#nazi propaganda posters

[stone-cold-groove]

Hands off! Every dud is life-threatening! German WW2 poster - 1944.

#vintage illustration #ww2 #wwii #life during wartime #usda #world war ii #vintage posters #propaganda posters #war bonds #the 40s #the 1940s #nazi germany #nazi propaganda #nazi propaganda posters #ww2 history #wwii history

[bishopsbox]

source: bishopsbox

Nazi propaganda poster (1938, illustrator: Hermann Witte): “Build youth hostels and homes”. Imperial War Museum, London.

Cartel nazi de propaganda (1938, ilustrador: Hermann Witte): "Construye albergues juveniles y hogares". Imperial War Museum, Londres.

#1939 #herman witte #nazi propaganda posters #propaganda posters #propaganda #nazi germany illustrators #illustration #Bund Deutscher Mädel

[degeneratedworker]

“Not a voice but rather a shriek, the plans are all over so is blitzkrieg” Soviet Union 1942

#propaganda #poster #vintage #imperialism #capitalism #communism #socialism #soviet union #russia #germany #nazi #fascism #anti fascism #world war #ww2 #wwii #hitler #red

[sarishim]

really wish people would stop throwing around the word n.azi to just describe anything/anyone they dont like.

#— always some kind of fucking temperature; ooc / misc. #i have studied n.azi germany. like. extensively. #i could fucking read the propaganda posters when we went to the holocaust museum and it was fucking with me so badly #i know people who’s family were in germany at the time - both nazi & jewish. ughhhhhh #it devalues the word & the history / acts associated and done. #during ww2. the events leading up to it. all the things done by splinter groups like the uštase #us americans reducing nazi to just mean ‘bad person’ is frustrating at the least & horrendous #i know that family of mine who never left europe were killed (unfortunately thats been confirmed.) like.. #nazi mention tw

[cartoonpigeon]

Dr. Gauls costuming was absolutely amazing like the visceral representation of the blood on her hands (and the way it seems to soak into her clothing!!!!! staining her!!!!!!!!! the way it sometimes seemed to come from her) during lab scenes and the way she's the only person who's truly dressed in the famous clothing style that the capital becomes known for (and we can assume that she probably had some influence on that fashion!!!!)

#anyways the movie was beautifully made go watch it #GOD i could talk about the visual symbolizatuon used throughout the movie #in district 12 there's a propaganda poster about how good work is and the font & style is the same as what the nazis used #the statues too..... the weird mix of lady liberty but so warped.. #tha same with the eagles #fuck I could talk all day about how much the eagles mean #anyways #tbosas spoilers #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas #cart's rambles #Dr. Gaul

[tikkunolamresistance]

27th January marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. When we think of the millions of lives taken by the Nazi regime. A regime that spurred a systemic white supremacist, ethnonationalist manifesto. A sepratist ideology of a supreme ethnicity, a supreme race, that had been festering across Europe for centuries. Millions of sacred lives, Jewish lives, taken in the name of supremacy. Of hatred and violence.

Millions of Jewish people, Soviet and Polish Citizens, communists, Rromani people, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of War and Queer people were murdered during the Nazi regime. Millions of lives were brutally taken whilst the Nazi regime convinced Germany, through a copious force of propaganda, that those lives were the real threat. That it were those lives who were inhumanely violent, were not just, they were deemed a threat to Nazi society.

Hitler and the Nazis promoted the idea of a master race— an Aryan, German race that needed to be protected as they thought that was the product of “racial purity”. And to Nazism, the Jewish people were the biggest threat to their sepratist, extremist ideology of racial purity. Initially, the Nazi leadership tried to force Jews out of Germany completely, with propaganda encouraging the dehumanisation of Jews to facilitate exile and the subsequent Holocaust of Jewish people in Europe.

“Rats, lice, cockroaches, foxes, vultures – these are just some of the animals the Nazis used to deride and dehumanize Jews. They used words too. In a new linguistic analysis of dozens of Nazi speeches, articles, pamphlets and posters, researchers show how this process of anti-Semetic dehumanization, which began before the Nazis took power and helped fuel the party’s popularity, was modulated to justify atrocity: in the years before the Holocaust.”

These lives, for purely existing, posed as a threat to the Nazis violently sepratist ideology. Propaganda subjugated German citizens with the power of deception; indoctrinating a people with the belief of superiority, purity and organic virtue. Simplifying the regimes ideological complexities to be palatable, unquestionable and targeting individualism. The ideological sepratism had indoctrinated millions into following the belief that Jewish people were sub-human— an undoubted threat to German people, values and society— and this was only achievable through the already pre-established rampant antisemitism that festered through out Medieval Europe, from Christian accusations of “killing Jesus”, to blood libel, the accusation of poisoned wells, and forcing Jews to chose either baptism or death.

“The mood changed markedly in around the year 1100, at the time of the First Crusade. Hordes of religious fanatics from all social classes, driven by a longing for redemption, set forth to kill infidels in the Middle East and to liberate holy Jerusalem. It stood to reason that they should also combat perceived enemies of Christ at home. Jews were hounded and forced to choose between baptism or death.”

The Holocaust happened because for generations, Europe failed to crack down on antisemitism. Christianisation spread through colonialism and with it, they carried antisemitism to new lands. The Holocaust happened because the Nazi party could convince millions of people of racial supremacy and purity. Far-Right ideology holds onto sepratist endorsement when they enforce anti-immigration laws, Islamophobic policies in France and the desperation of English nationalism. The Holocaust happened because Western superpowers only saw the Nazi imperial expansion as a threat to the Western hegemony.

The Holocaust of millions of Jewish people happened, and the effects of which are felt to this day. Every single day. The pain is carried through generations, for now there is a hole in every Jewish soul. We still feel the anguish, the pain. The frustration that this feels so never-ending.

And it is that pain, that fear, that drives us to say that with every last fighting breath, like the Maccabees who faught for our liberation, like King David who defeated a giant with a slingshot and stone and unbridled courage — Never again, for anybody. We will fight with all that we have. For such a magnitude of slaughter and pain should never touch this Earth for as long as we stand. We cannot carry forth our pain like a baton, we must hold it, a sword, to the enemy and ensure liberation of all feet that touch this Earth. They will not make our people, the Jewish people, into a proxy for their imperial expansion and sepratist Western values.

Never again, for anybody, for all life is sacred.

Never again, for anybody, and certainly not in our name.

Never again, for anybody, and that means Palestine.

#holocaust #history #statement #free palestine #palestine #anti capitalism #anti imperialism #jumblr #judaism #jewish thought #jewish #jewish socialism #jewish communists #anti zionist jews for palestine #anti zionism

[notaplaceofhonour]

it’s october 7th. you hear about the attack by seeing people you followed glorifying the terrorist attack—a massacre, a pogrom—as victory & justified resistance, glorifying a terrorist group that was founded with the explicit intent to kill your entire people

you make a post in which you make it clear you support palestinians and oppose the ways israel has wronged them, explaining that the terrorist group is still not good. you know you will probably get some flacc from the pro-Hamas side, but naively underestimate how much.

you get thousands of notifications on that one post, the majority of them hateful comments.

some of the response is positive. multiple messages thank you for the post, expressing bafflement that it’s controversial.

a few Israelis are upset at the loaded language in your post, but explain their problems with it civilly. you called Israel “apartheid”. they ask you what apartheid laws Israel has. you admit you honestly don’t know.

your inbox is flooded with anonymous hate from anti-Israel leftists.

over the course of a few weeks you have received hundreds of death threats, a dozen rape threats. people accuse you of being pro-genocide. you’re a literal Nazi. you’re racist, you thirst for the blood of Palestinians. you’re brainwashed by propaganda, a shill for The Zionist Entity. a few of the hate messages are from literal Neo-Nazis; the overwhelming majority are from leftists, many of them queer.

you are considering suicide.

you see footage of the october 7th attacks. you see footage of the bombings in gaza. you see footage of a Jewish man being murdered at an anti-Israel rally.

a popular creator you follow posts in support of an antisemitic hate group that masquerades as a Jewish organization. this organization regularly posts blood libel and other antisemitic rhetoric, works with groups that are even more explicitly antisemitic, including celebrating October 7th, holocaust inversion, blood libel, “Khazar theory” and others. more than one of the orgs they work with is pro-Putin.

your former roommate liked the post.

graffiti appears on a street you frequent that says “#freepalestine” and “end settler colonialism”

the boyfriend of the friend you spent most of the summer with makes his first post about the war. it’s a reposted comic that mocks and downplays the october 7th attack.

you doubt he’ll be receptive to criticism. he’s shared leftist memes about “monied elites” pulling all the strings and evangelicals being modern day “pharisees” in the past, and getting him to understand why that was antisemitic was like herding cats. you try anyway.

another of his Jewish friends also pushes back. he smugly dismisses her, tells her she’s falling for Zionist propaganda and uses several antisemitic tropes. you go off on him. he just deletes your comment.

you give up. you’re done. you block him.

you see anti-Israel posters and billboards around town

you mention what happened with the guy you went off on to his girlfriend—the friend you’ve grown very close to, who you’ve been listening to as she unburdens her fears for the future and complains about her bf’s BS over the last year. she doesn’t respond to you.

a friend of a friend shares posts tokenizing fringe groups that spread blood libel and have collaborated with holocaust deniers. you know they don’t know what you know, so you explain what those groups are. they seem somewhat receptive, apologize, and take it down

the next day they share several more posts that dip into antisemitic tropes. you mention this to your mutual friend, that you’re worried about them being radicalized. you’re not sure how receptive they’ll be to continued criticism

you have a confrontation with the foaf. in the meantime they’ve shared even more antisemitic posts. they say they didn’t mean to cause you distress but instead of stopping they effectively block you.

the “end settler colonialism” vandalism has been counter-vandalized with the words “commie propaganda” in place of “settler colonialism”. you don’t know if this is an improvement.

a month passes. the friend whose bf you went off on still hasn’t spoken to you. you see she shared a post defending an SJP chapter that posted Nazi cartoon caricatures of Jews repurposed in “Anti-Zionist” memes. you unfriend her on all social media platforms but you can’t bring yourself to block her number.

you see a friend of someone whose couch you surfed when you were homeless harassing Jewish celebrities with “Free Palestine” comments. you block them.

you’ve lost count of how many people you’ve unfollowed or blocked, or who’ve blocked you. friends, content creators.

when a friend takes an unusually long time to respond you worry if it’s because of your posts about antisemitism.

most of the podcasts, youtube channels, and other content creators you regularly engaged with no longer feel safe. you wonder who will be next

a couple friends wish you a happy hanukkah. you don’t celebrate much aside from lighting the hanukkiah and making some latkes.

you see posts about a destroyed chabad menorah, antisemitic comments on Jewish celebrities’ Hanukkah posts.

your neighborhood is covered in pro-Palestine & anti-Israel posters. some are seemingly innocuous, some are JVP “not in our name” posters. some call for intifada. “globalize the intifada” “Zionists fuck off!” “solidarity means attack!”

a man kills himself shouting “free palestine”. you learn about his suicide by seeing posts from several popular accounts you followed glorifying it.

you follow a bunch of jewish accounts on social media and commiserate with them about everything happening

your jewish friends post screenshots of the dead man’s antisemitic, pro-Hamas views. you look at his reddit and find even more horrific shit: anti-Ukraine posts. mocking Zelensky. “elites” are “lizard people”; the only named individual he calls a lizard person is Jewish. you start to notice a pattern: a lot of the people he dislikes just so happen to be jews.

several people you know share a post glorifying this man’s suicide. most are acquaintances, one is someone incredibly important to you.

you wonder how they would respond to your suicide.

you tell the close friend that shared this post how it scares you. you show them the receipts of the man’s antisemitism. their response is a single sentence. they didn’t know about the antisemitism.

they don’t apologize.

you notice none of your irl friends, even your closest ones, interact with your posts about antisemitism. you are able to vent to a couple friends, but no one has reach out to you

you try not to read into it. you try not to take it personally.

you haven’t slept well in months. you’ve always been an insomniac but not like this. you’re not sleeping until 4am, 6am, even 9am. even when you get to bed at a decent hour and get a full night’s rest it takes you hours to get out of bed.

a few weeks go by. the friend with the single sentence response shares a post saying they’re excited and proud to join a group to help palestinians. you’re excited and proud for them.

a couple days later, they share a post about a fundraiser to help a palestinian family get out of gaza. you note to yourself this is a much more effective & less concerning form of activism than the pro-suicidal antisemite post.

your friend shares another post about the fundraiser. it’s a joint post between their group and another group.

you open the other group’s page

the page is just a wall of signs from rallies. you swipe through one after another: “from the river to the sea”, “by any means necessary”, justifying/denying the atrocities of october 7th, calling for violent revolution. anything done in the name of resistance can’t be terrorism, all Israelis are terrorists. Jews aren’t indigenous; they’re white colonizers. holocaust inversion. other vile, thinly veiled violent rhetoric

you feel sick to your stomach imagining talking to your friend about it.

you already feel like you’re burdening the few friends you can talk to about this. you already feel like you think about it too much, talk about it too much. but you can’t not think about it; it affects every aspect of your life.

you’ve filtered out relevant keywords on more than one social media site to avoid the worst of it. some still manages to leak through.

there isn’t a single friend you regularly interact with that you don’t fear the moment when they will switch from listening to your concerns to seeing you as the evil zionist or indoctrinated hasbaranik they’ve been warned about.

it’s not an irrational fear. it keeps happening. you knew it would then, and you were powerless to do anything about it before, and you continue to be as it happens again and again.

you don’t know what to do about any of it.

#idk just kinda wanted to document what this has been like all back to back #I know some of these on their own might come across as ​not that big of a deal but all together #they add up #tw for the all of it #cw trauma dump #antisemitism #i/p #tw suicide #tw suicidal ideation #tw death threats #tw rape threats #tw october 7th #tw terrorism

[liberty-spiked]

Here's a selfie with a weird stance cuz my only full-body mirror is a shoe rack lol.

#for some reason i think i'm not an ugly swamp creature anymore #its because puberty is over it did me good tbh #i may block most of my face in most of my selfies but tbh? i just cant take good selfies #aight this is gonna become a self appreciation post #i got strong eyebrows and stronger shoulders #my hands have the perfect form to punch stuff #my leggies were made to pogo or kick nazi scum #aaand the calender in the background is lenin #my dad loves old russian propaganda poster and he just gives us commie stuff #my parents grew up in the gdr so... maybe he misses the red influemce lol #my posts

[matan4il]

I'm gonna share a few thoughts.

>>> People who are very insistent (rightfully) that Hamas and the Palestinians are not the same, because it de-humanizes the latter, are the same people who take every quote an Israeli official makes about fighting Hamas, and attribute it as if it was said about fighting the Palestinians. It seems they're the ones who are conflating Hamas and the Palestinians, but only when it can be used to de-humanize Jews.

>>> The same people who rushed to provide the "context" that the Islamist terrorists massacred over 1,400 people in Israel on Oct 7 due to occupation, were very silent when two Swedish soccer fans were murdered by an Islamist terrorist in Belgium on Oct 16. The last time I checked, Sweden had never occupied any part of Tunisia. For that matter, Hamas murdered and kidnapped many foreigners working and studying in Israel. I'm also pretty sure Thailand, Nepal, China and the Philippines had never occupied Palestine.

>>> I've seen many people screaming that the number of aid trucks being brought into Gaza since Oct 7 is insufficient, because so far it has been less than 100 a day, and before Hamas' attack, it was 500 daily. These are the same people who have been comparing Gaza to a ghetto or concentration camp. I can't remember a single day when the Nazis allowed 500 aid trucks into the Warsaw Ghetto or the Dachau concentration camp.

>>> I've seen many people claiming that Israel warning the Palestinians to evacuate parts of Gaza is forced transfer. I did not see these people so much as acknowledging the existence of well over 500,000 Israelis, who have been evacuated due to Hamas and Hezbollah's on going attacks against Israel.

>>> These same people criticize Israel so much, did not post a single condemnation of Egypt, which refuses to allow Gazans a temporary refuge within its borders. Egypt has also used the "forced transfer" excuse to deny Palestinians a safe temporary shelter. When Ukrainians needed to leave their bombarded cities, I don't remember their neighboring countries refusing to accept them temporarily, because it would be "forced transfer."

>>> IDK if this anti-Israeli post has the worst take yet, but it is def a strong contender:

The same people who can't bring themselves to condemn Hamas without reservations, to admit that it's a terrorist organization, with the stated genocidal goal of killing ALL JEWS, are the ones invoking the memory of the genocide perpetrated against Jews to try and get others to come out against the only Jewish state, and one that was very much a needed refuge place for about two thirds of Holocaust survivors after what they had endured. When Hamas has literally kidnapped and murdered Holocaust survivors and their family members. When countless Jewish people have pointed out that Hamas' massacre was the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust, and made many of them be reminded of its horrors.

To take the memory of the Holocaust and use it to attack Jews, including Holocaust survivors and their families, and most of all, to do it based on a narrative that is completely ignorant or deliberately dismissive of Jewish native rights in Israel, is unconscionable. This person and those who agreed with them, they're guilty of exactly what they accuse others of. They've bought into the anti-Israeli propaganda that allows them to look at kidnapped Jewish babies and tear down their posters, to ignore Jewish students having to hide from anti-Israeli mobs, and to explain that the murdered Holocaust survivors deserved it, de-humanizing and victim blaming them a second time, just as the Nazis and their collaborators did.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

#israel #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #antisemitism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #holocaust #shoah #resources

[mylight-png]

"We can fight against Israel's "colonization/genocide/apartheid/fascism/nazism/other ridiculous accusation" without fueling antisemitism, guys! Come on!"

You calling Israel a settler colonial state is fueling antisemitism.

You denying Jewish indigeneity to the Levant is fueling antisemitism

You revising Israel's history and villifying it is fueling antisemitism

You dehumanizing Israelis and Diaspora Jews by labeling them as "Zionists" is fueling antisemitism

You saying "by any means necessary/they were resisting/75 yo oppression/from the river to the sea/free Germany of guilt/etc" is fueling antisemitism

You covering for Hamas hiding behind civilians, building military hubs under civilian infrastructure and preventing civilian evacuation by claiming Israel is committing genocide is fueling antisemitism

You calling Israel a Nazi fascist state is fueling antisemitism

You claiming Ashkenazim are European white settlers is fueling antisemitism

You tearing down kidnapped children's posters is fueling antisemitism

You attacking anyone who displays Jewish symbols that are unconnected to Israeli government is fueling antisemitism

You ignoring all the evidence from 7th of October is fueling antisemitism

You posting unverified Hamas propaganda about "9k dead" with no third party confirmation is fueling antisemitism

You not calling out Egypt and everyone else for not accepting refugees is fueling antisemitism

You wearing Hamas symbols like paraplanes/flags is fueling antisemitism

Stop complaining about the antisemites in your protests. They're your buddies and we all see it

I don't know why but I didn't get any notification when this was submitted but like.

Absolutely. Yes. All these calls for "fight colonialism without engaging in antisemitism" is so weird to me whenever I read people sharing them because the statement in itself is perpetuating antisemitic misinformation... But then is also calling for an end to antisemitism?

It's almost as if their "stop antisemitism in our movement" is performative and meant to act as a cover for any time they are accused of antisemitism. Like "nuh-uh, I can't be antisemitic, I said it's bad!" even though they spread antisemitic propaganda in the same breath.

So many people ignore that this war is Israel versus Hamas, a group dedicated to the extermination of Jews. This war will not end until one side wins, we've seen evidence of this in all of the numerous ceasefires broken and peace deals rejected by Hamas. So if you are opposing Israel, you are inherently advocating for Hamas's victory, a victory that would result in the genocide of Jews living in Israel. Seven million Jews.

The whole movement is steeped in antisemitism. It's horrifying and disturbing.

#jumblr #jewish #judaism #jew #opinion #proud israeli #israel solidarity #discourse

[stone-cold-groove]

Shh! The enemy is listening! 40s era German WW2 poster.

#vintage illustration #ww2 #wwii #life during wartime #usda #world war ii #vintage posters #propaganda posters #war bonds #the 40s #the 1940s #nazi germany #nazi propaganda #nazi propaganda posters #ww2 history #wwii history

[shynerdwantscuddles]

Ok, so I’m going to walk y’all through some of the basics of spotting antisemitism as gently as I can muster, considering a lot of y’all have been ignoring Jews trying to teach you this stuff for years:

Jews controlling the world, banks, or media is rooted in antisemitic conspiracy theories. Another version of this is the idea that Jews are a part of some secret organization.

Jews being stereotyped as greedy, rich, and untrustworthy is an antisemitic trope that has existed since well before the Holocaust.

Anything involving Jews drinking blood, killing babies in rituals, or stealing children is rooted in blood libel, which is old antisemitism and VERY antisemitic.

“Noticing patterns” is an antisemitic dog whistle. Also sometimes spelled “noseticing” to mock Jewish people's noses. It’s tied into the conspiracy theory that Jews control everything.

If you see someone’s name surrounded by parentheses like this ((insert name here)) that’s called the “echo” and is used by neo-Nazis to signal to other Nazis that a person is Jewish.

Saying Jews are in league with Satan is an obvious antisemitic thing, but it can sometimes be snuck into media, statements, and posts in more subtle ways. If someone has the Bible verse John 8:44 in their bio or posts, they’re probably a Nazi. Jews are also sometimes portrayed as having horns or other devil like characteristics. This is also old antisemitism.

Media that portrays characters as having very exaggerated, hooked noses while being stereotypically mean, unattractive, or greedy-looking is often intended to be Jewish caricatures. This one’s a bit harder to explain, but if you want a perfect example of this, look up a Nazi-era propaganda poster and compare it to the goblins in the Harry Potter movies and video game. There’s even a Star of David in the goblin run banks in one of the movies. It’s so blatant.

These are just some common, basic examples of antisemitism. I’ve witnessed almost every single one of these multiple times on Tumblr alone. Some other things to keep in mind are that Jews are only .2% of the population, and I’d be suspicious of anyone trying to make that percentage look bigger to suggest we have more influence and control than we do.

#I don’t know why I even bother trying #just to be dispassionated once again by goyim #but I’m tired as fuck of seeing goyim deny that something is antisemitic when it clearly is just because they’ve never listened to a Jewish #person about antisemitism #my post #antisemitism #tw harry potter

[redditantisemitism]

Oh boy let’s see.

1. Holocaust inversion. Saying that Jews do, or want to do, actions on a nazi propaganda poster is a textbook example of inverting the holocaust and why it’s antisemitic. “Jews are the new Nazis” is a disgusting statement and that’s the one this person is making.

2. The idea that Jews want to manipulate the (white) human genome for some nefarious purpose, usually to subjugate it, is a pretty well established conspiracy theory, strongly connected to ideas of a “shadowy cabal of elites”, as well as vaccine conspiracies and bill gates conspiracies.

3. We once again see the distortion of the phrase “chosen people” for antisemitic purposes. As we should all know by now, “chosen people” refers to the idea that Jews are “chosen” by god to complete the mitzvot, not to subjugate or control the world or do any of the other insanity that phrase gets used to insinuate.

#antisemitism #reddit #eugenics #holocaust inversion

[dostoyevsky-official]

gorbachev’s funeral was a solemn affair kept purposefully small by an outsized police presence, ordered there by a regime that wants to distance itself as much as possible from his legacy but which cannot forsake something as momentous as the last general secretary of the ussr. at the same time, those in power hate the people who embrace gorbachev and what he stood for. therefore you have “elements of a state funeral,” a ridiculous amount of police, riot police, plainclothes police, military police, elaborate ways of making sure as few people show up as possible (gorbachev was supposed to lie in state until 2pm, but this was suddenly moved to noon; the burial was closed to the public, but it was actually open). one person was arrested for holding up an anti-war sign. surprisingly, many complained about putin snubbing the funeral due to “scheduling conflicts.” good riddance! who among those present really wanted to see him?

it was something of a quiet protest action against him and the war, even without posters. a pensioner at novodevichy cemetery told me as much: “this is the only way i can protest against what’s going on without getting arrested, and they know it. i couldn’t not take the opportunity.” but what is a protest if it’s sanctioned, quiet, and cordoned off?

at 9:30 am, crowds began to gather at the house of the unions in the city center, where all former soviet leaders were displayed in state. it was both larger than i’d expected and much smaller than i’d hoped for from moscow. from a city of 12 million, there were perhaps a few thousand people all together, many with red carnations. there were several gate systems to the memorial manned by cops who had orders not to let in more than 50 people at a time (i overheard one say so on his walkie-talkie). as with the the funeral procession later on, there was a good showing by the post-soviet generation and those who would’ve been too young to remember much of anything from the gorbachev years; there was also a fair amount of pensioners. the crowd moved fast—the cops didn’t want to let anyone linger for too long in any place—and after three security checkpoints and five gates, i was in the luxurious hall of pillars, though made austere for gorbachev. after seconds of looking at a man who embodied the twentieth century like few others, i was urged to move on as fast as possible. on the way out, a couple behind me, a man and a woman in their 50s, started crying. they were not the only ones.

across the street, a large “we will fulfill our mission” poster, written with the propaganda Zs and Vs, hangs on the scaffolding of the new bolshoi theatre, as if to put a period on what had already ended months, if not years ago. the crowds only became bigger when i left at half past ten. on my way to novodevichy cemetery, i ran into gennady zyuganov, head of russia’s communist party, and asked for a photo—why not. a smaller crowd of CPRF, left front, and other “left” parties gathered for some event near red square. later, i learned that he gave a speech celebrating the end of wwii with the victory over japan. zyuganov said that we must continue the fight and cleanse the earth of nazis, as russia is doing now. this, too, is part of gorby’s legacy, the shattered pieces of a massive, unfinished political project.

a few hours passed before gorbachev’s procession arrived to novodevichy, where the crowd was a bit thinner. i stood next to a young law student in his junior year who skipped his first day of classes to pay respects, chatting with him to pass the time. “how excellent that so many young people showed up,” he said. maybe a third of those gathered was under 30. “if we are here together, it means russia still has a future.” the police moved us around from time to time to “make space.” after finding my way to him again, i noticed he had two carnations instead of four: he gave two to a journalism student and exchanged numbers. a pensioner: “is she your sister? no? watch over her, keep each other safe.”

the procession was headed by a downcast dmitry muratov, a massive portrait of gorbachev in his hands: one nobel peace laureate parting with the other. among those present for the funeral service were ambassadors, including john sullivan from the US, the south korean, french, and german ambassadors, and suzanne massie, a historian who served as advisor to reagan and allegedly introduced him to the russian idiom “trust, but verify,” with pavel palazhchenko, gorbachev’s long-time translator. 

after the service, a 21-gun salute, the crowds thronging to the burial by raisa gorbachev’s grave. alexei venediktov (editor-in-chief of the now-dissolved echo of moscow, another glasnost creation) recently talked about how he went to novodevichy with gorbachev around 2010. gorbachev started crying, telling him that all he wanted now was to be buried with raisa. the love he had for her was immense. out of all the biographies and gorbachev/perestroika studies i’ve read, it’s only taubman’s that covers how profoundly he loved her with the space that such a deep, lasting relationship merited.

during the burial: “who do you think is next,” from one pensioner to another, two strangers. “well... you know.” “yes, let’s hope it happens soon.” 

a last opportunity to pay respects at a grave heaped, heaped, heaped on with roses and carnations, and then the throngs dissolved. it was the best of who and what you could see in moscow, or, russia’s conscience—what’s left of it—on public display. i have no doubt everyone at the memorial and the cemetery was anti-war. the palpable depression of this crowd was alleviated only by the reinforcing mutual presence of everyone there, a silent solidarity drawn from an organization that hasn’t been seen on the streets since march. you understand what people feel from what’s not said—the looks—the tears—the efforts of men and women in their 80s and 90s to stand for hours, so long as they could say farewell. 

the possibility of such organization, reluctantly allowed for the funeral and which was widely admissible in years passed, was the legacy with which we parted today. the defining feature of gorbachev’s rule was openness, glasnost, a gust of fresh air blowing through a hot, humid room, more than economic ideas that were a halfway house for the conditions the soviet state found itself in, and which he didn’t fully understand. yet he opened windows and doors. he returned memory to the people, he allowed memorial to form, he brought sakharov from exile, and yes, he then turned off his microphone during the congress of people’s deputies. gorbachev was a complicated, flawed individual who rose through the ranks of a bloody, ruthless bureaucracy to lead an imperial superpower whose continued survival was his overarching political imperative. he couldn’t have been gandhi. at one point, he nearly killed yeltsin with nothing more than a prolonged party criticism session; he was, directly or indirectly, responsible for the deaths of those on the imperial periphery. 

but what could have been instead? nothing is precisely inevitable. had andropov been healthier, the soviet union could’ve been held together to this day by sheer force, or perhaps by prolonged conflict in azerbaijan, or mass-scale repression in the baltics. set in this context, gorbachev leashed the security institutions of the ussr, but didn’t properly dispose of them. thirty years later, his failure is zyuganov’s gleeful speech on denazification, the descent into a fascist society waging genocidal war. his success was thirty years of lost opportunity.

where do we go from here? the feeling of helplessness predominates, resonating through the said and unsaid perception of what could have been and what we have had. the crowd goes home, the opposition stays in jail, the war continues. 

#here's the writeup people/mutuals wanted #lithuanian anon: consider this an answer #gorbachev

[memecucker]

Can you please do me a favor? Please post a propaganda poster or video from nazi germany that deals with this subject. I’d like a primary source. I can find a million poster against Jews, I can watch Triumph Of The Will in high res, but I cannot find a high quality example of nazi propaganda against lgbt people and erotica. Specifically with the “corrupting youth” angle if you can, please

https://memecucker.tumblr.com/post/689073024928038912/memecucker-was-like-if-you-say-we-should-destroy

I cannot understate how WEIRD it is that people don’t know about this. This is seriously like, layperson knowledge. If you got random people from a bus stop and asked them “Did Nazis ban porn and erotica?” I feel like they would say “Yes” simply from pop-culture impressions of Nazis as “super strict, harsh and brutal”

[radicalgraff]

Covering up Croatian fascist graffiti with posters promoting an exhibition on antifa propaganda during the nazi occupation of Zagreb.

The exhibition "'Voices of Resistance" will open on Wednesday June 14, at 7pm at Galerija Forum (Tesla street 16) in Zagreb and will last until July 1st.

The exhibition is part of a wider initiative to establish a Museum of Resistance in Zagreb, and to contribute to the fight against historical revisionism in the political, scientific and cultural fields.

The thousands of communist party activists, as well as tens of thousands of other people who actively helped resist the Nazis and Ustashas in Zagreb, need and deserve an affirmative presentation. Just like the whole of Croatia should finally stop being ashamed of its antifascist history.

The authors of the exhibition are two historians, and they prepared it with the great help of designer Sven Sorić.

For more info check out:

#antifa #antifascist #antifasizmu #smrt fasizmu #smrt fasizmu sloba nardou