AM

Comedian D.L. Hughley appeared Wednesday on Cuomo and weighed in on antisemitic comments repeatedly made by rapper Kanye West in recent days. Forty-eight hours earlier, Ye appeared on the show and refused to listen when Chris Cuomo pushed back against the rapper’s “Jewish underground media mafia” remarks.

“I think that ultimately, the only place you can hear the kind of rhetoric that Kanye espoused is in the farthest reaches of the blogosphere. If you sound like a white supremacist, you pretty much are one,” Hughley said. “And he seems to have a disdain for the same people that they do, which is people that are Black, and Jews. So I think he sounds a lot like a white supremacist.”

Earlier Wednesday, Howard Stern said that Ye’s mental state is no excuse for his repeated slanderous comments, and Hughley agreed.

“You can’t ascribe it to mental illness when he has access to some of the most powerful — rich, powerful white dudes in the world, and some of the most powerful artists in the world,” Hughley said. “So I don’t know what more support he would need.”

Back in March, following remarks Hughley made about Ye’s divorce from Kim Kardashian, Ye responded with a threat via Instagram, writing, “I can afford to hurt you,” among other things. But Hughley said he has been done with Ye for years, since the rapper said slavery was a choicein 2018.

“I was done with Kanye when he said what he said about slavery,” Hughley said, adding, “I think, ultimately, he’s indulged a lot because he makes great music. I would rather hear a horrible artist — I mean a decent artist who is a good dude than a great artist who seems to espouse all the rhetoric of a horrible man.”

Cuomo airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on NewsNation.

Watch Kanye West get upset when Chris Cuomo pushes back on 'Jewish underground media mafia' comments:

Kanye West doubles down on anti-Semitic rhetoric, slams 'Jewish underground media mafia'

On Cuomo Monday, rapper Kanye West doubled down on the anti-Semitic sentiment he’s espoused as of late. Ye’s Twitter account was locked in response to an anti-Semitic tweet he posted, and anti-Semitic comments were reportedly edited out of a recent interview he did with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. On Monday, Ye offered the media uproar about him wearing a White LIves Matter t-shirt as a legitimate reason for his slander against the Jewish community. “When I wore the White Lives Matter t-shirt, the Jewish underground media mafia already started attacking me,” Ye said, before referencing canceled concerts, and public tiffs with Pete Davidson and Trevor Noah. He added, “They just immediately disrespect me. They keep the crazy narrative going. They never call me a billionaire.” Eventually, Chris Cuomo pushed back. “You’re trying to say that there isn’t a collective. Over 50% of the executives in Hollywood, the CEOs, are Jewish,” Ye said. “And these guys know each other.” “That’s different than saying it’s a mafia,” Cuomo responded, “and that they act as Jews in some way as opposed to just being businessmen.” Later, when the two were going back and forth and Cuomo attempted to explain to Ye what is wrong with what he’s saying, Ye broke into, “La la la la la la.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Kylie Jenner reveals she had 'baby blues' and cried nonstop for three weeks after giving birth to baby no. 2

'Masked Singer' unmasks 'Sex and the City' star and 2-time Grammy winner despite powerful performances

Trump drops F-bombs and shares potentially sensitive information in newly released audio

Tell us what you think! Hit us up onTwitter, Facebook or Instagram. And check out our host, Kylie Mar, on Twitter,Facebook or Instagram.

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robotpussy · 2 years

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ok i had to delete the original because i had so many people harassing me because i told them their white woman fave fucked up and are terrible people, but unbeknowest to me, everything under the cut cannot be seen once the original post has been deleted. so im going to quickly do this again.

Before you come here and say "you just hate women", you're right, i hate bigoted white women! hope this clears everything up 👍

I am only going to mention things i have evidence to back myself up with, so sorry if i left anything out.

TW RACISM

Im going to briefly bring up lindsay ellis because she is the reason why i made that original post.

Lindsay has made claims she was "harassed" off the internet but will not explain why she was "harassed", she was told that she has continouslly said racist things and decided to brush those "criticisms" off.

The examples of these instances i can find are when she dismissed the racist portrayal of Native Americans in twilight as being a factor of why Twilight was so hated, (and also the racist rule based on the mormon belief about black people in twilight (not mentioned) being inherently evil because they are black) and instead just said "its because the world hates teenage girls!".

she also made very strange and racist tweets about finding reylo-type fic of Harriet Tubman and her "Twinky salve master" on a plane.

and of course the Raya tweet many people spoke about

This also goes beyond twitter as people who knew Lindsay in real life had come out and said Lindsay is very dismissive of and has racist biases

1. Jenny Nicholson

Jenny Nicholson has a very long history of being extremely racist, but most well known for getting john boyega harassed over a joke he made about movie characters that are not real.

here is the thread of some of the harassment john had to endure because Jenny claimed he was a misogynist

Then wanted to turn around and play into her white woman victimhood

And when told she was racist and encitied the harassment John Boyega received, she went on a mass blocking spree

(all people shown below were blocked by Jenny after they called her out)

TW CANIBALLISM

and i think she also defended caniballism?

2. Contrapoints

TW TRUSCUM, ANTI-SEMITISM, RACISM AND NAZI IMAGERY

Despite me finding Contrapoints' obsession with "deradicalizing numerous young men within alt-right spaces" is weird (and it shows as she spends so much time with them she ends up spewing a lot of their same rhetoric) she constantly gives them a platform.

The most notorious instance of this was when she made a video with known domestic abuser and truscum, Buck Angel.

TW ANTI SEMITISM

Contrapoints keeps to have a affinity for "ironically" being anti-semitic, evidence can be found in these videos, where she "jokes" about the anti-semitic conspiracy of the lizard people.

What's Wrong with Capitalism (Part 1)

What's Wrong with Capitalism (Part 2)

She also sold t-shirts with said lizard people, and apparently had in the description "David Ickle was right" in the description. I cannot find this, but i did find the shirt on TeePublic with "The reptiles rule us" in the description.

TW RACISM AND NAZI IMAGERY

She also mocked Native Americans for talking about racism and dressed up as a Nazi in her video about Charlotteville (yes, its weird to have nazi gear lying around your house)

3. Sarah z

Sarah Z is known for going on mass blocking sprees when she is called out for her racism, and claimed she was "curating her space" due to "harassment". she also went on a big petty blocking spree when people were joking about her blocking anyone who interacts with a post talking about her.

posts can be found here:

She has obviously gained a lot of attention on here because of her youtube channel, where she talks about tumblr history and fandom "drama". I will not be bringing her channel up because as i stated in my last post, i do not care about her content and i have no reason to bring it up.

But she did reblog a post talking about only caring about the women and children of Afghanistan, which is a very common scapegoat white women use as cheap representation for them to "tear down the patriarchy" when they do not care about women of color (and will deny their womanhood when criticised by them, or claim it is misogyny as Sarah z did to me when I confronted her) and also an excuse to be racist towards men of color.

TW RAPE KINK, PEDOPHILLIA AND RACE PLAY MENTION

as of July 7th 2022 Sarah came out to say that it is transphobic that people, many of whom are not white, are discussing how harmful race play, pedophillia and rape kinks are.

These women constantly cry about being "cancelled" (Lindsay and Contrapoints even made videos about them)

Lindsay's video

ContraPoints Video

When they were "cancelled" for genuine shitty things and not "they were mean to someone on twitter and a video we don't like".

And if people telling them they have racist biases, spew alt-right rethoric, and enticing the harassment of a black man is wrong is "harassment", then i don't know what else to say.

#idk what to tag this so i'll put #white woman discourse #ref #text

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fuck-customers · 2 years

Note

I admit I live under a rock a bit and wear a mask everywhere, so often customers will tell me things that I didn't know regarding mask mandates. The mark of a good customer service worker is pretending you knew that already.

Today's learning experience was that our governor rescinded mask mandates. Well, we're a private business so kiss my ass through your mask because we require you to wear it. Yes, masks are required here. This woman called and told me this, asking if our policy had changed. Yes I do live under a rock but I would have been told about a policy change before I even came in. You have to wear a mask and we will kick you out if you don't, I've seen it. It's fun to watch. "Well," she tells me, "I have a health condition that I can't wear one so I guess I've been ostracized from society!" Yep, bitch, bye! But I can't say that. I inform her we have wristbands available so people won't bug you. While I won't say "this bitch lying", it's been my observation that people with health concerns gladly take the wrist band so they aren't bothered.

But this woman. This is when I knew I was dealing with my arch enemy.

This woman told me, "That's like putting a star on a Jew."

EXCUSE ME?????

"The governor has determined it's unconstitutional." DO YOU REALLY WANT TO TALK TO ME ABOUT THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION??? IS THAT A CONVERSATION YOU WANT TO HAVE WITH ME???? Look deep in your soul and tell me THAT'S SOMETHING YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME ABOUT. After making that kind of anti Semitic comment - and being WRONG by the way, when I tell you we don't ask questions, I mean we don't ask questions. You don't want to put a "target" on your back? Well now I WANT to hunt you for sport!

I take care of my parents who, one has cancer and the other has other health conditions that put them at high risk. You're telling me. You're telling ME. You're going to make anti Semitic comments and would rather RISK KILLING MY PARENTS than wear a fucking piece of fabric. Or paper! You're telling me you care that little about other people.

Then! Don't come! Stay the fuck home! This is a MUSEUM. Fuck off out of here, or get escorted from the building by security! Watch me NOT GIVE A FUCK.

"I'm just asking you to pass on my concerns." Fuck you.

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socialjusticeinamerica · 3 years

Text

By: Mary Ellen Flannery, Senior Writer

Published: 06/02/2021

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Proponents of QAnon allege that Satan-worshipping pedophiles are secretly running the country, and they also have spread false information about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, the recent election and more.

When they get elected to local offices, they endanger citizens because their potential decisions—around budget, safety, school curriculum and more—aren't grounded in reality.

Recently, retired teachers and students protested the election of a Michigan school board member who has tweeted her support for QAnon theories.

When retired teacher Patty Duffy opened TIME magazine last summer to read how members of QAnon are infiltrating and radicalizing local school boards, she was stunned to find one of her own Grand Blanc, Michigan, school board members featured.

QAnon theorists believe, among other things, that a shadowy cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, including Pope Francis, Oprah Winfrey, and President Joe Biden, are secretly eating white children and taking over the world. Their neo-Nazi beliefs are anti-Semitic, purporting that wealthy Jews finance these pedophiles and control the media.

Additionally, despite bans on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, QAnon’s promoters also are spreading false information online about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, the Sandy Hook mass shooting, refugees and immigrants, and the presidential election.

Duffy couldn’t believe these conspiracy theorists now have a voice in choosing curriculum for Grand Blanc students, buying their textbooks, hiring and training their educators, and more. “We have a wonderfully diverse district with African American students, Jewish people and more—and they’re all at risk with Amy on the board,” says Duffy.

THE RADICALIZATION OF LOCAL BOARDS

This isn’t just about Grand Blanc, a small suburb of Flint, Michigan.

In a small town in Washington State, the newly elected mayor calls QAnon, “a truth movement,” and recently fired the town’s skeptical city manager.

In coastal San Luis Obispo, California, a school board trustee’s Facebook posts include a QAnon video, misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, and promotion of the ex-gay, conversion movement. She won, says the town’s mayor, who is calling for her resignation, because “people had no idea this was going on,” and didn’t have the “bandwidth to research the school board election,” reports the local newspaper, the Tribune.

patty duffy

Retired teacher Patty Duffy is interviewed by CNN during the protest over school board member Amy Facchinello.

Meanwhile, in Florida, a newly elected county sheriff is now explaining why he posed for photos last year with a supporter in a “We are Q” t-shirt.

Across the county, conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases.

“The long-term impacts are really dangerous,” Jared Holt, a disinformation researcher at the Atlantic Council, told TIME this summer. “We’re supposed to have our leaders make decisions based on shared sets of facts. If we decide [it’s okay] for elected officials to believe in an outlandish byzantine conspiracy theory like QAnon, then the door is left open for that shared sense of understanding to further erode.”

“THIS IS NOT WHAT WE’RE ABOUT.”

In Grand Blanc, school board member Amy Facchinello won a 6-year term in November, with 26 percent of the vote. (There were four candidates for two seats.) Weeks later, a then-Grand Blanc High School senior, Lucas Hartwell, found her Twitter account.

“He documented her Twitter posts, brought them to a school board meeting and said, ‘This is not what we’re about!’” recalls Duffy.

In her tweets, now deleted but preserved in Hartwell’s Twitter posts, Facchinello repeatedly shares QAnon videos and hashtags, adding comments like, “Excellent work Patriot!” One post shows an image of a fiery Q and her comment: “They can delete our YouTube Channels, our Facebook groups, Twitter accounts and links, but they’ll never break our spirit or stop what is coming.” Another post says, “Healthy people do not need and do not want to be tested for Coronavirus!”

Her views "give conspiracy theorists a voice," says Duffy. "It normalizes misinformation, promotes fear, and skews reality."

During her campaign, “[Facchinello] talked a lot about ‘outside forces infiltrating our schools,’” says Duffy, including the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism project that launched in 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia.

“Nobody in Grand Blanc teaches the 1619 Project, but she’s afraid they will,” says Duffy, who taught English for 35 years and now works as an adjunct professor at Mott Community College. “She doesn’t want a fair view of American history—she wants a whitewashed one. She wants [a history] that looks like her.”

If people had known what Facchinello really stood for, “I do not believe she would have been elected,” Hartwell told local TV reporters. “What we have is a situation where someone who is completely detached from reality is making choices related to children’s lives—and that’s something that I just cannot get on board with.”

NOT A PARTISAN BATTLE

Last week, Duffy and Hartwell led more than 100 retired teachers, students and community members to protest Facchinello’s presence on the board and call for her immediate resignation. Gathered outside Grand Blanc High School, they held signs that said such things as “Keep Q Out of Schools,” or “You Already Destroyed the Capitol, Now Stay Out of the Schools!”

Michigan law requires voters to wait six months before recalling elected officials. If Facchinello doesn’t resign—and she’s said she won’t—Duffy and others will kick off a recall effort this summer, says Duffy. "We want to make voters aware. The way forward is to outvote [the conspiracy theorists]," says Duffy.

This is not a partisan battle, she adds. “Amy’s side claims we’re trying to cancel conservatives. But she’s not a conservative voice! There’s nothing wrong about conservatives, progressives, whatever—you need these different voices on a school board,” says Duffy. “We’re not worried about conservative beliefs. We’re worried about false beliefs. We need our school board to make decisions based on reality.”

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tazwren · 3 years

Text

My two cents on the devolution of fandom spaces...

As a former mod of a fandom space and a woman of colour, I do not feel safe.

Seeing what has been done to so many in this fandom, by a particular group of white American women, in the name of moral policing is both abhorrent and demoralising. As it also is to repeatedly see the same narrative being shoved at everyone as the gospel truth.

A narrative that very conveniently either becomes about fic or has nothing to do with fic, depending on how people want to swing things. A narrative that will accuse a person of Jewish heritage of anti-Semitism, a person of colour of racism, a practising Muslim of being an Islamaphobe. A narrative that will define for you and me and all of us comprising this myriad of multitudes in the world what generational or personal trauma includes and what induces the same.

Those of you who know me, know what I’ve been dealing with the past few days & why I haven’t spoken up before now. Before I logged out a couple days ago, I saw what looked like more of the usual nonsense by the same group of people I’ve kept my distance from once their true colours were revealed. What I didn’t expect is that they would think themselves so above the norms of human decency and accountability that they would go after not one but two women of colour this time around in their rabidity. And many others who spoke up, as it turns out.

It hurts to see what these women, that I know of, have had to endure and to see the passivity of the community, save for a few voices, in sitting back and letting the circus rampage through town. It hurt when I was at the receiving end of it and it hurts now.

Why? Because it shows me a microcosm of the world that I don’t really relate to, that makes no sense to me with the values I was brought up with, and which reduces basic human decency to a commodity to be trampled upon and for you to be seen as weak for having. Because people who willingly laud you for your art / writing / wit, meet you with effusive claims of love and affection and friendship, who have no qualms in taking your help when it suits them, will throw you under the bus and let the wolves ravage you when it doesn't.

Before I get into that, let me talk a little bit about what has transpired over the past few days to a week, and what has been systemically taking place over perhaps the past year in this fandom.

One thing is that everyone who makes a statement about anything suddenly has people in their mentions demanding they show what gives them the right to hold that particular opinion. A critical thing people forget about fandom is that it is a place where people hide their identity for a variety of reasons, all valid, and this approach to fiction and conversations where everyone has to reveal every part of their past and identity as a means of establishing their "credentials" in order to present their views comes in direct contradiction with how fandoms operate. It violates people's rights to privacy.

The other is that there has been an increase in the voices that purportedly stand up to “speak for” the marginalised, the abused, those discriminated against and those who belong to minorities who “need to be protected / kept safe”. An admirable sentiment, to be sure. If it weren’t for the fact that none of these groups of people needed saving, speaking for or the protection of this particular group of voices.

Voices who only want to define and use these people as "model victims" to hurt other white women and establish their supremacy over both them and other POC. Voices that will present their "truth" as they see fit and sans context or present you with screenshots of snippets of conversations held in supposedly secure spaces that they have no qualms in violating in the interest of the "greater good" and claim offense / silencing if the misdemeanour is pointed out or action is taken against them, Voices that will conveniently categorize you as a "token POC" or "white adjacent" when you do not support or align with their narrative. Voices that belong to a predominantly white American group of women, whose real agenda, as is evidenced by their modus operandi, has nothing to do with real altruism or a drive for justice or indeed to right wrongs.

No, their agenda is purely power.

To hold sway over groups of followers, to shepherd them as though they are sheep who cannot think for themselves, and to set themselves up as white saviours who call out those who step out of line, or are deemed to be problematic and toxic and unsafe. To be the owners of the only "safe spaces" in fandom and to drive other groups and spaces to be boycotted or worse.

Now, I've long wondered, who indeed are these women to decide that for anyone? In a world comprising multiple cultures, religions, groups, subgroups, genders and which contains multitudes, who are these women and what gives them the right to foist their puritanical standards on everyone, very conveniently disguised as concern for the moral well being of everyone and the consumption, of all things, of fiction?

Certainly, there are many things in this world that people regard with justifiably equal dislike / horror / sadness. At the same time, there is much that is not shared, that is particular to a culture and to a person’s background. There is a multitude of perspectives that make the whole. And the white women of the United States of America have not cornered the market on what those are, or indeed even own any curatorship or censorship of the same. They cannot, because each person’s culture and background and joy and trauma is their own, as are their ways of dealing with it all.

That being said, let’s talk about their pack behaviour and the devolution I’ve witnessed on social media as basic human decency is bartered for clout.

I’m all for standing up for someone who doesn’t have a voice or a platform, or maybe afraid of repercussions to voice dissent. I’m all for being there for our fellow human beings as they face struggles of often unconscionable and unfathomable proportions. I’m all for holding people accountable for their negative behaviours as they impact the larger community.

What I am unequivocally NOT for is treating such situations as an opportunity to preach, to virtue-signal, to shame and to put on blast the alleged wrong-doers. I say alleged because that’s what most accusations are on these platforms—allegations to do with things that disturb our sense of balance or make us wrinkle our noses or that we deem bad, and therefore make the accused deserving of the full force of the community’s misbehaviour and censure.

I ask you if you were found guilty of a crime in real life—you know, the one away from your phones and keyboards—would you not have an opportunity to retain a lawyer, to plead your case in a court of law, to acquit yourself? Or, if found guilty, would you not have the opportunity for correction and rehabilitation? Yes, you say? (If you say no, then that explains the spate of state-perpetuated injustices across the USA, but that is a different matter).

Why then are people treated so abhorrently in this court of public opinion? What gives you, me, any one of us the right to judge people so vilely and with a metaphorical gun to their heads? What gives anyone the right to say you better agree with everything I say, retract everything you said and grovel for it or we will eviscerate you in public, shame you, force you to change or delete the content that offends us and still ostracise you and in some cases even threaten you with bodily harm or death, or doxx you?

Why is there no grace in how people are approached or dealt with? Whatever happened to allowing people to learn from their mistakes, where applicable, or hearing them out and giving them a chance to explain their side of something we may not fully understand?

Why is there no accountability for such behaviour on the part of the accusers?

What makes the rest of you sit back and allow this to happen? What makes you think this is in any shape or form okay to watch? Today, it is a virtual stranger at the receiving end, one you can distance yourself from quite conveniently saying Oh, she just mods a group I am in, or I only read their fics a couple times or I only followed them for their art or jokes or whatever flavour of excuse you choose. Tomorrow, it will be one of your own - or it may very well be you. And you'd better hope there's someone left to speak up for you.

The irony is you will have allowed it to happen by letting the wolf in the fold. By letting these white women manipulate you, and the community you claim to be a part of, so unapologetically, so maliciously and so unashamedly that before you can do anything about it the cancer has taken hold.

If this was happening in the world outside of social media, they would have to follow due process, to present real evidence based on facts (not based on emotions, rumours or perceptions) and would have to allow the person they are accusing to present a counter-argument, to defend themselves or be defended. Failure to do so is a miscarriage of justice and, depending on whether this is a professional or legal proceeding, they would either seriously risk their jobs or have the case thrown out of court. If not face action themselves for attempting to derail the process of justice.

Why then are they permitted to range so freely through the landscape of fandom, snarling and biting at who they please, or who displeases them?

I have no shame in saying I was at the receiving end of their behaviour for defending a friend they put on blast and I will tell you right here and now, I am a woman of colour who feels unsafe and attacked by these so-called self-appointed white saviours of your social media experience, these so-called upholders of the common morality—whatever that means—who will fight for you the evils of problematic and toxic writers who dare to have an opinion not aligned with theirs and who do not bow to their clout. Not that they care, so long as they can ignore this fact since it doesn’t fit their narrative. So long as they can ignore what has just been done to so many people in the name of cleansing the fandom.

If any one of these women were truly interested in alleviating the troubles and pains of the discriminated, the marginalized, the trauma-affected, I invite them to please come roll their sleeves up and help in the multitudes of troubles that wrack this world, not just in the backyards of their minds. My country is amidst a struggle for the basics of human life in this horrific pandemic and, prior to that, for basic constitutional rights for religious minorities. Do not patronize me and lecture me on trauma and racism and discrimination. Do not marginalise me in your attempt to pontificate and set your pearl-clutching puritanical selves above the rest, or assuage your white guilt.

A largely American audience or fanbase in this fandom is purely a function of access and interest—other cultures have vast followings for things you couldn't begin to fathom—and it doesn't mean you are entitled in any shape or form to be spokespeople for the rest of the world. We have no interest in being colonized again by white oppressors.

If you disagree with what I have said, I congratulate you on being a part of their coterie and wish you much joy in being the sheep in their fold. Kindly unfollow or block me on the way off of this post.

#fandom #fandom culture #bullying #gaslighting #gatekeeping #minorities #people of colour #real talk #toxic people #problematic behaviour #problematic authors #problematic fiction #fanfic #reylo #reylo fanfic book club #reylo fic recs #trauma #safety #accountability

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cto10121 · 3 years

Text

The bad Shakespeare takes keep coming, I see. This one had the cleverness to couch itself as a personal narrative (makes it much more interesting, tbh). But as bad Shakespeare takes are my bread and butter, my boon and bane, mamma mia here we go again, with Merchant of Venice.

“But those who thought the play was irredeemably antisemitic were, the consensus went, vulgar and whiny—and, completely coincidentally, they were also Jewish, which somehow magically invalidated their opinions on this subject.”

I’m glad (is that even the right word?) this author found scholars that don’t think this play is anti-Semitic, but my experience with scholarship has been way more mixed than that. Suffice to say, this is literally all the play is known for these days, and views of the play as anti-Semitic are everywhere (Rosenbaum even had a hot take that since the Nazis liked it, it must be anti-Semitic). Didn’t know Harold Bloom thinks this play is anti-Semitic, though. That in itself is a bit of a red flag, as Bloom is a notoriously poor reader of Shakespeare.

“[I]n Merchant, Portia unhappily fulfills her father’s requirements of her suitors, while in Il Pecorone, the lady enjoys drugging her suitors and robbing them blind. By removing this detail, Shakespeare removed the suggestion that malicious schemers come from all walks of life.”

Or, by removing this detail, Shakespeare removed the clear and abhorrent sexism of his original source that turned a woman robbed of her autonomy by her father’s will into a criminal. It’s almost as if you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

“Dr. Lopez, one of the most respected physicians of the 16th century, had indiscreetly revealed that he once treated the Earl of Essex for venereal disease. The earl took revenge by framing Dr. Lopez for treason and arranging for his torture; while on the rack, Dr. Lopez “confessed”—though “like a Jew,” as the court record states, he denied all charges at trial, while the attorney for the Crown referred to him matter-of-factly as “a perjuring murdering traitor and Jewish doctor.”

This is a very twisted account of the Lopez affair and Essex’s motives in going against him, at least to my understanding. For context, Lopez was accused of receiving loads of money from the King of Spain to poison Queen Elizabeth.

According to Stephen Greenblatt, in Will of the World: “Essex had tried some years before to recruit Lopez as a secret agent. Lopez’s refusal—he chose instead directly to inform the queen—may have been prudent, but it created in the powerful earl a very dangerous enemy. After his arrest, he was initially imprisoned at Essex House and interrogated by the earl himself. But Lopez had powerful allies in the rival faction of the queen’s senior adviser William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his son, Robert Cecil, who also participated in the interrogation and reported to the queen that the charges against her physician were baseless.” Lopez apparently had been taken bribes from various sources, and confessed (freely? under torture?) “that he had indeed entered into a treasonous-sounding negotiation with the king of Spain, but he insisted that he had done so only in order to cozen the king out of his money.” Weird.

Greenblatt isn’t a historian, though, and Essex was indeed an asshole to Lopez, (and for what is worth, I feel Lopez was innocent; I just get those vibes) but so far I can find no other source that Essex actively framed Lopez. Most likely he did some sleuthing, dug up some questionable, compromising stuff, and tried to blow a hearth flame into a firestorm.

“After all, the historical record gives Queen Elizabeth a cookie for dawdling on signing Dr. Lopez’s death warrant; her doubts about his guilt even led her to mercifully allow his family to keep his property, not unlike the equally merciful Duke of Venice in Shakespeare’s play.”

Again, Lopez had powerful allies (doesn’t get much higher than Burghley), and again, re: Greenblatt: “According to court observers, Elizabeth gave Essex a tongue-lashing, ‘calling him rash and temerarious youth, to enter into a matter against the poor man, which he could not prove, and whose innocence she knew well enough.’” A cupcake, then?

“And it is of course entirely unclear whether this trial and public humiliation of an allegedly greed-driven Jew attempting to murder an upstanding Christian, rapturously reported in the press with myriad antisemitic embellishments, had anything at all to do with Shakespeare’s play about the trial and public humiliation of a greed-driven Jew attempting to murder an upstanding Christian—which Shakespeare composed shortly after Dr. Lopez decomposed. Most likely these things were completely unrelated.”

Nearly all the major Shakespeare biographies and articles I’ve read literally and explicitly talks about the possible influence of Lopez’s execution on Merchant of Venice and names it as an inspiration: Greenblatt, (he even headcanons that Shakespeare watched the execution!) Bate, Ackroyd. That’s how Horn managed to ping my BS radar something awful—because I had read about it, many times, even if it was mentioned in passing. It’s solid, legit Shakespearean academic fanon. The sarcasm is really unwarranted, and childish besides.

“It was damned hard to hear the nuance while parsing lines like “Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnal,” or “My master’s a very Jew; give him a present, give him a halter,” or explaining what Shylock meant when he planned to “go in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian.”

The first two are the fool’s, Lancelot’s, lines, I think. As for Shylock’s hatred toward Christians, while ugly, it’s entirely understandable given the Christian characters’ treatment of him pre-play and during it (Antonio spitting on Shylock’s gaberdine and then asking him to borrow money from him is called out by Shylock himself for its sheer hypocrisy). It also fits Shylock’s character as an unassimilated Jew, resenting Christian hypocrisy and racism.

“The actor began the brief soliloquy that every English-speaking Jew is apparently meant to take as a compliment: ‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? . . . If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’

“Wait, that’s the part where he’s more human?”

[…]“Sure,” I told my son, game-facing him back in the rearview. “He’s reminding us how he’s like everyone else. He’s a normal person with normal feelings.”

My son laughed. “You seriously fell for that?”

[…] “What do you mean?”

“Shylock’s just saying he wants revenge! Like, ‘Oh, yeah? If I’m a regular human, then I get to be eee-vil like a regular human!’ This is the evil monologue thing that every supervillain does! ‘I’ve had a rough life, and if you were me you would do the same thing, so that’s why I’m going to KILL BATMAN, mu-hahaha!’ He’s just manipulating the other guy even more!”

And then the crowd applauded, Harold Bloom cried, and the mayor gave the author’s six-year-old son a gold medal for his Brave Hot Take. Honestly, this was the most unbelievable part of the essay I’ve read. Unless this kid has been reading academic essays on MoV that posit this exact same interpretation (“Shylock was just using humanistic rhetoric to justify his ~bloodthirsty revenge!”), this one’s for a fake Internet stories anthology. Shylock may be a dour, miserable pain in the ass, but he is no Barabas, an actual anti-Semitic caricature—he has a character, and a recognizably human one, and the play bears it out that he is right in his anger.

“I reviewed the other moments scholars cite to prove Shylock’s “humanity.” There were two lines of Shylock treasuring his dead wife’s ring, unlike the play’s Christian men who give their wives’ rings away. But unlike the other men, Shylock never gets his ring back—because his daughter steals it, and becomes a Christian, and inherits what remains of his estate at the play’s triumphant end.”

Er, this is a non sequitur—that last has nothing to do with the first. The point is, Shylock doesn’t give away his ring; the fact that his daughter stole it means nothing to his treasuring it. It may be proof of the play’s marginalization of Shylock (which accurately if sadly reflects real-life systematic marginalization), but not his humanity. Shakespeare just doesn’t do backstories, even for major characters, so it is significant that he gave Shylock a wife/beloved in the first place.

“Finally, scholars point to the many times Shylock explains why he is so revolting: Christians treat him poorly, so he returns the favor. But for this to satisfy, one must accept that Jews are revolting to begin with, and that their repulsiveness simply needs to be explained.”

This makes absolutely no sense at all. If one accepts Jews are inherently revolting, then no explanation need be given for when a Jewish character acts revolting! The racist accepts the revolting Jewish characterization without qualm. The fact that the play insists on his grievance is significant.

“We listened together as Shylock went to court to extract his pound of flesh; as the heroine, chirping about the quality of mercy, forbade him to spill the Christian’s blood as he so desperately desired; as the court confiscated his property, along with his soul through forced conversion; as the play’s most cherished characters used his own words to taunt and demean him, relishing their vanquishing of the bloodthirsty Jew.”

YMMV, but to me there are no cherished characters in this play. That’s the whole point! Everyone is so mired in this dreary capitalist materialism that denigrates genuine human connection into mere transaction. Everything to these characters is money, money, money (and class), or at least tainted by it. Shylock is simply the most overt (and honest) of the lot. Love relationships, religion are impoverished; Portia and Bassanio are scarcely more suited than Portia and her other suitors. Shylock and Antonio are Jews and Christians in-name-only: They are capitalists first and foremost. Portia is a smarter, more likable Karen. Lancelot isn’t funny. Jessica is okay, but her leaving her father is framed as a asshole moment at least in one instance. Portia is probably the most lovable, but she has her asshole moments too. There are no truly awful characters, but you don’t need to demonize and dehumanize your whole cast into two-dimensional racists just to make a point.

Merchant of Venice is not the best of plays. It is one of Shakespeare’s experiments, a proto-problem play before his Jacobean era, using dark comedy and a slight bent of farce to explore and elucidate social issues, racism and discrimination, chiefly. At least it tries, anyway. Taming of the Shrew is the first proto-problem play done completely farcical, which at least makes it compelling in a slapstick-satire way; Merchant is much more sociologically astute, but also more dull and coolly distant even from its own concerns. I don’t blame anyone, much less Jewish people, for not liking the play or thinking it a masterpiece. I myself don’t, though for reasons that have nothing to do with the usual ones. I like what Shakespeare was trying to do and I think he did some things very well. It has ambition and thought. But I feel like for most of it Shakespeare was on writing autopilot while mentally looking around for something a bit meatier to adapt and develop. It’s a jogging-in-one-place play; he has a couple of those.

In sum: Author argues for complicated play’s anti-Semitism, ends up just saying the racist slurs by the flawed/asshole Christian characters made her and her son uncomfortable (feat. A distorted and even misleading account of the Lopez affair). Plus some internalized anti-Semitism to sort through, methinks.

#the merchant of venice #shakespeare #cristina metas #shakespeare meta #kind of #cristina reviews #also kind of #merchant is not even one of my liked plays but these takes are just wearying

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lewis-winters · 3 years

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Some additional dæmon!au headcanons, a continuation of this headcanon list.

Ok so I thought about it some more and decided to change Dick's dæmon from a Caracara to a Gyrfalcon. Still a raptor, but a larger one that has, historically, been used in falconry and hunting and is, in some European countries, a symbol of patriotism and national pride. Dick's daemon is a female, silver-streaked Gyrfalcon that settled sometime after college but before Fort Benning. Her name's Anahida, and she speaks like a queen. Like, literally, I imagine her voice sounds a lot like Helen McCrory's (gee, I wonder why). She's very large and eye catching, but she only speaks when spoken to-- which is rare. In a society as repressed as 1930s - 1940s America, I imagine speaking to another person's dæmon would be seen as rude or taboo. Because of that, Anahida barely speaks and thus, people often forget she's there. There are rumors too, that Dick's the son of a witch, because Anahida likes to fly far above and at a distance, farther than any human-dæmon bond should go. However, it isn't true. They just practiced a lot growing up. Dick's always wanted to fly, in some way or another, and practicing as well as testing how far they can both stretch from each other was their afternoon play time. It's weird. I know. But this is Dick we're talking about. Of course he'd do something like this.

Anahida is the only one allowed to berate Dick when he's being exceptionally petty or self-righteous. She keeps him in check. It never happens often, but it happens enough. Other than that, they're right as rain and very in-sync with each other.

Is anybody surprised that the only other person who will ever address Anahida directly is Lewis? Show of hands? None? Yeah, me too.

Liebgott's dæmon's name is Chaya and, after some pondering, I've come to the conclusion that she's a Bat-eared fox. Very chatty, too. She and Lieb are very blunt, but she's arguably the blunter one of the two. Where Lieb sometimes gives into the urge to hide or repress feelings, Chaya is willing to take more risk. She does this thing where she will boldly go one way, the way she knows is good for them both, stretching their bond even to its thinnest and most painful, just to get Lieb to finally concede and agree with her. They're both stubborn as all hell, that's the problem. Sometimes Lieb will deny himself things for a myriad of reasons. Chaya has no such qualms. She loves him, but she definitely thinks he's an idiot sometimes. It also sometimes extends to how Lieb gets really soft around people he cares about. In the wild, male Bat-eared foxes are the more nurturing of the young, while the females are the ones who go out and hunt. Kind of the same with Lieb and Chaya. Lieb takes care, he hovers and forgets that boundaries exist-- his own, and the person he's taking care of. But Chaya's the kind who remembers, and reminds Lieb that sometimes you can't give all of yourself away, no matter how much you want to. Does that make sense?

(Disclaimer: I gotta admit. The reason why I hesitated with Lieb was because I didn't want to accidentally be anti-Semitic. I grew up in a country that is primarily Christian and Muslim so I am only familiar with Islamophobic visual vocab, not so the anti-Semitic ones. I had to make sure the animals I assigned a Jewish man's literal soul to were not anti-Semitic or used in anti-Semitic imagery by Nazi propaganda in any way. So. Yeah. Um. Pigs, goats, lizards/reptiles, rats, rodent-adjacent, or any animal seen as "pests" or "vermin" were immediately struck out. Nope. Let's not.)

You wouldn't know it at first glance, but Web and his raven dæmon have a very intense love-hate relationship. Annabelle is a very act-first, introspection-never kind of thing. Web is the opposite. Sometimes, Annabelle will act before Web himself will, and she can be very, very vicious. Because of this, Web is afraid of her and Annabelle resents him. They never fight in public, they largely ignore each other, but often when they get into it... well. It gets almost... a bit too violent. Some of the others have never seen a human and a daemon hurt each other until they’ve met these two. Sometimes, Annabelle often thinks that she’s somebody else entirely, a completely different entity from Web, and sometimes, Web thinks she’s a changeling. That maybe some fae or other switched his real daemon out for this cursed one. It’s a really fractured, complicated relationship.

When they’re on the same wave length, though, they’re scary. The only thing they can seem to agree on is passionate and impulsive anger. Web will always regret it afterwards whereas Annabelle is always smug about it. They calm down after the war and they’re back home. During the war, though, they’re both a mess.

Joe Toye’s daemon is a doberman pinscher named Alessia who is just about as quiet and solemn as her human. Classic soldier daemon. He calls her Al for short. When he loses a leg, she doesn’t. I don’t think amputation in the daemon world works that way, at least not according to Pullman’s original text. Going back home with her after his amputation is easier because she’s there to encouraged him and hold him up when necessary. They make a good team. They share similar fears and insecurities so it’s easy for the both of them to understand each other and help each other through it.

Pat has a little american robin as a daemon. Which is really funny, honestly. Big tough guy like Pat, you’d think he’d have a big tough daemon for sure, but that’s not the case with him. He’s always been gentle and unassuming, Pat and so is his daemon. Her name’s Aoibheann (pronounced ay-veen). She likes to sit on his shoulder and rarely flies far away from him. When they jumped, she stayed inside his jacket at all times, tucked away and close. The only time she flies is later on at peace time, when she knows they’re both safe and she can leave Pat for a few minutes without it being too much trouble.

Johnny’s daemon is a mongoose named Corentine, but he calls her Cora. She’s fiesty. Sobel’s rooster daemon, Julius, wasn’t very fond of her. In fact, he was downright frightened of her. It’s why Sobel won’t mess with Johnny. It’s really funny.

Perco’s daemon is in the same family. A weasel. A tiny little thing he can hold in both his hands. Her name’s Jackie. I have no idea why. But it fits.

Ralph Spina’s daemon is a raccoon. It’s adorable. His name’s Nimaphael. But he hates it and everybody just calls him Nim. Ralph carries him around like a baby on a sling, strapped to his chest. Unlike Harry and Saoirse, you can tease them about this. They’re aware it looks ridiculous. They also don’t care.

Bull’s daemon is a sun bear. I know. I didn’t see this coming, either. But I thought about it and... honestly? It fits. Not to mention Bull’s pretty big. He can carry her no problem. Her name’s Xanthia, by the way. And she’s very sweet, if only a little gruff in showing affection. She’s also not afraid to do what needs to be done. If she needs to have a go at an enemy’s daemon, then you know she’ll do it. She definitely isn’t afraid to get down and dirty. It scares the replacements for awhile, until they realize that she only does it to protect her own.

I finally figured out what Merriell Shelton’s daemon is-- it’s a Jaguarundi. It’s a wild cat that looks to be a mix between a house cat and a mongoose. They’re fascinating and they hiss. A lot. It’s a perfect fit. Again, he name is Charlotte, but he calls her Lotte. Imagining them swaggering down the streets of 1940s New Orleans appeals to my aesthetic sense so much I cry just thinking about it.

BONUS:

Kitty Grogan’s daemon is, not surprisingly, a cat. But not a domesticated one. He looks like it at first glance, but he’s not. He’s an African Wild Cat and he’s a sarcastic little shit named Xaphania. Xaph for short. Send me a wink if you understand that reference.

#dæmon au #band of brothers #dick winters #joe liebgott #david webster #joe toye #pat christenson #johhny martin #frank perconte #ralph spina #bull randleman #kitty grogan #the pacific #merriell shelton #bob hcs #bob aus

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paulinedorchester · 3 years

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Garrett, Leah. X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021; London: Vintage Publishing, 2021.

(The American cover is on the left, the British on the right.)

Every so often, gifs from something called X Company cross my dashboard. When I came across Leah Garrett’s book X Troop, my first thought was that it must treat the same subject, but it seems that that can’t be the case: Garrett maintains that none of this story has ever been told before, because most of the documentation remained classified until very recently. (She claims to have single-handedly declassified many sealed British military records.) X Troop is about No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop, commonly referred to as X Troop, comprising 87 German, Austrian, and (in a few cases) Hungarian refugees, all but five of them Jewish (at least under Nazi racial laws — I’ll get to that). It is indeed an extraordinary story, and occasionally an infuriating one. Garrett has done a tremendous public service in relating this tale, but the book itself has some puzzling — no, let's be honest, irritating — aspects.

The men who would make up X Troop left their native countries in their mid to late ’teens during the late 1930s, most of them without their parents as passengers on the Kindertransport. They occupied themselves in various ways until the middle of 1940 when, apparently without exception, they were interned on the Isle of Man, in Canada, or in Australia, to which more than 2,500 of them were transported on the H.M.T. Dunera, a dangerously over-crowded liner on which they endured conditions so horrific that the officer in charge — Major William Patrick Scott, a gleeful sadist and anti-Semite — ended up being court-martialed.

It is heartening to be able to report that British public opinion appears to have turned strongly against wholesale internment by mid-1941, but it wasn’t until that December that the internees were released from confinement. Those who had been transported overseas were offered immediate permission to return to the U.K. — if they volunteered for the Pioneer Corps, and I’m grateful to Garrett for providing the first detailed explanation that I’ve seen of what that meant. It wasn’t a good situation: they did menial labor and were bored out of their minds.

In the summer of 1942, they were finally offered an opportunity to join in the fight against the Nazis. This appears to be an instance in which the “great man” theory of history is perfectly valid, Lord Mountbatten being the great man in question. Garrett explains:

Mountbatten made a bold suggestion [to Winston Churchill]: they should create a new special unit of commandos, different from anything used before. Rather than coming from the ranks of the army or the navy, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando would be composed of soldiers made up of displaced nationals such as Poles, Norwegians, and Frenchmen. Each of the units . . . would be used for different missions depending on their native languages. They would be unified by the shared desire to drive the Nazis out of their home countries. These commandos, highly trained and highly motivated, would lead the way when the time came for the Allies’ invasion of Europe.

And that’s exactly what happened. There were French, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, Polish, and Yugoslavian troops within No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando. There was also a troop known as the “British” troop, made up of Germanophones. That was X Troop (a nickname Churchill gave them). “X Troop would be Britain’s secret shock troop in the war against Germany,” Garrett relates:

They would kill and capture Nazis on the battlefield. But that would not be all. They would also immediately interrogate captured Germans, be it in the heat of the battle or right afterward. The men’s fluency in German would enable them to get essential intelligence that would guide the next moment’s choices rather than having to wait to interview prisoners until they were back at headquarters. ... They would have to be in peak form both physically and mentally. And because they were nearly all Jewish refugees from the Third Reich, they also would need to be diligently protected.

The situation was particularly dire because most were stateless — stripped of their citizenship in Germany or Austria, but refused naturalization by the Home Office. As one officer later recalled, “If any of them were captured in battle and their true identity had been revealed, their fate would have been almost impossible to contemplate.” (Those who chose to remain in the U.K. after the war faced an uphill battle in gaining British citizenship, as Garrett relates. She tells us nothing, incidentally, about Jewish personnel in the other No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando Troops.)

The first step was to have them adopt pseudonyms. When they arrived in Aberdovey (now Aberdyfi), Wales, for training they were each given 30 minutes to come up with a nom de guerre. They also had to concoct false backgrounds to explain why they spoke English with foreign accents. One man told the couple with whom he was billeted “that his accent was somewhat peculiar because his father had traveled a lot on business,” an unlikely story that they apparently accepted without question.

X Troop personnel were involved in the Dieppe raid — which may have been a mistake, as the troop was just past its infancy and several of the men were killed — and the Sicily landings and their aftermath, but of course all of that was really just a warm-up for the invasion of Normandy and, beyond that, Germany. More than half of the book is devoted to this. Assigned to various units, nearly all of the commandos landed at Sword Beach on June 6th, 1944, and proceeded into Central Europe, achieving victory after victory. Garrett places great emphasis on anger as their motivator: anger at the disruption of their lives and at their uncertainly over the fate of their parents and other relatives.

Leah Garrett is American; she is also Jewish. Like the overwhelming majority of my fellow Jews in this country, she is incapable of acknowledging the possibility of viable Jewish life outside of the U.S. or Israel. Her main piece of evidence for this view, which she hammers home repeatedly, is the fact that all but three of the surviving X-Troopers (22 were killed in action) chose to continue using their noms-de-guerre after the war — and, as she is at pains to point out, all of those who resumed their original names ended up emigrating to the United States! (The book’s excellent index helps the reader keep track of who was whom.) It’s true that names hold an important place in Jewish culture, but coming from someone using Garrett as a surname, her attitude comes across as either oblivious or chutzpadik, I’m not quite sure which. She also seems not to know that, historically at least, Jewish immigrants to Britain have changed their names with an assiduousness that makes the same phenomenon in the U.S. look like a mere blip.

Garrett also informs us, in the written equivalent of hushed tones, that some of the men who settled in the U.K. after the war married gentile women and brought up their children as at least nominal members of various Christian bodies. I share her discomfort with this, to be sure, but in order to maintain her shocked, shocked, stance she has to ignore something that she has in fact explained at some length in the book’s early chapters: a significant percentage of the future X-Troopers had only one or two Jewish grand-parents apiece, were brought up as Lutherans or Roman Catholics, and had absolutely no idea that they had any Jewish forebears until Nazi racial laws forced the issue into view. While I’ve known quite a few converts to Judaism whose initial impetus was the discovery of Jewish ancestry, it’s a bit much to expect that everyone will react that way. On the other hand, it’s dispiriting to learn that the inscription on the monument to X Troop that was raised in Aberdyfi in 1999 does not include the words Jews or Jewish.

Garrett is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Center at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), a post she has held since 2018; she previously taught at the University of Denver and Monash University. As a former CUNY faculty member myself, I’m in a position to tell you that (a) even as a full professor, she won’t have been hired with tenure, and (b) this book probably won’t help her to achieve it. It’s a great read on an important topic and represents prodigious research, but as a work of scholarship it has several marks against it. It doesn’t come from an academic publisher. It has only a partial scholarly apparatus — end notes, but no bibliography, or even a list of the many abbreviations used in the notes. Those notes aren’t always as useful as one would like, I might add: after relating that some of the men interned in Australia chose to remain there permanently, Garrett announces that they “would forever change the landscape of Australia. They would be known as the Dunera boys and would become leaders in the arts, sciences, culinary arts, and industry during the twentieth century,” but fails to give us any clue as to where we can go to find out more.

She also adopts an informal writing style that alternates between the faintly slangy (“All the evidence I’ve found points to ... ”) and the unnecessarily dramatic: two key chapters are written entirely in the present tense, a strategy that would normally be after my own heart, but which feels contrived in this context. It also seems not to be the case that none of this has ever been written about previously, as Garrett asserts. (Last but not least, Garrett recently resigned from CUNY’s faculty union, which may end up affecting her status there, as tenure recommendations are made by union members.)

Mixed feelings, then; but the book is worth reading, and I can recommend it.

#world war ii #u.k. armed forces #refugees #historical accounts #a long post for sunday #longer than i had intended in fact #with some very long paragraphs #book review #recommended with reservations

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0aurelion-sol0 · 3 years

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SNK 134: Why we need to move forward.

Well...

That's horrifying...

Oh but whatever they are probably bad people in there. Thieves, greedy people, hateful mothers, men who beat their wives , liars, bullies, killers, murderers, rapist, child rapist and racist babies.

Yeah...

This is a rhetoric that has been used for ages and is currently being used in this fandom especially on reddit and 4chan.

The justification of injustice.

When George Floyd was slammed on the ground and died because he couldn't breathe anymore, conservatives and republicans at large ignored the police brutaliy leading up to that.

He was just a cocaine or drug addict who one day pointed a gun at a pregnant lady. So he was a criminal and deserved that.

Of course ignoring the racial segregation that happened from the very legalized slavery hundreds of years ago and how poor and racially stigmatized black people are being in America right now.

When the Uyghurs are being genocided by China, the world blinds itself because China is one the worlds necessary assets in economy as it basically produces a good chunk of what is being used in the world. Most made by children, " but it makes us live "... Apparently that's the only logical reason...

When Palestinians and Israelis are literally killing each other over some complicated non sense that no one ever really understands and also Israël basically doing Apartheid at this point,

When the totality of the Middle East has turned into a warzone because of the United States's violent imperialism,

When most far right or extremist group decided that Islam and Islamic terrorism are the same thing,

When xenophobes and racist always attack immigration,

"If she wasn't wearing that skirt, she probably wouldn't have been raped",

When we have homophobes, transphobes, LGBTphobes, telling us what's natural and always bragging about "\___-_-___/ God, Holy Jesus",

When you have people who tells you that poor people chose their way of living when there are a small percent of billionaires and soon to be trillionaires having such a gigantic amount of wealth,

When 6 millions Jews were genocided which was 40% of Jewish people at the time and 2/3 of European Jews,

When the prime minister of Israël is saying that the Holocaust wasn't Hitler's Idea but Haj Amin al-Husseini, (who was extremely anti semitic, don't get me wrong)who suggested it to him maiking the prime minister a revisionist but at the same time making his actions against Palestinians justified,

When around the world Christianic places of worship are being vandalized,

When entire SYSTEMS of segregations have made societies work,

When the South American continent has been attacked by the United States because of different political beliefs,

When people use their rape as a way to attack other communities of a specific religion or color,

When Black Panthers uses racism against White people because of the story of USA and are being anti semitic but essentializing a whole group,

When Nationalistic Israelis tells you what is a good Jew and what isn't a good Jew,

When dozens of groups have been forced to extinction,

Natives who were being murdered, yeah? YOU DON'T SEE THAT A LOT IN YOUR COWBOY MOVIES ?

When literal "feminist" calls for the destruction of men while they can't educate the kids about what to do and what not to do, OH, can also be transphobic apparently,

When you have entire websites who encourages pedophilia,

And pedophiles killed, left alone and live a life of endless torment while no one does nothing to help them and fight those who encourages it even in the highest places of our society,

Oh and Hollywood, that's all I need to say.

And let's not even talk about animal brutality and the destruction of ecosystems.

And there is more and more and more and more and more and FUCKING MORE,

All that because of reasons, reasons, reasons, reasons,

All stuck in a cycle of hate, violence and discrimination that just never ends.

The selfishness,

The greed,

And at end, everything is meaningless. There is just blood.

This is what this chapter represent the meaningless of it all. How everything goes to shit...

How everyone, whether it's the oppresor or the oppresed, will justify the violence, the injustice.

Society does nothing cause society right now runs for the entitled and the entitled only and creates it's own monsters.

I want to ask those people who defend the rumbling.

After everything we saw in this manga, after what the real world has commited, after how much these real events have inspired this story, how can you say it was the only way ?

After everyone hided Hange valuable informations including Eren who had information about KRUGER who was a spy in MARLEY. Who has created a civil war in Eldia and activated the rumbling while killing Eldian civilians in the way.

After seeing the mental breakdown of Bertolt, who we don't hear about anymore, Annie and Reiner's mental breakdown over GENOCIDING AN ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE, by the way Reiner totally didn't develop another persona at that time to cope with what he was doing, HUH ?

After all the deaths, Carla, Grisha, Dina, Faye Marco, Levi's squad, Ymir, Erwin, Sasha, Hange, Hannes, Floch and many others, how can you go and be like "CHAD EREN, BEING DADDY, FUCKING HIS MEAT WAIFU, PHILOSOPHER FREEDOM SEEKER"

"104th crybabies... xDdDDDD Prfrpfr"

Come on...

This isn't serious at this point.

And for the H character, we're gonna come back for her but...

GODDAMNIT!

THANK YOU, DEATH.

This has sparked debates.

Some are thankful for this speech by the commander.

Others are finding it disingenous.

Others think it's too on the nose and not natural.

Others don't care.

On my part, I enjoy it but I take it with the context. Most of their airships have been destroyed and they are facing their doom upfront right now. It's more of a death plea at this point. Just like in the cave with Histor... GOD IT'S SO HARD SAYING HER NAME... with Historia who said truly horrible things at the point of an imminent death. At that moment, words like this can tell what you really are inside but even that is not enough to have a full picture.

It did have some interesting elements.

It is true, using, raising, breeding hate and shoving problems upon a group will always come bite you up the ass someday.

Marley in their extensive and violent coloniaslistic, imperialiatic behavior towards Eldia creates only weaknesses for them on an international field and create this monstruosity that is right now Eren.

Eren, a soldier who suffer from trauma and PTSD, who has terrible insecurities and everything to lose after losing so much and possibly in my book being influenced by another entity decides to kill them all.

But...

In no way does that justify Eren's actions, in fact it goes against it.

He is just as angry and hateful as they were back then but instead of destroying the system, he decides to genocide.

Essentializing the whole world as your ennemy and problem, and deciding to get rid of it is just continuing what has been started and continued for hundreds of years before.

No one ever thinks about the simple families, the innocent children, the homeless...

What about them Eren ?

What about the people who faced discrimination like Ramzi ?

What about the other groups that are almost extinct just like yours ?

What about the groups that tried to support the Eldians but were considered freaks ? HUH ?

What about the babies and innocent children ?

Isayama is even spelling it out for you this chapter.

Is he not worth it ? To stop all this ?

He was born into this world just like every other baby.

Look at that while everyone, is trying to jump off, their trying to save the baby. Even if it's probably impossible. That's humanity right there.

And... jesus christ...

I literally saw people who said that the mother was dumb to give it to the people because titans were behind them.

I can't even...

Imagine if Eren is the daddy of H's Baby and that he completes the genocide, killing his friends or even persuading them and at the end he is saying you are free to this baby.

So this baby is worth more than this baby ?

He is more legitimate to live than him.

I can't even imagine what the arguments would be like with the Eren stans:

"He's protecting his friends."

While literally challenging them to fight and right now trying to kill them.

"Well, you know the Rumbling is horrible but they got what was coming for them. They did nothing to help Paradise."

While forgetting the complexity of human nature, how banalization of these acts of violence have come to be BECAUSE...

These just like me and you are just simple people. With simple lives and not too much power who can't do anything about it.

Most of the people today sees all the suffering in the world, they just don't have the power, nor the will to go against such complex geo-political conflicts.

Would you be able to just resolve the Israelo-Palestinian conflict ? I don't think so, so shut your ass down with this argument.

These people can't change the world with power that they have and the one that has the power to change that, is killing them right now. BRAVO.

" Well, uh, the child is a child, parents might be racist and uh... child maybe is racist or will become racist..."

God...

Just because someone has done horrible shits or is an horrible shit doesn't mean he should die like this.

Here it is people, how we work as human :

Fuck redemption and possible solutions, let's kill everyone who did something bad.

Y'all would have been perfect during monarchies time.

And like... having an argument on a baby should face genocide is just fucking disgusting.

AND DON'T GIVE ME THE BULLCRAP OF FICTION DOESN'T EQUAL REALITY!

That you are interested into what could bring the Rumbling in terms of thematics and story is fine.

BUT ENDORSING IT ?

Do y'all even hear yourselves sometimes ?

You just sound like every racist, bigoted, fascist and violent person that has ever existed.

You're just excited to see someone die because he commited something wrong, sadistic pricks.

You're no different. Perhaps the guy who was talking to Grisha in chapter 97, who was a Marleyan and gave serums to Eldian is right. When he was talking to Grisha, Isayama use it to break the fourth wall and talk to the readers.

Why do we watch this, all this violence ?

" Because it's fun!"

" People take peace for granted!"

" Of course we're abnormal in society's eyes."

" We wish to exterminate all eldians!"

" Your sister did nothing wrong. Shame she was an Eldian!"

The fun fact is that this guy is a racist fuck but he dies pushed by Kruger and killed by his very own creation: a titan.

Why do people endorse genocide ?

" Because it's justice!"

" They got what was coming for them!"

" Isayama is just showing us that genocide is not really wrong if you just understand the concept of morals. Puritans."

" Humanity can die, they deserve it!"

" I'm sad for Ramzi, he didn't do nothing wrong but you know... maybe he didn't have good ideas about Eldians."

While also saying why children could deserve genocide. \____@-@____/

Of course I found most of these on Reddit and 4chan, the nazi propaganda website. Tumblr is a little free of it.

Babies....

Literally babies...

That remind me of somethin'...

OH YEAH!

QUEER NO MORE.

*put gloves on*

PUUUUUUUSSHH!!! COOOOOOOMMEEE OOONN!!!!

Breathe...

I SEEEEE THE HEAAADDD, IT'S HEREEEEEE!!!!

Natalie, bring the bucket, quick!

Of fuck she shitted on herself a little bit!

_________________________________________

So ?

Y'all like my fanfic ?

It's about how Erehisu is canon and how Historia is actually thinking about Eren right now because she is blushing.

But also about how Historia actually looks good and sexy while being pregnant and how she looks so happy!

She also is a lesbian that turned straight.

I'm so proud of my work.

_________________________________________

In all honesty...

This is... dissapointing and an insult to Historia fans. Why ? What is the purpose or the reason ? Being tragic ? To show how far Historia can go to protect her loved ones ? A female Eren so ?

I always leaned towards the fake pregnancy even if I don't know how something like that could be really pulled. I didn't understand this choice for his storytelling. The others I understand but this one...

O_o

What the fuck ?

So she really is pregnant ? But nothing leading up to it makes sense.

The character whose thematics still rings too much true for this arc is put in the background and as a breeding farm on top of that.

It even came to a point I started people to stop asking about her.

I had faith in her presence in the final arc. That she would have a role play.

But now ?

/\/\/\

For people who don't understand why this aspect of story is wrong, we have to break it down.

First off, Historia one of the first queer characters with Ymir in SNK. Others are suspected but these two are the few that holds a definitive representation as queer.

Most often in media or in real life, LGBT people have been forced into a situation that requires them to fall under heterosexuals lives. Here Historia is forced to be pregnant, yes in a way she agreed because of her people, but at the same time she didn't really want it.

For queer people, like me, this still rings true. Too much true. People literally forces you to go for your opposite sex everytime, to have a family.

No, stop forcing your view of your own life or desire of life on other people.

The fact that the fandom rationalizes that and says that she is happy and in love with Eren is just so fucking weird.

It either is blind ship following, heteronormativity or not understanding the story.

And I saw people saying she might be bisexual. This doesn't change anything. Also ignoring the fact that she hasn't shown any attraction to men other than women in the story.

If she is bisexual, it doesn't change anything, she is still queer. Not semi-straight AND EVEN IF SHE WAS A WOMAN WHO HAPPENED TO BE STRAIGHT, SHE IS STILL FORCED INTO SOMETHING SHE DID NOT WANT.

Bisexual is not semi-straight, semi-gay.

It's bisexual.

Bisexual, Straight and Homosexuality are not the same thing.

And if she was straight, that doesn't make it acceptable. It's just sick.

Just because you're a straight woman doesn't mean you are going to be more happy or have god like duty to have kids.

I just don't understand it...

A manga who was so progressive with his female characters reduces Historia to this.

Imagine...

Just imagine...

Eren is the father. I would shoot myself in the face. A forced straight relationship at the end for the pleasure of shonen readers and heteronormative readers.

" What if I have baby, Eren ?"

" Only if it is from me. I want him to live and have FREEDOM!"

" It's open bar, honey." *saying this after hearing the guy says he's going to genocide which goes against her own values and actions as queen*

Ew... Just ew...

And even worse she wasn't supposed to give birth right now, she was supposed to give birth in a few months.

She could DIE. SHE IS 19. This is dangerous.

Everyone is like this is normal.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL. *sigh*

This goes against what she is supposed to have as a character development.

The fact that she would be okay for genocide while as a queen she reached out to the most weak and in need is fucking incoherent.

No. This doesn't make sense. Even Eren said that Historia's action as a queen were to help others. How could she be okay sitting at her house ? Telling no one about what Eren was going to do ? And becoming a breeding farm ? What is the logic in that ?

Why make it suspicious than ?

The only thing that was able to make any logical sense to me was that the person we are seeing here isn't Historia.

I know if my theory is right, it's sick, even more sick.

The only times we saw Historia after the timeskip was during flashbacks, the reveal at 107 and possibly at the end of 123.

If this is her at the end of 123, I want to ask you why is she all prepared, why is she all dressed up and why is she wearing the same clothes in 134 that she is wearing 107. Something doesn't add up.

She is young, small-petite, blonde and her belly and face are hidden.

I was only able to go through the theory that this is a fake Historia. Than who it is than ?

Well, I searched for female characters who look like her or who could look like Historia right now. From all the characters that we haven't seen coming coming back and that has interacted with Historia, there is only one.

Rico Brzenska.

For those, who don't remember her : She was a Garrison Member who helped Mikasa and Eren during the Trost Arc and also helped Historia while she was exhausted during the Clash of the Titans Arc.

She hasn't appeared ever since the start of the Return to Shiganshina Arc unlike many of the older characters.

She is the only one I see who could pass as Historia I think.

I know this is still sick. But this is the only way I would be able to make Historia get out of this crappy storyline and play some relevance in the story. And if we look at Rico and Historia in 107, they kinda look the same. They have the heart shaped face, they are both small and they both have this sort of closed eyelids.

One line that just stuck with me of Rico was:

"Hiding/Lying about Eren's rampage in the report wouldn't have benefited humanity. "

This was during Eren's trial before joining the Survey Corps. What was discused was when Eren lost control of himself during the Trost Arc and attacked Mikasa.

The second line that struck was the one where she holds Historia who is exhausted in her arms:

"Wow! Who is this girl, is she okay ?"

I don't know why it just pushed that theory. And I kinda believe it now, because no one can make me believe that there is something satisfying coming out of this. Why would she sacrifice herself for Historia ? Well, I don't really know but Rico was always a little wary of Eren, even after the Trost Arc but yeah ultimately for Rico being able to give her own life for Historia. I don't know about that. But with this manga you never now. It is a very dark and twisted theory but this is the only logical thing I can see right now since no answers have been provided.

Monkey is BACK

Zeke is back and like most of us predicted, Eren dragged him with him. And I'm not gonna lie, the way he was attached to the spine was pretty badass.

He is used as a puppet which reinforces the theory for me that all three of them: Eren, Ymir and Zeke are being used by the Attack Titan.

I cannot understand Eren's illogical behavior especially after seeing the train scene where he says he wants them to live long happy lives and than having him kill his friends.

Ymir the first being free and having eyes to returning to having no eyes just like before and Eren.

And Zeke would have never agreed to the Rumbling. And we can't see his eyes either.

And...

Thank you, 104th for existing.

Because...

After how much shit they have gone through and after how much the fandom, not just the Eren stans, have mocked them. Like the fandom has been the biggest asshole to the the Alliance while they were the ones who were able to survive through the sentence " Genocide is wrong!" that so many people seems to find to be so hard to say.

I will root for them until the bitter end, I don't care. They are the one who are fighting. You can call Cringevengers all you want but I am glad they are winning.

They all suffered like Eren but they didn't prioritize their own and only feelings above everything else and they stood by for the values they fought for since they joined the Survey Corps. Even if I have to admit they have, for most of them, conflicted feelings with what they were doing and have done things like trying to talk to Eren while it's obvious he wasn't going to talk and that in a situation like this I don't think someone would try to stop Eren by just talking.

Levi, and it would be foolish to not recognize it, is being consumed by his promise but he is restraining it and still is able to think about the bigger picture.

There's one thing I really like about this is Armin asking Eren:

"Eren... I'll ask you one last time... "What part of you is free" after we rip you out from there... "

Hehe... yes... what part of you is free ?

To be honest, there's many things I don't want for the ending.

A Lelouch Ending, it was all Eren's plan. Literally wouldn't make sense. No one would be questionning his free will and he wouldn't have these weird shits happening to him.

A Code Geass ending, why would Mikasa have to kill Eren, what does that add to her as a character ? More tragedy ? No she doesn't have the scarf, it's pretty telling what place she's at right now.

Eren being the daddy. NO, JUST NO.

Everyone dies, genocide is the right thing. You know all the worst shit that can happen.

But most of all I want important plot points to be explored and moved over because ever since the timeskip, there has been no important plot points out the way. Eren's behavior, Ackertalk, Bertolttalk, Historia's Condition, Paths stuffs, answers!

Whatever... Trust me Peace is not something I take for granted. Being proud of myself and having a life with the least conflict and problem is something you fight for. Having rights, being recognized as a human.

Never lose that, fight for it. But never with injustice, be smarter and stronger. Cause at the end what unites us is not only what we have in common but what the perspective of what we have not in common can make a bigger picture of what we are as humans. We all are different and have a different story with similarities but in the end, we are human and born into this world. And in that, we must move forward. In the present, because of the past and for the future.

We all wish for the problems to go away but if it's for the solutions to be rigged with injustice, it will not work. No one has acheived with genocide and never will.

It's kinda sad that this long of a post has to say this. Did y'all see that ? Pretty inspiring what I wrote. Oh well you know what ? If they can be bigoted why can't I myself.

Here's a song I wrote:

(Fuck everyone and you.

We hate women

There are only 2 genders, the breeder and the breeded.

Everything is degenerate.

We hate brown, Arab and Muslim people.

Genocide is cool

And Hitler was too.)

I know but you know what, at least if they want a spy for Nazi Germany someday. They'll know not to give it to me because I'd laugh at the stupidity of the people just like you and I are doing with the rest of world cause for all the shits it gives us, it's entertaining.

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