How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook
You’ve heard Trump’s promise:
TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.
History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.
In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.
Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power
Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.
TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.
RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.
RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.
GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.
If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.
Step 2: Consolidate power
After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.
In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.
That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”
Step 3: Establish a police state
Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.
Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.
Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.
And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.
Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.
And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.
Step 4: Jail the opposition
In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.
TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.
And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.
TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.
In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.
TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…
Step 5: Undermine the free press
As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.
And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.
He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.
Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.
We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.
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Another note on climate change despair:
My politics are pretty leftist, especially by the standards of a red state, but I think there is a such thing as Too Far Left re: the systemic nature of problems
It happens when you start to believe that nothing will ever change unless the current system is completely destroyed and a new one built in its place. In particular, when you believe that taking steps to reform, or decrease the harm of, a corrupt system is pointless or even bad, you've gone off the deep end imho.
People from my own country—the United States—will say things like "Gradual, incremental change is pointless, we need Revolution!"
Look me in the eyes and tell me that women's rights, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, etc. are in the same state they were in 1950. Maybe just google these things first.
Revolution IS an incremental change!!! This country has tens of thousands of elected officials and officeholders!! Every life-supporting industry is run by a fucked up Rube Goldberg machine of bureaucracy that could stretch from here to the Moon 87 times!!! This country's laws, institutions, and supply chains are a Bethesda game programmed in the 1700's, released unfinished and currently running thousands of mods, at least half of which either remove crucial game mechanics and content at random or do things like "make your character take damage when he pees." Do you think it's really possible to raze this clusterfuck to the ground and rebuild it from scratch?
anyway, I say this because a concerning amount of people believe literally nothing meaningful can be done to save the planet until our current government and economic system no longer exist.
I get it. Capitalism is what got us into this mess and it's making it worse right now, but we do not have zero agency, capitalism does not have infinite power and wisdom, and humans and governments can and do make decisions that are contrary to the immediate interests of capitalism. I think it's not only possible but normal throughout history for people's actions and beliefs to flow against the prevailing power of the time.
Think of dandelions. They flourish not because they are wanted, but because they are numerous, and the power that controls the grass and sidewalks cannot reach everywhere at once. And so they are unstoppable, and will never be destroyed.
We must have the raw, opportunistic resisting power of weeds, taking hold in every crack in the terrible machine that controls our lives. We must hold on like little plants in an expanse of cracked concrete—the slab will not be dug up and the soil set free anytime soon, but if enough of us live our lives in spite of it, its power will be weakened and its impenetrable nature changed.
Also, just because technological solutions to climate change don't feel right—they don't satisfy the longer-term, idealized principle of healing the Earth and creating a more sustainable society—doesn't mean they wouldn't, in the short term, work.
Get in losers, we're burning incense to Caesar and tomorrow we will be alive.
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It’s become a real challenge to keep up with every Palestine protest and action happening in this country, but I am going to round-up some of that have occurred in recent days in case you missed them.
Over 75 activists shut down and blocked all entrances to Boeing Building 598 in Saint Charles, Missouri. The facility manufactures the Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) bombs that Israel is using Gaza. “We are joining millions of people across the United States and around the world in demanding an end to Israeli’s brutal assault on Gaza and its decades-long occupation of Palestine,” said Ellie Tang, a member of the anti-war organization Dissenters, in a statement. “We urge Congress and Biden to hear the calls of millions of us living in this country, and push for a ceasefire. Until Congress blocks the bombs, we will.” After shutting operations down for 2 hours, the facility canceled its deliveries for the day.
500 protesters with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) took over the Statue of Liberty’s platform, dropped banners, held a sit-in, and chanted for a ceasefire. “HAPPENING NOW AT THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: Hundreds of Jews and allies are holding an emergency sit-in, taking over the island to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. We refuse to allow a genocide to be carried out in our names. Ceasefire now to save lives! Never again for anyone!,” tweeted the organization.
Oakland protesters blocked a ship from leaving its port for hours. The boat was headed to the Port of Tacoma to pick up arms destined for Israel. Hundreds of protesters are currently occupying that port and at least one worker is refusing to take the cargo after learning about its use.
At a Get Out the Vote rally, Democratic candidate Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) was confronted by a protester calling for a ceasefire. “4,000 plus dead children in Palestine. 9,000 plus dead civilians, get off the stage. … Get off the stage. I don’t care … get off the stage,” he yelled before being escorted out of the building by police.
Tens of thousands gathered in San Francisco to demand a ceasefire. “I can feel the momentum of it and that’s why we had to get out today,” one told the local CBS station. “My son’s in Trafalgar Square right now or he was earlier today. Same deal. People who just feel the injustice of the world.”
A speech by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) in New Jersey was interrupted by activists calling on him to back a ceasefire. He quickly exited the stage.
Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse were disrupted at event by protesters calling for a ceasefire.
Rep. Grace Meng was confronted by protesters asking when she will back a ceasefire. She remained silent and her staff told them, “There’s a time and place for this.”
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let's talk about the palestinians in israeli prisons
content warning for discussion of police and military violence, torture, and murder of palestinians, including of children, though not in graphic detail
in just the past two weeks, israel’s genocidal ramp-up in violence and surveillance towards palestinian has led to the doubling of the population of palestinians incarcerated in israeli prisons. prior to october 7, 2023, there were approximately 5,200 palestinians incarcerated by israel; by october 21, that number had increased to over 10,000. around 4,000 are gazans who were working in israel with temporary labor permits, and another 1,070 are palestinians arrested in overnight army raids in the occupied west bank and east jerusalem.
imprisoned palestinians are being treated worse than ever; israeli forces and guards are assaulting them, starving them, preventing them from accessing healthcare, cutting off of their water and electricity, and prohibiting them from any contact from their families. the knesset (israeli parliament) even voted this past week to allow prisons to reduce the minimum living space allotted to each detainee because of the rising crush of prisoners, and to allow detainees to be imprisoned without a bed.
but this recent ramp-up in detention and increase in the dehumanization of palestinians should not overshadow the long history of oppression, torture, and murder of palestinians by israeli forces through the criminalization. for a good background and summary, rawan masri and fathi nemer’s piece imprisoning palestine: zionist colonialism through an abolitionist lens for scalawag magazine is an illuminating analysis of how israeli law, policing, and incarceration have worked together to advance zionist colonization of palestine and dispossess palestinians of their land, their rights, and their humanity.
as a result of this history, the following dynamics and outcomes have long existed in israeli policing and incarceration of palestinians:
prior to october 7, one in every five palestinians had been arrested and charged under israeli military occupation; that percentage has only gone up now. while the absolute numbers on incarceration are nowhere near a country like the u.s., the rates of incarceration for palestinians are massively higher even than those of black americans (which is not to downplay the latter; the rates of incarceration for black americans is also fucking ridiculous and horrifying.) for palestinian men, that incarceration rate was as high as 40%. the united nations estimates that approximately one million palestinians have been imprisoned since israel occupied the west bank and gaza in 1967, including tens of thousands of children.
the israeli criminal legal system is anti-black as well, particularly towards afro-palestinians, who are tireless in their fight for palestinian liberation. even black jewish people are impacted by carceral anti-blackness: 40% of minors in the israeli correction system are ethiopian israeli jewish people, although ethiopian israelis make up less than 2% of population. but the racism is even clearer for the tiny community of 350-400 afro-palestinians, who live in a neighborhood in jerusalem that is blockaded at both entrances by israeli police, where they are highly surveilled and face constant police harassment. the majority of their community has been arrested at one point or another, and those who are incarcerated, including youth, are subject to constant rearrests for flimsy reasons. for example, mohammed firawi, an afro-palestinian youth who had been arrested when he was in twelfth grade because he was accused of throwing stones at israeli police, was shuttled around nine israeli prisons before being released five years later. however, he was rearrested two days after his homecoming because he “defied Israeli orders to refrain from celebrating [his release].”
palestinians live under a different (and harsher) system of law than israelis – an inequality so profoundly unjust that it didn’t even exist in south africa’s apartheid system. in the occupied west bank, palestinians are tried under military law for the same crimes that israelis are tried under civilian law. teenagers and adults alike are tried in military courts, where simultaneous arabic interpretation is not provided, so palestinian defendants are only provided summaries at the end of proceedings that can leave out important details. virtually all military cases in the west bank end in convictions – 99.74%, to be exact.
the separate systems of law also mean that palestinians can be held without trial or even being charged. “administrative detention” allows the israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information, and is applied almost exclusively to palestinians in the occupied west bank, east jerusalem, and gaza. prior to october 7, there were 1,264 administrative detainees out of the total 5,200 palestinian people incarcerated in israeli jails – almost 25%!
palestinian children detained by the israeli military are subject to physical and psychological torture. since the second intifada in 2000, more than 12,000 palestinian children have been detained by the israeli military, and between 500 and 1000 children are held every year. a save the children report from july 2023 found that 86% of palestinian children report being beaten in israeli military detention. 42% are injured at the point of arrest, and 69% report being strip-searched. they are often interrogated without the presence of a parent or lawyer, and potentially even in a language not understood to them. they are also charged according to their age at the time of sentencing instead of at the time of their alleged offense, allowing for higher charges simply because their trials take a long time.
palestinians are often murdered in prison by security forces, and the bodies of palestinians who die in detention can be kept by israeli forces for the remainder of their sentence. since 1967, approximately 237 palestinian detainees have reportedly been murdered with torture, medical negligence, or execution during arrest or an escape attempt. in late 2022 and early 2023, the united nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied palestinian territories learned that israeli authorities were holding 125 palestinian bodies, including 13 bodies of palestinians who had died in prison, “allegedly as they need to terminate the execution of the sentence”. the bodies of palestinians are even lost or visibly damaged by israeli authorities when they are returned to families.
palestinian prisoners often face exile to gaza even when they are released, regardless of where they were originally from. former prisoners are often separated from their families, who may have difficulty entering gaza, and who may also lose rights simply for being related to a former prisoner. for example, formerly incarcerated palestinian shuaib abu snina was exiled to gaza, and found that his wife and children in jerusalem were raided and arrested by israeli forces using him as as reason. shuaib was forced to divorce his wife because his eldest son was told that israeli forces “will not deal with your [family] as citizens with rights in jerusalem unless your father divorces your mother”.
but even in captivity, palestinians continue to resist and fight for their liberation. incarcerated palestinians engage in mass disobedience even when faced with beatings or solitary confinement from doing so. since at least the 1960s, palestinians have undergone mass and individual hunger strikes; on may 2, 2023, khader adnan, who was being held without trial in administration detention, was martyred after 80 days of hunger strike. incarcerated palestinians also support each other and have earned concessions through their protests, such as increased visitations, better conditions, access to books and political curriculum, and more – though many of these are clearly being violated by the current israeli acceleration in imprisonment.
as rawan masri and fathi nemer conclude for scalawag magazine:
Today, more than ever, it remains crucial to center any discussion about Palestinian liberation through the lens of abolition and a complete rejection of carcerality. In this context, Incarceration is not only related to prisons and prisoners, but touches upon every aspect of our life. From the moment of birth, Palestinians must contend with being criminalized for existing. We are surveilled and censored, our oppression normalized, and our bodies corralled into various open-air and closed prisons.
Such tactics have always revealed more about the jailor than the prisoner, and the logics inherent to the carceral apparatus are shared between all oppressive forces. While the goal is to project strength and power, what it divulges instead is fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. Resorting to locking away the inconvenient reminders of a crooked system betrays its weakness, a society unable to function without constructed villains onto which the world's ills can be pinned.
It is an attempt to cover the sun with a sieve. [x]
organizations to follow and support:
addameer prisoner support and human rights association
samidoun palestinian prisoner solidarity network
al-haq
adalah legal center for arab minority rights in israel
adalah justice project
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The Poll
So, for those who don’t know, I put up a poll of, “Who was the worst American President?” The list was FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon. It got up to about 13k notes before I deleted it, because I was tired of the notes clogging up my feed. And the results were... telling.
About 75-80% of all the notes were, “Where is Reagan/Andrew Jackson?!?” Many of the rest, though, can be seen below:
What this tells me is that more than ten thousand people didn’t have an education; they had an indoctrination.
You want to hear it? All right, buckle up, because it’s time for a stroll down memory lane.
Why was FDR a bad president?
It is almost hard to know where to begin with this. Let’s start with one of the most basic ones: The belief that FDR got us out of the Depression.
Point of fact, No the fuck he did not.
Making American Depressed
If you ask almost any historian or economist, they will tell you flat-out that not only did the New Deal not end the Great Depression, but that it made it significantly longer and worse than it would have been otherwise. Hoover bears some of the blame for this, but the pseudo-socialist dogshit that was the New Deal bears the brunt of the blame for this one.
The stock market crashed in late October, 1929. Two months later, unemployment peaked at 9%. Over the next several months, unemployment started to fall, down to 5-6% by the spring of the next year. Half a year after the crash, unemployment had not hit double digits. Hoover’s intervention, though, did cause unemployment to reach double digits. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933, and unemployment did not fall out of double digits for the remainder of the 1930′s. The thing that actually pulled the US out of the Depression was the second World War; turns out that removing roughly 12 million people from the labor force to go and fight does wonders for unemployment numbers. FDR even said that Doctor New Deal was replaced by Doctor Win-The-War.
This was hardly the first economic downturn in American history. For the first 150 years of this country, there were downturns all the time. And what the government did was nothing, and the economy recovered on its own. But Roosevelt represents the first massive large-scale intervention in the economy. And government intervention in the economy slows economic recovery; when you have no idea what the government is going to do tomorrow in regards to the economy, it’s hard to make smart financial decisions, so you just don’t bother. After all, why do anything if tomorrow, the rules of the game are going to change?
Separation of Powers Who?
FDR issued more executive orders than any other President of the 20th century. He may, in fact, have issued more than all the other Presidents of the 20th century combined. Rather than letting Congress, the legislative branch of government, you know, legislate, he preferred to try to do everything himself.
The President is supposed to be the weakest branch of the government, but Roosevelt did everything he could to try to establish its supremacy over the other branches. When Congress didn’t give him his way, he used executive orders. When the Supreme Court challenged some of his acts as unconstitutional, his response was to threaten to have them replaced, or to simply pack the court with judges more sympathetic to his aims. This is a man who was openly contemptuous of the concept of the rule of law.
Here’s a fun entry from the notes:
Hey, you want to talk about fascists? Actual, honest-to-goodness Fascists, not just the modern definition (i.e. anyone a nanometer to the right of Noam Chomsky)? Let’s talk about the originals. Let’s talk about the inventor of Fascism, Benito motherfucking Mussolini. And how FDR openly admired him, and was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished”, calling Fascism the “cleanest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery [he had] ever seen”, and that it made him “envious”. And Mussolini, for his part, said of Roosevelt that, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices … Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”
When the guy who fucking invented Fascism is saying that he thinks that you are also doing Fascism, then maybe you’re not a good person.
Concentration- I Mean, Internment Camps
And just like his buddies on the other side of the Atlantic, right when World War 2 kicked off, Roosevelt thought it would be a good idea to take “undesirables” and throw them into prison camps. Roughly 20 thousand Italian- and German-Americans, American citizens, were thrown into camps, simply for the crime of having ancestors from countries we were at war with. And then, of course, there’s the 120 thousand Japanese-Americans who were likewise rounded up and put into prison camps, two thirds of whom were natural-born American citizens.
Almost 150 thousand American citizens, thrown into literal concentration camps, without the bother and expense of due process, stripped of their constitutional rights simply on the basis of race.
As for the concentration camps set up in Europe by the Nazis, however? Despite being told of their existence by people who had escaped, as well as journalists and lawyers from Germany, once American planes gained the ability to attack those camps, to shut them down? FDR refused to grant them permission to do so.
Commander in Thief
Executive Order 6102 outlawed the private ownership of gold, allowing the government to confiscate all of it. Once that was accomplished, the Gold Reserve Act allowed him to change the value of gold, debasing America’s currency (which was on a gold standard at the time), which permitted him to steal literally billions of dollars from American citizens, without any compensation.
World War, Too
There is evidence to suggest that Roosevelt knew about the imminent attack on America by Japan in December of 1941. He discussed with several high-ranking people in the War Department, and in his own cabinet, how to get Japan to fire the first shot in the war, so that he could get America involved. It would make sense: His oil embargo was designed to provoke a Japanese response, so as to draw America into the war. And once America was in the war, ordered the Philippines to be abandoned, outright lying that there was an army waiting to retake it once it had been conquered by Japan.
And as the war dragged on, he got quite cozy with Uncle Joe, Stalin himself. He helped to repatriate two million people to Russia, who very much did not want to go back, many of them ending up either in the gulags, or simply killed outright. And his constant concessions to Stalin helped the Soviet Union hold on to eastern Europe, setting the stage for the Cold War. Even when he was informed of Soviet spies within the American government, and provided evidence of their disloyalty and subversion, he simply let them keep at it.
Racism, Racism, and more Racism
Remember how you cheered when lynching was made a federal crime a few months ago, and asked why it hadn’t been done before now? Well, the main reason was good ol’ FDR himself. A bill was proposed in the Congress which would have made lynching a federal crime, and Roosevelt refused to pass it.
Or what about during the Olympic games in Berlin, when black athletes from America took home multiple gold medals? Roosevelt invited the white athletes to the White House, but not a single black one. Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, said, “Hitler didn’t snub me --- it was [Roosevelt] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.”
And then there was his nomination of a KKK member to the Supreme Court; Hugo Black, who had zero judicial experience, was nominated simply because he supported the New Deal.
He also was of the opinion that America was, and ought to remain, a white and Protestant country, and that too many Jews was inherently a bad thing, because of how distasteful he found them. He boasted that there was no Jewish blood in his veins, as a mark of pride. He even went so far as to turn away ships of Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi tyranny in Europe.
In conclusion
FDR was a massive piece of shit. He massively overstepped his constitutionally-appointed bounds at every available opportunity, massively expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of all other parts of government, and at the expense of individual liberty. He was openly racist and anti-Semitic. His economic policies brought ruin upon the American economy. He openly praised fascism right up until the moment that it was no longer politically expedient to do so, and switched to deferring to authoritarian communism instead. Almost everything that you hate about the modern United States can be traced directly back to this one man.
The fact that he is remembered as not just a good President, but one of the best Presidents, shows how utterly broken American education is.
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excerpts from How the 🇻🇳 Vietnam War Explains Hamas' Strategy 🇵🇸 (extremely brief overview of the Vietnamese utilization of guerrilla warfare & how it relates to the Resistance's tactics)
Guerrilla warfare is usually when there's an asymmetry of power between one side and the other. Often fought between insurgents and a conventional army, and the conventional army loses if it does not win and the guerilla wins if he does not lose.
In this type of warfare, the main objective of the guerrilla is to survive protracted fighting with the adversary, and avoid big decisive confrontation that play into the strength of a conventional army. The guerrilla keeps doing that until they overpower or wear down the enemy by consistently extracting a cost from them.
Most famously, the Vietcong used an extensive tunnel system that extended for tens of thousands of miles and served as their base to engage in effective guerrilla tactics. [...] For the Americans and South Vietnamese, it was like they were fighting ghosts, and the Vietcong was able to inflict heavy costs on them.
In the face of this, U.S. deployed the longest and heaviest aerial bombardment in history by dropping over 7 million tons of explosives and killing over 3 million people. Their strategy was to cause so much death and destruction that people in the guerrillas would abandon their cause. But they never did.
The U.S. government constantly lied to the American public about the war and justified it by framing this as a fight against "an immoral enemy." But as this became the world's first televised war, the horrific images from American massacres and the use of weapons like Agent Orange and napalm sparked outrage. This led to mass opposition to the war around the world and one of the largest protest movements in U.S. history.
After 20 years of fighting, the Vietnamese were able to liberate and unify their country, and defeated the global superpower by maintaining the principles of guerrilla warfare: the conventional army couldn't win, and the guerrillas didn't lose.
Does this sound familiar?
The longer Israel fights, the bigger impact it will have on its economy, given the size of its army in proportion to the country's population. That is a high cost to live with over a long period of time. Secondly, Israel's unrelenting bombardment of Gaza to establish deterrence by retribution and to have people turn on Hamas has caused mass death, destruction, and glaring war crimes, and is failing to crush people's appetite for liberation.
And because of social media, these images have been broadcasted all over the world in a way that Israeli propaganda can no longer contain, sparking mass protests, solidarity, and pressure globally, which is starting to have an impact on domestic politics in the U.S. and the rest of the West.
Within this context, and after weeks of bombardment and a ground invasion, Israel has yet to achieve its military objectives or release prisoners held by Hamas through force. This is why they accepted a temporary ceasefire deal now even though it was on the table weeks ago.
Because remember: in guerrilla warfare, the conventional army loses if it does not win, and the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. And at this point, Israel is not winning and Hamas has not lost.
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notes: I did a lot of research for this and yes, the manuscript I reference is a real thing. I didn’t put its name in though because that felt a step too far 😂 set in the light, the dark, and the spaces in between after ch3 so hope that’s ok! requests like this give me life.
relationship: aziraphale x immortal!reader x crowley
rated: G, pure fluff
word count: 1.4K
if you like my work you can buy me a kofi!
You’re the one who makes the tea.
That’s because you’re the only one who changes how you have it: sometimes you fancy a chai, or a green tea, or a lapsang souchong. Sometimes with sugar or a little bit of milk, sometimes with neither, sometimes with an oat alternative. It changes. You’re human, you go through phases.
But Aziraphale and Crowley? Nah, they’re creatures of habit. Despite the angel’s wide and experimental palate he’s oddly rigorous when it comes to his cuppa. For him, it’s loads of milk and four sugars, drowned to the point where it could hardly be called tea any more. Crowley likes his black and strong and nowhere near anything that could affect the taste. You wring the teabag tortuously into his mug with a teaspoon before grabbing all three servings and heading into the shop.
You put yours down first, on the side next to the book you’re currently reading, then hand your husbands theirs. They both take them from you in the same way, the way they have done for centuries now, a domestic ritual: accepting the mug you offer and then your hand, pressing a little kiss of thanks and affection to the back of it.
A heartfelt intimacy just between the three of you.
☕️
“Hurry Crowley, it’s starting!”
“Yes, yes, alright angel, hang on.”
“We won’t hang on and we’re not pausing it. Not a threat, just a fact,” you call into the kitchen. A couple of seconds later, Crowley emerges from the kitchen with three wine glasses and a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
“I’ll be mother, then,” he mutters as the other two of you barely take your eyes off of the telly. You’ve got your legs slung over Aziraphale’s lap and he only takes a break from stroking your knee in absentminded, loving circles to take the proffered glasses from his husband, one for himself and one for you. Crowley plonks down the other side of Aziraphale and throws his own legs over him too, the two of you playing footsie for space across his plush thighs. Eventually the three of you find a comfortable pile and settle in.
“Another ten weeks of torture begins,” Crowley says as the Bake-off theme ends and the show starts. You nudge him with your toe.
“You don’t have to watch it with us,” you tell him. He harrumphs but doesn’t argue because, really, of course he’ll watch it with the two of you. It makes you both happy.
🍞
Your work is as a consultant for museums around the country, which is a fun way of saying you get paid a lot because you know a lot. But mostly, you only know a lot because you’ve been around for a very long time. So whenever a shard of pottery or a scrap of clothing needs dating they call you to come and put its history into context.
Also, for the bigger museums, it’s a chance for you to smuggle out the stolen artefacts and return them to their country of origin. You consider it a hobby, a bonus perk of the job.
You’ve set up this exhibition. It’s for pottery around the end of the Roman rule in Britain, stuff you’ve found and identified around the country on archaeological digs. You lead Crowley and Aziraphale through, discussing your findings in detail, before you come to a small, surprisingly intact, terra sigillata oil lamp. It sits on its own, spot lit. You asked for it that way.
“See this? I made this. Over a thousand years ago,” you tell them, quietly, gently putting your hand to the glass of the display case. Aziraphale and Crowley take a careful look at the engraving on the object. It bears the profile of a man, and with the sharp cheekbones and little glasses there’s only one person it could be.
“Oh, Nightingale. It’s lovely,” Crowley says, surprisingly touched. He wraps an arm around you and buries his face into your hair.
“You could say I’ve held a flame for you for a long time,” you say, and grin. Crowley groans.
“Did you put my face on a lamp just to keep that pun up your sleeve?”
“Maybe.”
🔥
You next return to the museum when you pick up that Aziraphale is jealous. He isn’t jealous often but he’s pants at hiding it, and it’s not hard to guess why: he’s just seen that Crowley stuck with you for such a long time you put his face on a piece of bloody pottery. You’d probably be a bit put out too.
So for a couple of weeks you throw yourself into your work to find the thing that will make it even. And you do, even though it takes a lot of overseas bargaining and promises to do some pro-bono work.
You finally get the museum in America to agree to send it over for a showing. You arrange a special exhibition specifically for this, where it’s held behind a huge glass case in a dark room with only a small light on it.
But you get special access because, well, you’re you. So you sneak Aziraphale and Crowley in one night and walk into the display room, wearing a face mask and a pair of protective gloves.
There it sits: the Canterbury Tales. One of the oldest versions in the world.
“Oh, this is wonderful!” Aziraphale gasps, peeping over your shoulder to inspect. “I can feel the adoration coming off of it in waves. This was a labour of love, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I’d let you have it for the shop if I had the power. But I think they’d notice if I shoved this one down my top,” you sigh, scanning the pages for what you’re after, then stop dead when you find it.
“Here. Look.”
You point to one of the illustrations, a mounted rider on a beautiful white horse. Aziraphale takes in a quiet breath and draws closer. Because just as plainly as you put Crowley on your oil lamp, you drew your angel in the Canterbury Tales. Curly hair, pink face, beaming smile.
“Oh my,” he whispers. You stroke the little picture and remember toiling away over painting it, repeatedly wiping your brow to make sure your sweat didn’t smudge your work.
“I put you in all the copies I could get my hands on. And you,” you turn to Crowley, “your face is probably buried on my pottery in a dozen dig sites across the UK. I’m just saying I’ve loved the two of you since the day we met; always have, always will.”
Your husbands look at each other and then at you, before as one they step forward to embrace you.
“And we’re lucky to have you,” Crowley whispers in your ear, as Aziraphale kisses your cheek. Their hands meet at your back and they interlace their fingers with each other, you wrap your arms around them and stay like that for a moment; three working parts of a whole.
They kiss, and then they kiss you. You feel warm and rosy. Then you spend the evening reading through the book from beginning to end.
📖
You keep your wedding ring on a chain around your neck at work. Not because you’re embarrassed that you're married; far from it - it’s far too precious to risk losing while constantly taking protective gloves on and off all day. So you don’t blame your colleague for asking you on a date. He’s young, fresh out of uni, and of course has no idea you’re old enough to be his grandparent forty times over.
“That’s very kind,” you tell him, and his face falls because he knows where this is going, “but I’m already happily married.”
He sighs in embarrassment but manages to recover quickly, instead telling you: “they must be someone special to have you.”
He’s doing the polite thing by not assuming the gender of your spouse but it turns out “they” is right on the money. On cue, Aziraphale and Crowley walk through the door to pick you up at the end of your shift. You wish your colleague goodbye and go to meet them.
“Evening, darling,” Crowley calls.
“How was work, my love?” Aziraphale follows up.
“Oh, fine. I’m tired now. And hungry. Can we go and get dinner?”
You link an arm through either of theirs, heading out into the London afternoon.
“Ooh yes, that is a good idea. I quite fancy fish and chips!”
“Let’s go to that spot round the corner. They make their own tartar sauce. Crowley, are you getting your own chips or nicking mine when I’m not looking?”
“The best tasting chips are the ones you steal.”
“Oh, he doesn’t even deny it—!”
Your colleague watches you leave the building, a little dazed, and supposes it takes all sorts to make a world.
Taglist: @angiestopit @dazed-soul @idontmeanto @smile-eywa @staygoldsquatchling02 @underratedboogeyman @specter-soltare @candlewitch-cryptic @cool-ontherun-world @emilynissangtr @willbedecided @cool-iguana @bdffkierenwalker
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Daily update post:
I wrote yesterday about a Hezbollah drone which crashed in Israel without setting off the sirens, and missed by a small margin a kindergarten. Now we know about a second Hezbollah drone, which was found in someone's backyard in northern Israel, and which also didn't trigger any alarm systems. The fact that no warning systems were set off twice that we know of, is a real cause for concern, and is being looked into. As this second drone didn't explode after crashing, Israel will be able to study it, which is the main silver lining.
I have written repeatedly about UNRWA's complicity in Palestinian terrorism in general, and Hamas' in particular. We're getting even more data on this. Previous numbers talked about how many UNRWA members had ties to any Palestinian terrorist organization, now the figures on ties to Hamas specifically are being shared: at least 440 UNRWA workers in Gaza were active Hamas terrorists, at least 2,000 are registered Hamas operatives, and at least 7,000 have a first degree relative who's a Hamas member, making a total of at least 9,440 UNRWA employees in Gaza closely tied to Hamas out of a total of 12,000 Gaza UNRWA workers. And since we're talking about this UN agency again, remember when I recently wrote about the social worker employed by UNRWA, who was captured in CCTV footage kidnapping the body of a murdered Israeli man to Gaza, with the help of a fellow Hamas terrorist? Well, we now know who the man, whose lifeless body Faisal Ali Mussalem Naami was kidnapping, is. It's 21 years old Yonatan Samerano.
He was attending the Nova music festival on Oct 7. It seems he and two friends tried to escape the slaughter there by fleeing to the nearby kibbutz Re'im, where all three were murdered by Hamas terrorists at the community gate. Then Naami showed up DRIVING A UN VEHICLE (that's right, with UN LICENSE PLATES, as confirmed by Ayelet Samerano) and used this car to kidnap Yonatan's body. In the interview I heard with Ayelet Samerano, Yonatan's mom, she said she's going to be demanding answers from the UN secretary general, and that the family is considering filing a lawsuit. Meanwhile, because Jewish lives really are nothing, I'll remind you that UNRWA has been nominated by a Norwegian member of parliament for a Nobel Peace Prize. If you think this is the bad judgment of one politician, Norway is also one of the few western countries NOT temporarily suspending funding of UNRWA until further investigation, and have even said they might increase it. There's only one bit of good news, and that's the fact the US is saying its suspension of UNRWA fudning is going to be permanent.
The reality of Hamas' brutal sex crimes isn't news at this point to anyone with a bit of decency regarding Israeli civilians' fate on Oct 7, but a new report delving into more details than ever on those sex crimes has now been sent to the UN. I expect it to have zero impact given the UN's track record, but it's still important that this report was compiled and submitted by ARCCI, the Israeli association of organizations aiding rape and sexual assault victims.
There's a whole saga with Brazil's president, Lula. Sit tight. It started with Lula saying that what Israel is doing right now in Gaza has never happened before in history, and if it did, it was only when Hitler decided to genocide the Jews (this is absolutely untrue on any measurable level. The war in Gaza is not the bloodiest one ever, doesn't have the highest rate of killed civilians when the global one is a 9:1 ratio of killed civilians compared to killed militants while in the Gaza war there's a 4.5 times lower rate at 2:1, and certainly doesn't include an intentional attempt to kill all Palestinians on an intense industrial level with tens of thousands often being killed daily as the Nazis did to the Jews and which made the Holocaust stand out even in comparison to other cases of genocide). So to make it clear, what Lula did was antisemitic, both in falsely demonizing the Jewish state, and in minimizing the Holocaust by presenting it as comparable to a drastically less extreme event (in fact, the internationally accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism has included false comparisons of Israel to the Nazis for years now). In response, Israel has declared Lula a persona non-grata (unwanted personality) here until he retracts these antisemitic comments. This didn't make Lula reconsider his antisemitic comments, instead he recalled the Brazilian ambassador to Israel. This is maybe connected to Lula's warm ties with the Islamist regime in Iran (including allowing Iranian ships to dock in Brazil), which officially denies the Holocaust.
Here is a vid 21 years old Maya Regev, who was injured, and then kidnapped together with her younger brother Itay by Hamas on Oct 7, from the Nova music festival. Despite her complicated leg injury, she didn't get any medical help during here time in captivity, which compounded her state. She was released in the hostage deal more than 2 months ago, and had undergone several surgeries due to the state of her leg. In this footage, shared yesterday, Maya is seen walking on crutches for the first time since her abduction, more than 4 months ago.
(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)
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one of my favorite scenes in tgcf is the cave of ten thousand gods because of what it reveals about xie lian. hua cheng is actually a walking red flag and its quite clear to everyone that he's obsessed with xie lian to an unhealthy degree. with the reveal about the earring and the statues, feng xin and mu qing are rightfully concerned, and fx asks xl, 'doesn't looking at these things scare you?' and when xl defends hc, mq says 'did he actually cast something on you to confound your mind? i think even if he was to write ‘suspicious’ on his face you’d suddenly become illiterate.'
now xl is the king of willful ignorance and self-delusion, but in this scene can't deny hc's devotion to him. however, xl is used to being abandoned. his entire country turned it's back on him, his parents killed themselves, his best friends abandoned him, and he was expelled from heaven, hated and mocked by everyone in the three realms. except for one person. xl still doesn't realize his whole history with hc and a lot of assumptions are made during this scene, but seeing proof of hc's devotion comforts him. hc is the only one who believes in xl, and xl is so messed up and traumatized by his past experiences that being stalked for 800 years is his idea of a dream relationship. i think that 'cute and wholesome' is a fundamental misinterpretation of hualian's relationship. yes, they have cute moments, but they're both so deeply fucked up that outsiders of their relationship are very concerned.
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Non-paywalled version here.
"Tens of thousands of workers at Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics across the country will soon vote on whether to authorize a strike, union officials announced Thursday.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which includes a dozen local unions with members in seven states and the District of Columbia, said voting would begin Saturday [August 26] and extend into the middle of September. Any strike would start no earlier than Oct. 1.
More than 80,000 employees are represented by the coalition, which counts among its members a wide range of hospital and clinic workers including nursing assistants, phlebotomists, pharmacy technicians and housekeepers. The coalition said that it represents roughly 40% of the overall Kaiser Permanente workforce.
Union leaders said that if a strike moves forward, it would be the largest strike of healthcare workers in the history of the country. They faulted Kaiser for inadequate and unsafe staffing and said the healthcare giant had failed to bargain with them in good faith by refusing to provide them with crucial information during negotiations, among other unfair labor practices.
“Patient care is in crisis at Kaiser Permanente,” said Linda Bridges, president of one of the unions in the coalition, OPEIU Local 2in Silver Spring, Md. “Staffing was decimated during the pandemic and it has not gotten any better. The problem we’re dealing with is Kaiser is not hearing us.
“Kaiser can and must do better. ... They need to stop the unfair labor practices and address the healthcare staffing needs now.”
Regan, the SEIU-UHW president, said the coalition has proposed a $25 hourly minimum wage for its members across the Kaiser Permanente system, saying that “you cannot take care of a family in Los Angeles, San Diego, Denver, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Honolulu” on $19 to $21 an hour. He said Kaiser had recently proposed a much lower minimum — $21 an hour — in 2026."
-via Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2023
Note: Also, if you have Kaiser and you've been putting off any doctors appointments, uh...you might want to make those asap.
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Amazing how uncritically modern leftists, who won't even say "Rhodes Scholar," will leap to defend 150-year-old white Englishmen if they seem to be good on Palestine for ten seconds.
Fucking ARNOLD TOYNBEE. Really!
Toynbee uses the term "Judaic" to describe episodes of "extreme brutality," even where Jews themselves were not involved, as in the Gothic persecution of the Christians. More generally, throughout the first eight volumes of his civilization series, Toynbee often refers to the Jewish people as a "fossil remnant," implying that Judaism was defined by its "fanaticism," its "provincialism," and its "exclusivity," whose value derived solely from its role as a seedbed for the superior civilization and moral code of Christianity.
By characterizing Judaism as a morally primitive belief-system based on the idea of Jews as a "master race," and then asserting that Jews' claim to Israel is based on this premise, Toynbee figures Zionism as "kindred to Nazism." On the other hand, Toynbee argues that by failing to accept their fate as a diaspora community and trying instead to replace the "traditional Jewish hope of an eventual Restoration of Israel to Palestine on God's initiative through the agency of a divinely inspired Messiah," Zionist Jews have the same "impious" relationship to their religion as Communists do to Christianity. Having thus equated Zionism with both Nazism and Communism, Toynbee asserts:
On the Day of Judgement, the gravest crime standing to the German National Socialists' account might be, not that they had exterminated a majority of the Western Jews, but that they had caused the surviving remnant of Jewry to stumble.
What was delightful was that an actual Jew made this colonizing motherfucker eat his words!
Toynbee explained that he did not intend to statistically equate the actions of the Nazis with those of Israel’s founders, but rather simply to draw a moral comparison: that individual massacres committed by Israeli forces in 1948 were no different than those perpetrated by the Germans against the Jews. “If I murder one man, that makes me a murderer,” he observed. “I don’t have to reach the thousand mark or the million mark to be a murderer.”
Herzog pounced on this point, turning Toynbee’s own scholarship against him. “Now, Professor, in volume four, page 128F, of your Study of History you say, ‘In the history of man’s attempt at civilization hitherto, there has never been any society whose progress and civilization has gone so far that in times of revolution or war, its members could be relied upon not to commit atrocities,’ ” Herzog recited. He then listed all the nations Toynbee himself implicated in this charge: the Germans in Belgium in 1914, the British in Ireland in 1920, the French in Syria, and many others throughout history—including, of course, the Nazis.
Herzog then added one group that Toynbee had omitted: “Do you agree that there were also Arab massacres of Jewish civilians?” Herzog made reference to such cases, asking, “Were these also in the category of Nazi atrocities? And if so, why don’t you say that both sides did things in such a category? Why do you choose us? Why do you single us out? Why don’t you write of Britain and of almost every country in the world according to your own definition?”
After several minutes of such questioning, Toynbee conceded the point. “I agree that most societies have committed atrocities, but I do not think that condones atrocities,” he said. “I agree with you on that,” Herzog quickly responded. “But do you agree that this comparison can be applied on the universal level to any country which in war its soldiers have committed atrocities against civilians?” Toynbee had to concur: “Yes, atrocities are atrocities and murder is murder, whoever commits it.” Herzog asked if Toynbee would similarly stigmatize “Arab atrocities against Jewish civilian populations,” and those committed by the United States. “Of course,” the professor replied.
With that admission, Herzog essentially disarmed the historian. After all, if every nation had behaved like the Nazis, then the charge was divested of moral meaning. “In other words,” Herzog concluded, “the Nazi pall lies across the world, before the Nazis came … and after they have gone.” Jews, then, were no more prone to immoral conduct than any other people, and Israel no more and no less guilty than any other modern state.
@laast-in-tranz-lay-shn
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The Republikkkans have been covertly funding minor 3rd party candidates for decades. The RepubliKKKlans are a vocal “numerical MINORITY.” To be successful, which they are more often than the Dems, they must pull out all the stops and do everything possible to siphon votes away from the Dems. They suppress black votes, or any group or geographic region which tends to lean blue. They also fund the “my vote doesn’t matter” and “both parties are the same” propaganda that keeps people who would have other wise voted blue from voting at all. At the local level the often fund someone with a similar name to their Dem rival. They encourage Kanye in the hopes of diverting black votes and they are pushing RFK junior in the hopes of diverting uniformed Dems. RFK Jr is the black sheep of the family and shares No Democratic values with his strongly Democratic family but many people don’t know that.
Putin and the GOP oligarchs channeled money into Jill Stein in 2016 and again this year. The Green Party always siphons off votes from the Dems since they both support the same ideals. The “Bernie or Bust” movement was pushed heavily by oligarch political operatives to siphon off first time voters from Hilary. Many of those voters didn’t understand the primary process where you first vote the person who most represents you before rallying around the party in the general election. A low-level Republican operative even claims to have started the Bernie or Bust movement although this is debatable.
Ralph Nader has said that had he known he would cost Dem Al Gore the win in 2000 that he would not have run. That blunder doomed us to two terms of dumb ass George “Dubya” Bush/Darth Cheney, which in many ways was worse than Trump. Those two clowns (Cheney was literally the shadow president) gave us the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars turned the entire Muslim world against us and strained relations with our NATO allies, cost us trillions, led to tens of thousands of American soldiers being killed or maimed, and raised the deficit to unheard of levels. They also caused two energy crises,one before 9/11 and one after Katrina, that led to record high gas prices that were higher than pandemic levels in many parts of the country. They also allowed a major city, New Orleans, to be wiped off the map and forcibly relocated its residents its poor and minority communities across the country at gun point.
Republikkkans win because they always vote as a solid block in every single election and they do it as if their very lives depended on it. Now some might rebut this by bringing up the Libertarian Party. This lunatic fringe party is basically the same as the Republicans. Most of them in the general election will end up voting GOP but an insignificant number spread out nationwide.
The Dems need to stop trying to claim every single group out their and desperately need to help recreate their union base which Republicans, starting with Reagan, have been killing off. The Dems claim both the Jewish and Muslim people but both groups largely vote Republican. The Dems try to claim all immigrant groups but many don’t vote, aren’t citizens yet, or lean to the autocratic Republican Party because it reminds them of the strongmen of their home countries. The Hispanics are claimed by the Dems but fully one third of them are registered Republicans with the rest going either way. How many elections have the south Florida Cubans cost us with their unyielding support of Republicans wanting to endlessly punish the Castro brothers in Cuba?
The left needs to realize the Hispanics are not a solid block and need to launch a massive outreach program to those who could be swayed left. A disproportionate number of Hispanics are white or white passing and heavily favor the racist Republicans. The letting go of unions and the failure to recruit Hispanics are the two biggest ongoing mistakes of the Dems. But the Dems aren’t as organized or as well funded as the GOP which has unlimited dark money from neo-Nazi autocrats. The legions of dumb ass Evangelicals and racist alt-right groups also help in bringing the Dems down and that’s something else entirely that needs to be addressed. We can’t win playing the game of division. We need to win over voters in massive numbers and do it asap. Dem leadership needs to convince the rank and file that the GOP only supports the wealthy, the religious fringe, and the deplorable racists.
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There are no more dog whistles. No code words. No efforts to hide the truth. When it comes to democracy, Republicans are against it.
Trump: We’ve been waging an all out war on American democracy pic.twitter.com/4YQDfsvTwi— Acyn (@Acyn) December 2, 2023
That little nugget may have been just one of the endless series of mistakes, slip-ups, and misstatements that the media seems willing to overlook when it comes to Donald Trump. But even if that’s the case, you don’t have to go far to understand what Trump has in mind for America. There’s “Agenda47,” where Trump promises to expand the death penalty, end birthright citizenship, and create giant “tent cities” for homeless people. And there’s the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which lays out plans to destroy the Department of Justice and replace tens of thousands of career federal employees with conservatives pledged to Trump’s will.
But this past week, it seems that major media outlets woke up enough to realize that whistling past the Chancellery may not be the best idea.
As The New York Times reported on Monday, Trump’s plan for moving the country into authoritarian control is now more sophisticated, and the systems that are supposed to safeguard democracy have all been weakened. It’s not that Trump hasn’t always been a radical fan of authoritarian rule.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
It’s just that the first time around, Trump seemed unprepared for the idea that he couldn’t just step into the Oval Office and begin enjoying the despotic freedom of a Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin. This time, Trump and his allies seem to be pulling out all the stops to ensure that there are no stops.
Not only has Trump been mimicking the language of the Nazi Party in describing his opponents as “vermin” and fretting that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he’s also making it clear that he intends to take actions lifted from Germany circa 1939.
Republicans have made the idea of invading Mexico practically a requirement for being a candidate in 2024, and Trump has sworn to get that done. Besides getting a little American lebensraum, Trump has also threatened to send military forces to take control of “Democratic cities.” Which would be all but three of America’s 20 largest cities and almost two-thirds of the top 100.
Any student of history - hell just current events - would know that countries are at their weakest when they stand alone against the world.
Just look at how weak Russia has become as a result of standing alone. They'll be lucky to get out of 2024 without handing over their east to China.
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i want to share a piece i wrote during the first black out i experienced in gaza during this ongoing genocide.
With the threat of the ground invasion looming around, all 30-40 people gathered. My aunts relative decided to share stories like ghost stories at a sleepover.
During the 2008 war there were two phases of the ground invasion. Phase I, IDF soldiers came in, they killed and bulldozed at random, they separated women and children and told them to run. They then shot at their feet, “for fun”. Phase II, in some Northern Gaza cities IDF soldiers went door to door rallying every male. My aunts SIL tells her firsthand recount of why her husband is scared. That he and her father-in-law were taken down to the basement in troves, stripped naked, blindfolded and psychologically tortured. Some of the techniques included that the soldiers would call out a name, bring them to a corner, shoot near them, again, “for fun” all while the rest of the men would believe they’ve been killed. They did this for hours, amongst other things.
Ground invasion would be more of a scare some nights than others. Some nights it felt like soldiers would be right outside the door. We joked about barricading the door but my uncle said that would all be for naught as the cement wall was a lot easier to break than the metal door. So unless we were thinking of how to barricade the walls, we were sitting ducks. Not that there was anything to be scared of, of course [insert eyeroll].
War, a testament of man’s faith.
Fear is interesting, throughout a war it manifests differently. Sometimes debilitating, sometimes a myriad of physical manifestations, sometimes only felt deeply when expressed out loud.
October 27, 20:00.
Gaza, a territory, cut off internally and externally. With the bombing of At-Tisal all telecommunication was cut off. A flurry of thoughts plagues your mind. I had family and friends in northern Gaza, I had family on the main road, we were located closest to the eastern border, would they sweep in from the north making us safe or will they come in through the entire border, how long will I have to mentally prepare myself before they’re at our house? Ten, five, three minutes? Will this be Phase I? Merciless killing, which actually when thinking of ground invasion sounds like the most attractive option.
Being a female there is one constant fear. Whether in a warring territory or the safest first world country.
“There’s never been any history of IDF soldiers raping any Gazan.” Oh, thank god. I feel so much better. Sarcastic of course, but also settling in a way. However, I don’t know how true that proclamation was, yet in the moment it was the most comforting thing to hear. So I don’t need to be punched in the face, good to know. My sisters and I talked a lot about that actually, being punched in the face, deforming my face to be unattractive, something women used to do in vietnam and other war zones to avoid being sexual assaulted…
Outside men were gathered, an old radio was pulled out, only one radio station was a available, it was in Hebrew. An old man who was imprisoned countless time and his young adult son began translating. They had invaded, they came in by the north. Al-Shifa hospital was now marked, the largest hospital in Gaza, the hospital I volunteered at the third day of the war, home to over 80,000 displaced. Would they bomb it now? In an hour? Leave it until the last day, keeping everyone in a unique state of fear?
My dad pulled out a Motorola phone from his backpack. Huh? We all looked around in our bags if we had an aux cord headset, my mom finally found one, we plugged it in and radio sound came to life.
Boredom comes with war. That’s not common talked about and probably needs a whole thousand words on it itself for one to grasp the blandness and boredom in war. How does radio work? How do landlines work? Sound waves?
What does a blackout mean? Not only no internet, no way of hearing or reading or seeing what’s going on, but no way of communicating with the people in Gaza. Family and friends, we’re cut off. We have no way of knowing who will live and who will die, which happens every night but there’s a difference when the essence of ground invasion plagues the air.
The radio played all night long, and ever night since.
What to say? We’re alive, we’re safe, nothing happened. Except stuff did happen, not the horrors of ground invasion just the nightly norm. People died, people are dying, streets and cities flattened beyond recognition, more homeless, more displaced.
I connected to the internet. More dead, more injured, more, more, more. Amongst them, a friend. Not having internet was horrible, but off from the world, but when you do connect and all you see is death, death, death you start to avoid connecting anyways.
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TEMPORARY THINGS, chapter 1
March 2022
The seatbelt chime dinged, signaling your arrival at Gate 43--at least that’s the number the pilot had mumbled through his headset upon your departure for Heathrow.
Six hours overnight, not terrible overall. But the crappy neck pillow you bought back at JFK wasn’t much of a sleep aid, and neither was the weed gummy you’d popped and swallowed in the backseat of the car that arrived to whisk you to the airport.
A flight attendant reaches for your carryon overhead, you smile and trail behind others onto the jetway. Warmer than New York, you could already tell, but only by a little.
It dawns on you, as you read the overhead signs and weave through crowds of passengers, that your sleepless red-eye was likely due to the nerves that had been keeping you up all week.
Had you made a terrible mistake?
No. Probably not, right?
Carousel 21 is already littered with familiar faces when you get there--the guy from 3F that asked for headphones a whole ten seconds before take off, the woman in 5A who downed about four gin and tonics before the flight was even halfway across the Atlantic.
You find a spot to stand and try to breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Maybe it was the time change, or maybe it was the fact that both of your feet were now firmly planted on London soil, a whole 3 weeks after this idea had been broached over burrata and Barolo.
Not the amount of time you usually put into giant, possibly life-changing decisions to move to a new country and start over.
Maggie promised you’d be okay. She swore up and down and back and forth that if you’d handled this type of celebrity before, you could do it again. Hell, you’d handled bigger celebrities, so this should be a cake walk!, she said. And she was someone you could trust. She knew the ins and outs of this world and she knew you well enough to know that this type of chaos was enough to jolt some happiness back into your bitter soul.
An unforeseen break up after six years together will do that to someone.
So here you are, startled by the aggressive sound of the buzzer when the belt starts moving. 3F grabs his suitcase and makes a beeline for the door. At least you’re not the only one desperate to get out of the stuffy airport.
And that’s when you hear her yell your name--way too loud for barely 7am in Heathrow and way too loud if either of you had any hopes of blending in. Two Americans were bad enough. Two noisy Americans?
She trots over to you with excitement, her arms wrap around your neck before you can even mutter a greeting in response.
“Your mom texted my mom already and I promised photographic evidence,” she pulls away and you smile, being in Maggie’s presence is immediately calming, analgesic to the unease that set in once you reached thirty thousand feet.
You force a dramatic smile, throw up a peace sign and pose for the camera. She giggles to herself and presses send, stuffing her phone in her pocket in the exact moment that your suitcase appears from the underbelly of the airport.
“I’ve got it,” she calls again, still too loud. She runs and tugs it off with a grunt, and you laugh again, too, thankful for the distraction of your oldest friend.
Maggie’s mom and your mom went to college together. Then they married each of your dads and then the two of you came along (Maggie in ‘92 and you in ‘93) and the rest is history. Your early childhood was spent building forts in her basement and by middle school, your favorite pastime was tricking your little sister and her little brother into makeovers.
She brushes her hair out of her face, stands upright, and takes one look at you. “Okay, tell me everything.”
So you climb in the back of an Uber, Maggie nods and listens intently to details that you hadn’t shared before over facetime. Like the fight you had on your birthday last year, the way he slowly started telling you less and less about work, then friends, the way you should have seen it coming.
Maggie knew your ex, obviously. They got along overall but now she let her lip curl into an expression of disgust, her usual attempt to turn a shitty situation into something to laugh about.
“What a dumb fucking asshole, Y/N, seriously. I never liked his stupid job or that stupid name,” she turns up the theatrics, a roll of her eyes when she commits to the bit.
You smile a little, thankful for the 8 weeks that have since passed and the thousands of miles that now stood between you and him, literally. Both of those things made it easier to ignore the stinging in your eyes when his name came up.
“He’s dumb,” you agree, a swift nod before you take another glance out the window. The London suburbs turn more urban, flats and parks and people on the sidewalks when she reaches over to squeeze your knee with force.
“But now you’re single and in London and your best friend in the whole world got you an amazing temp gig,” she flattered herself and grinned, a text illuminated her screen before she opened it.
“Which, by the way, I have to be on set around 9am, so I’m dropping you off and then I have to go. But you’ll swing by? I told Jason you’d come for lunch--you know, meet everyone you need to meet.”
“Sure,” you nod, the casual mention of your new boss makes your pulse quicken slightly, you swallow and ignore it. Not your first rodeo. In fact, your lengthy resume that listed all the previous rodeos was surely part of the reason you landed this slightly nepotistic arrangement in the first place.
That and the fact that Maggie was a mid-level producer on the show, had known one of the head writers from a different project, and once upon a time dated one of Jason’s close friends.
Pair that with your life and career practically exploding when you got dumped with no notice and within only a few weeks you had a first class ticket to London. Maggie called it magic. You called it an impulsive--and possibly irrational--decision.
But whatever. You needed work and a fresh start and hanging out at your parents’ house was getting boring, anyway.
The car pulls to a stop and the driver helps you out onto the gray sidewalk. Maggie keys in for you and says she came to see the place with a friend to scope it out, you know, since she hadn’t done enough for you recently.
“Okay, so obviously I got you the best thing I could find in his price limit. This location is great. Same neighborhood as moi,” she flutters her lashes. “A nine minute walk, a four minute jog.”
“Same neighborhood as my boss?” You ask, the real reason your location matters.
It was common practice for assistants to live within a 10-minute radius of their boss. Late night snack? Scheduling emergency? Your job was to meet those needs. Your job was also to handle his schedule, and to--you know--assist in whatever way he asks.
You’d climbed the latter a bit after starting out in LA in 2012. Previous clientele included one of the Real Housewives, Reese Witherspoon, and, most recently: the famous wife of a Los Angeles Laker.
You like this job. You liked most of the people. You loved the friends you made and the places you got to travel. And since finally crossing the Executive Assistant threshold in 2019, the pay was killer, the perks were better, and no longer spent most of your time fetching coffees or doing grunt work.
“Of course,” Maggie rolls her eyes before checking a text message. “And I told him you’re the greatest EA he’ll ever have, he lives on the street behind this one, number 82. You can practically see into his house from your bedroom window.”
You shoot Maggie a glare, glance out the window when she throws a thumb in that direction and mentions his house. “Great.”
She holds your gaze for a second, like she’s reading your mind or something. “Wasn’t the whole point of you coming to London so you’d stop being depressed?”
You mock her childishly, voice high and annoying, “wasn’t the whole point--”
“Okay,” she holds up a hand. “Insensitive on my part,” she admits. “But you know I just want you to be okay?”
She watches you for a moment, her features soften and she blinks a few times, almost like she was unsure if you were broken altogether, with your life stuffed into the suitcase between you.
You force a smile and open your arms. “When shit hits the fan there’s no place I’d rather be than in a foreign country with you.”
She bounces over and hugs you again, “that’s what I thought!”
**
The March air is cold, the sky’s gotten gloomier with each passing hour and eventually you had to force yourself to leave the house when you tried on your third consecutive outfit. Is there a right or wrong thing to wear on the set of a TV show? You have no clue.
Maggie met you outside a giant building at 1 o’clock sharp--one on the outskirts of town with giant parking lots and film trailers. She used a keycard to swipe in and said your first stop would be the security desk to obtain your own.
Once that was handled she led you down a maze of hallways, pointing out rooms and departments and providing information you knew you’d never retain. But that was fine, because when she pushes open the door to the main sound stage, your eyes go wide.
She watches you take it in, a smile on her face. “Pretty dope, right?”
“I mean, I knew it had to be a good gig if you got you to leave LA,” you tease.
The room is buzzing with energy. People with headsets carry out missions, walkie-talkies beep and a woman with short brown hair smiles when she sees Maggie.
“Mag—Brett wanted to talk about a re-write for scene 4, he was over near catering with Brendan.”
“Do you know where Jason is?” Maggie asks the woman, not bothering to introduce the two of you yet.
“Upstairs, I think--”
“In his office,” a man clarifies when he walks by—in a rush.
You look up at Maggie, unsure what the right move is.
She looks at the woman with short brown hair and then back at you. “Brave enough to go up there alone since I’m needed for script?”
Yes, of course, fine. You nod quickly and hope Maggie can’t see the fear in your eyes. Something told you she did, but soon she bounces off with Short Brown Hair behind her.
It takes only a few seconds for you to realize that standing by the door alone looks more awkward than if you, too, move around this giant room like you knew where you were going or what you were doing. You saw another door in the corner, took off in that direction when someone else opened it and you caught a glimpse of stairs.
That was a start.
You make your way up one flight and open the door, windows in the hallway look down onto the stage, a better view of the overall set: a locker room, offices, a hallway, a tiny and fictional world with no roof that was born from someone’s imagination.
You’d watched as a proud friend, never finished the first season after a busy week and an overall disinterest in new TV shows.
A name plate on the door to your right confirms you’re getting warmer. A few dark offices, then the sound of humming pulls you down the hall to the only room with an open door.
His name on a piece of paper taped to the wall in bold font, you hold your breath for a second and knock, stepping into view when you hear his voice.
“What are your thoughts on flowers? Is that, like, too weird?” he looks up, eyebrows lifted when he realizes you’re not the person he expects.
Standing in front of him suddenly makes you nervous, mostly because you don’t have Maggie by your side to smooth over this awkward moment. You roll with it, your best at your service smile.
“Assuming you’re talking as a gift…thoughtful, somewhat overdone,” you offer an apologetic grimace, “but simple and shows you care. Who are they for?”
He smiles at your answer, leans back in his chair and nods. You were killing it, right? Assisting before a formal introduction? You’re already excited to brag about it to Maggie tonight over a glass of Merlot.
A tingle down your spine when he laughs a little. “A welcome gift, yeah…for my new assistant.”
“Oh,” you nod, a tiny smirk in surprise when you realize you know something he doesn’t. “Then I’d do tulips.”
Now he leans forward and puts his elbows on his desk. A smirk that he tries to hide when he lets his eyes settle on yours. Is he…flirting? “What makes you say that?”
You shrug casually, “they’re my favorite flowers…and I’m Y/N.”
“Fuck, hi, sorry—“ he stands from his chair quickly, awkward and embarrassed as he tries to hide his surprise with a smile and extended hand. “I’m Jason. You’re Y/N,” he nods, saying it more to himself than to you.
“I am,” you smile, watching as he rounds the corner of his desk to shake on it. “Nice to meet you--the set down there is really awesome.”
He smiles, the release of his shoulders tells you he’s glad to move past whatever just happened. His eyes follow your gesture out into the hallway and onto the stage floor. A nod, a quick glance in your direction. “Thank you, yeah—can’t believe we’re already filming again.”
“Hiiii,” Maggie’s voice sounds from the door, a cheerful grin on her face when you both turn to see her. “I see I’m not needed for an introduction,” she waves her hands around and flits her fingers in your direction.
“No, yeah, Maggie--come in,” Jason moves back to sit at his desk, which, you now realize, is just a folding chair at a folding table with a laptop. A couch along the side wall, a mini fridge in the corner and papers and red pens strewn about the table.
Got it, a makeshift office up here since he was the guy in charge. You wondered where Maggie’s main post was, and you notice that she now has a headset around her neck and a clipboard in hand.
“Jason, I’m very glad you get to meet my oldest friend, Y/N L/N,” she comes to put her arms around your neck, sloppy kisses to your hairline to show the unbreakable bond. “She’s the reason I work in this field to begin with and I expect that the two of you will be thick as thieves in no time.”
He smiles at that a little, lets his eyes meet yours briefly when Maggie reaches up to pinch your cheek. You swat her away, skin still prickling from the way he smiles at you.
Maggie was obviously comfortable with him, which you gather when she flops down on the couch and a voice comes through the headset. She pushes it into her ear to get a better listen.
“Few things for you,” Jason points in your direction and searches for something on the table. A three-ring binder after he shuffles through papers, tiny black font that reads Exec. Asst stares back at you when he hands it over.
“Jessie made this…before her maternity leave,” he informs. “Briony’s here somewhere and she’ll go through it with you, but--based on everything Maggie’s said, I’m sure you’ll jump right in.”
Right, Jessie. The woman whose job you were filling for the filming of this season due to the baby that was about to pop out of her. Briony--no idea who that was--but you make a mental note to bug Maggie for details later.
A sound buzzes from the hallway, an alarm or something of the sort. Both Maggie and Jason perk up at the sound, you recognize it as some sort of cue that the set will soon be an active filming zone. Maggie stands from her casual position and smiles, “I can bring you around downstairs and introduce you to people, since he’s about to be busy.”
“Perfect,” you nod, a quick glance at Jason to see if that kind of thing is allowed. He doesn’t seem to notice that you’re looking for permission, he smiles when your eyes meet again but then reaches for his phone.
“Oh, wait--here,” he hands it over, an open new contact page on the screen. You type in your name and number and figure that this will be your main form of communication, instead of the emails with Jessie and Maggie and his manager.
You hand it back when you’re done, he glances down at the screen--was he checking to make sure you really put it in? Maggie’s nose is in her walkie-talkie again, replying to some kind of garbled request.
“She will report back when I am done with her, Sir!” Maggie salutes in jest and Jason cracks a laugh, a sliver of anxiety melting once her elbow links with yours and she tugs you out of the room.
You meet set designers and the props team and then hair and make up. You meet the Brett you’d already heard about and get an intro to Briony when she shows up with coffee around 2pm.
Maggie eventually relented to your incessant reminders: Monday was your real first day. For now you had every right to sleep and try to get your body and brain to remember they were on the same continent. Which is why, and probably the only reason why, she eventually let you dip out.
The uber ride home is longer thanks to afternoon traffic, your head is pounding and the king sized bed in your new flat is calling your name before you can even twist the knob. But your nap gets delayed by a knock on the door when you’re rummaging for a sweatshirt in your suitcase.
You pull it open, sure that whoever is on the other side has the wrong apartment or wrong person altogether. You’re way too new for visitors.
But it’s not a human, not at first. Instead, a vase of yellow tulips--and a delivery man who smiles from behind them in greeting, happy Friday!, before he leaves you to open the card taped to the side.
I heard these are overdone. Oh well. Welcome to London - JS
table of contents | talk to me
AN: Hi friends! I've been sitting on the start of this story for a few months and have been v excited to start sharing what I have so far! I do not have a post schedule for this, nor do I know how long it will be, nor is it finished at this time. As I've mentioned recently, I'm focusing a lot more on writing for FUN, so your patience and general kindness is appreciated as I share my writing for free with everyone! There also will not be a tag list for this story but it's table of contents will be pinned on my blog! My inbox is (usually) always open!
But also, I'm so fucking pumped to share this and be able to chat with all of my internet pals about our favorite middle aged man.
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Does DePlatforming Fascists Work? Part Two
(this is the second part of our two-part response to a question we were posed: does deplatforming fascists work or does it backfire and actually amplify fascists' views? Please see Part One of our response here!)
Looking now at the example the religious leader you cite claims is evidence of deplatforming backfiring and only amplifying the voices of fascists: Milo Yianopoulus. Well, where is Milo today? Flogging trashy Christian knickknacks on youtube.
Milo was famously deplatformed. He was also exposing for glibly advocating pedophilia. Which of these things knocked him off the box and reduced him to where he is now? Well, what does Milo think?
Sounds like it was deplatforming that cost Milo “tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars,” forcing him to spend “all my savings.” Further proof: after efforts from antifascists got Milo removed from mainstream social media sites, he was reduced to a Telegram channel with just 470 subscribers, which he whined was “not going to sustain people like me,” and that “It’s just not a good use of my time to be here talking to the same 1,000 people, none of whom buy books, tickets to anything or donate.”
Milo is just one example, though. If your religious leader is correct, what about all the other fascist influencers? Take, for example, Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right?” In 2018, Spencer posted a long, dull video in which he said that militant antifascist deplatforming tactics forced him to cancel a campus recruitment tour.
In 2020, when Spencer’s own lawyer quit because he wasn’t getting paid, Spencer told a judge that “due to deplatforming efforts against me, it is very difficult for me to raise money as other citizens are able to.”
So both Spencer and Yianopoulus admit that antifascist deplatforming devastated their activities.
Oh, but if we deny fascists social media platforms to spew hate & recruit followers from, they’ll just start their own, like Parler or Gab or Truth Social! Milo again: “Gab is relentlessly, exhaustingly hostile and jam packed full of teen racists who totally dictate the tone and discussion.” Parler has “zero interaction, no one is there.”
Truth Social has been a disaster, dropping to the 355th most popular download just two months after launching, with its half million daily users on the app for an average of 90 seconds/day. The shell company behind Truth Social has lost nearly $2 million dollars so far this year and its stock price plummeted by two-thirds. Not great metrics.
Finally, if the religious leader you mention doesn’t think deplatforming fascists is a good idea, what is he preposing instead? We’ve already discussed how ignoring them and hoping they’ll go away only enables them and endangers the people they target. Does he think we should debate them?
Does he think people should sit back and let the authorities deal with fascists? Because if he does, we see several problems with that. First, authorities won’t normally intervene until after fascists have hurt or killed people. That = too late. Second, it ignores the loooong history of authorities openly collaborating with, encouraging, or belonging to fascist terrorist groups like the KKK, or just operating in extremely racist ways in the communities they’re responsible for. Examples include the Greensboro Massacre , the “IPA” gang in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept., the Fruitland police department, the Williamston Country police department , the California Highway Patrol - really, we could just go on and on with examples, or you could just go to any counter-protest by anti-fascists and watch which side the police brutalize vs. which side they protect.
We understand that some people don’t feel that deplatforming fascists is an ideal strategy and has its drawbacks, but truthfully any strategy for countering fascism has flaws and we believe the alternatives people always propose are significantly less effective. That said, we can think of one platform we’re fine with giving to nazis, though:
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