#i do not need to explain the context of the PNA & the oslo accords for tumblr user horrid-little-pedant but can if other people are not awar

[chicago-geniza]

Hey @horrid-little-pedant I can make you a Boy Scouts/international Scouting movement imperialism/colonialism/not-so-crypto-fascism syllabus if you’d like but for a first tantalizing taste here is:

Fig 1) Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts and the Scouting movement, on the swastika symbol, from his 1917 sequel to the classic manual Scouting For Boys, entitled Young Knights of The Empire. Its companion book, for Girl Guides/Girl Scouts, authored by his sister Agnes, was called How Girls Can Help Build Up the Empire. The Baden-Powell family, prominent British military aristocrats, were instrumental in the British colonial expansion re: South Africa. Baden-Powell’s inspiration for the Boy Scouts was the Mafeking Cadet Corps, a group of child soldiers formed by Lord Edward Cecil shortly before the Siege of Mafeking that secured Robert’s place in annals of imperial military history. His niece Betty later became--I am choking and wheezing and coughing up a hairball getting this phrase out--Scoutmaster for the. Girl Guides of North Rhodesia. Do not even get me STARTED on, uh. The Peace Light of Bethlehem (tl;dr it’s a program inaugurated in Austria circa 1986 nominally to help ~handicapped children, but of course. In 2005. The International Commissioner of Austria symbolically passed the Peace Light to a delegation of Scouts and Guides from the Palestinian National Authority, comma, just after the Oslo Accords. And then in 2007 a delegation of Guides and Scouts from Austria, Germany, France, Jordan, Israel, and the PNA--by the way, all but Jordan and Israel are part of the Catholic international Scouting branch that generally, depending on region, ‘pledges allegiance’ to “[country], God, Church, and Christian Europe”--they symbolically lit the ~*~Peace Light together. In. Bethlehem. Scouting is the most fucked-up Bad Internationalism movement in the world.)

Fig 2) The Rodlo symbol was designed by a woman who was part of the Polish minority population in Germany, she went to a Sokol (also Scouting!!!) gymnasium, she got a scholarship to study with Wladyslaw Skyoczylas and other modernist naive folk-revival painters at the school of fine arts in Warsaw, she survived the war, she got into this bizarre movement of neo-pagan anti-clerical pan-Slavist ‘nationalism’ that confirms every single thing I said in my undergrad thesis, she wants to take these symbols back from Hitler and stress the uniqueness of the Polish-German border regions that are neither like, fashy Catholic nationalist Poland nor fashy-flavor Germany, unfortunately that’s not how history or visual semantics work. She says it’s ‘rod’ plus ‘godlo’ (pretend it’s a liquid l) but it’s rodnoverie, we know what you’re about, Joasia--or rather, if you have to give a paragraph-long disclaimer every time you present your lovingly-rendered symbol, you gotta just let it go once it reaches critical mass and recognize that that your defensive disclaimers come across as “my t-shirt is raising a lot of questions that are answered by the shirt.” Anyway. This Harcerstwo troupe named after...the Harcerstwo movement that became a WWII paramilitary and subsequently Catholic anticommunist movement adopted it as their symbol. They’re from a small town in the Katowice region and they are. Well. If you don’t want everyone to think you’re fascists then maybe don’t be a paramilitary organization with a Hitler Youth lite flag (if you put the Rodlo on the Polish flag...it’s...it scans as the swastika on the...they know! They’re not oblivious, they do 500 WWII memorial actions per year!). And don’t have your scouts swear fealty in military fatigues while doing the seig heil to the Slavic Hitlerjugend flag in the woods. Ya dig. Their website is like “why are our enrollments declining :(” 

idk man maybe your town’s teens want to smoke weed under the bridge and not be put through boot camp after school 

#NISHT REBAGELN #i have so much autism about scouting and it is extremely embarrassing but if you have questions about it. i have Answers #also did you know the UU church got in a huge fight with boy scouts of america #and boy scouts of america got in a huge fight with baden-powell about being allowed to say god #i do not need to explain the context of the PNA & the oslo accords for tumblr user horrid-little-pedant but can if other people are not awar #*aware. Scouting: Bad Internationalism #OH. wanna hear about the officially recognized Boy Scouts Displaced Persons DIvision after WWII dissolved c. 1950 #or Mury: Harcerki Troupe of Ravensbruck #did you know krupskaya once used komsomol and 'boyskautizm' as synonyms and that #ok i got distracted but again. rudyard kipling. he just tweeted it out. there are also 800000 examples in this book about Helping Police #and how scouts are like bees: serve their Queen & DISPOSE OF THE UNEMPLOYED #also baden-powell's sister agnes was great friends with marconi you know the long-distance radio transmission inventor who #joined the italian fascist party in 1923 like years before mussolini came to power and #used his authority as director of the science institute to mark all jewish applicants' papers with an E (italian word for jew starts with E) #& none were admitted during his tenure. before this became state policy & before this pressure was even. you know. subtly dispersed by #mussolini. just of his own initiative! #he has so many quotes praising fascism i couldn't fit them in one document #the british monarchy & aristocracy will see continental european fascism and especially german & go 'Tell Me More...' #the polish nobility AND endecja will see various permutations of fascism & say 'tell me more...' for different reasons #the polish intelligentsia will see ITALIAN fascism & say 'tell me more [eyes emoji] while condemning german fascism bc one has #better aesthetics #meanwhile stefania zahorska & bruno schulz are having stress-induced heart disease #pilsudski wants to be england so bad it makes him look stupid. & dmowski hates england & germany on paper but also #wants to be them so bad it makes them look stupid if he can do it with the slavophile side of the slavophile vs. westernizer debate #comma american industry and isolationism comma good old WWI 'ethnographic borders' comma #and solve The Jewish Question (threat)