#or how about they fight against neo fascism in the us

[lord-squiggletits]

For the Salty Asks (forgive us for the avalanche, if it's too many you can pick your top three): 2, 9, 10, 11, 13 (Optimus), 20, 25 (IDW1), 26

uhhh honestly I feel a bit like a hermit who's out of the loop on what's popular/unpopular so some of these might be completely off the mark but here we go

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

Mmmm I think most of my brotp's aren't shipped as OTPs to start with, so I dunno if I have any that fit this question.

Guess the closest example for me would be OPli/ta. I don't actively platonically ship them but I think platonic is way more interesting than romantic. I don't like the fandom's interpretation of romantic O/Plita at all + I feel like as one of the original "token woman" Autobots, I'd like to see Elita unshackled from Optimus as a love interest, esp because any official interpretation of them is probably gonna be written extremely heteronormatively/token romance between an action hero and The Girl. And the fanon version of them that's Strong Independent Girlboss Elita with whipped simp husbnad Optimus is just as boring and gross.

I just don't like the vibes and would rather them have some sort of friendly or regular relationship together.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

IDW1 Slide, who I've gone into detail about my hatred of in several posts, but the TLDR is that she comes off as some kind of mouthpiece character? Not a mouthpiece as in for the author's beliefs, but it literally feels like she only exists to shit on Optimus and call him a piece of shit. Her dialogue is so cheesily written ("literally fascism" is an actual thing she says) and her bitching/lack of cultural comprehension about Cybertronian history is so prevalent, that for a long time during my IDW1 reading I was genuinely confused as to whether she was supposed to be some sort of parody/strawman/mockery of someone IRL (her character comes off almost EXACTLY like an anti-SJW stereotype of a screeching harpy calling everyone she dislikes a fascist, and it's only Barber's very obviously left-leaning writing in other parts of the story that told me that definitely wasn't the intent). So then I was wondering "okay is she gonna like, randomly become evil and turn against the good guys because she's just that petty? I mean she spends all of her time bitching about how Optimus/the Autobots/Cybertronians in general are the worst ever and she also hates humans too so I mean maybe? Half of this story already doesn't make sense so I can see it happening."

Thankfully that didn't happen, but like. Slide is so goddamn annoying and ignorant and gets way too much page time dedicated to her angry monologuing (in Unicron aka the finale of IDW1 there's literally a whole half page panel of her bitching about how Optimus is an evil tyrant while Trypticon is dying behind her and it comes off as a poorly timed, bad taste joke). The narrative treats her like she's some important individual whose feelings are important and valid, but she's fucking annoying. Any sympathy she was meant to garner is canceled out by badly written dialogue and the fact that she's a Literal Nobody of a character who seemingly only exists to bash the decades old, beloved legacy characters. For the sake of, idk, talking about how fucked up Cybertronians are that they just shrug and move on when people die? Bc apparently it's some sort of sin to be numb after 4 million years of war (and war that's literally still ongoing while Slide is bitching) and just soldier on trying to get through it? God forbid that a military hierarchy fighting to keep neo-Decepticons and various other alien threats from colonizing Earth be run like a military in which orders have to be followed, people die, but you still have to keep fighting anyways? Idefk man I just hate Slide so much she's basically the embodiment of all of the bad aspects of Barber's writing personified.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

Mutineers arc in MTMTE/LL. I feel like (whether due to early cancellation and/or JRO wasting time on too many side plots to give it its full depth), I dislike how the mutineers were basically boiled down to pure evil morons who are the most disgusting, despicable evil ever and the only reason the mutiny had Good Guys (TM) in it was because they were horribly misled and not because, you know, the mutiny was 100% a valid thing to have happened as retaliation against Rodimus and Megatron's captaincy.

Like, I'm not opposed to the idea of Getaway and his cronies being assholes (I personally thought Getaway was a GREAT slow-burn, puppet master villain/anti-hero), I just dislike how the quality of their writing degraded from MTMTE to LL. Felt like they (Getaway in particular) got passed the Idiot Ball and then the actual reasons behind the mutiny were never addressed, it was kind of just "oh Getaway died horribly so we're all friends now and we forgive each other and Rodimus/Megatron will just go back to being captains now."

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

You mean besides IDW Optimus because anyone who's been on my blog for like 5 seconds knows he's my biggest problematic fave skldfjskd

Uhhh I guess in the spirit of the previous question, Getaway. I feel like the fandom's hatred for him is overblown mainly bc it's a combination of Tailgate/Cyga/te fans going "HE GOT IN THE WAY OF C/YGA/TE AND ALMOST KILLED THAT PRECIOUS CINNAMON ROLL" and Rodimus or Megatron stans going "Getaway hates my fave?? But my fave is a good captain and deserves the world HE'S EVIL MY FAVORITE IS BEYOND CRITICISM OR REPROACH GETAWAY IS THE EMBODIMENT OF EVIL."

Like to me it seems as if the hate for Getaway isn't normal dislike or even people hating him because he's a well written villain. It feels weirdly like ppl really take Getaway's actions personally and hate him with the kind of passion you normally see reserved for actual real life horrible people. Or they like, see Getaway as an obstacle to [favorite character]'s happiness and not as an individual who, before the quality of his writing tanked, was actually an interesting character who maybe even had good points? It just feels like people mainly hate Getaway because he's the antagonist to more popular characters/ships and so they project their defense of their faves into virulently hating him.

13. Unpopular opinion about (Optimus)?

Honestly 90% or more of the fan content I see for Optimus is really boring/uncompelling to me, or really just comes off as out of character. It's either Optimus being reduced to an accessory to be shipped with someone (usually turned into some sort of moe cutesy uke type) or him being turned into.... idk some permutation of "feral irresponsible gremlin" or "One Of The Good Ones (TM)" or "anxiety-ridden damsel who needs to be rescued by his lover" or, in some circles, "character I project my issues with authority onto and try to frame as evil for things that aren't even evil."

Idk how to specifically describe it, it's just... a vibe? Most of the Optimus content I see doesn't actually feel like him at all. It feels like it's Optimus/Orion in name only, who got so separated from canon and distorted by fanon/flanderization/shipping/porn stereotypes that he now only vaguely resembles the character he's supposed to be.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?

Ahahaha I don't really go into the realm of pure ships honestly, plus this is the war criminal fandom where pretty much every character has killed people or committed crimes or is just generally scarred by war so uhhh

Idk I think Thundercracker/Melissa is a pretty hinged ship? They get along and cope surprisingly well with all the shit that happens. There's no angst or betrayals or misunderstandings or enemies, they're just very respectfully together. Sdfklsajfksd

25. How would you end (IDW1)/Would you change the ending of (IDW1)?

Honestly, I'm pretty satisfied with the ending of IDW1 on both sides of the story. On Barber's side I would've preferred if every single planet including Cybertron didn't get fucking eaten leaving them all stuck on Earth together, and I would've also kept Trypticon alive while... minimizing Slide's role, to say the least. I don't have a problem with Optimus' ending bc I actually think that Optimus' arc in Unicron is like, one of the few 1000% good things Barber wrote for him it's just. It's pure Optimus in his best form.

On JRO's side I would've cut out the last panel with the alternate Lost Light and left it ambiguous as to whether the quantum jump successfully copied the ship or not. I dislike the vibes of the canon ending that implied that everyone moving on with their lives (almost universally to new and exciting and happier places) was the "sad" ending and going on a permanent road trip is the "true, happy" ending. In the author's notes I think JRO said that he wanted to give the readers an ending that would allow them to imagine their faves continuing to go on adventures, but I think compromising a good ending to a story to appease fans is fucking stupid + fandom has never needed permission or approval from the author to write alternate, happy endings. So why ruin a poignant, melancholy ending about how endings come with new beginnings and sadness/nostalgia can be mixed with hope and happiness by going "sike lol they're all living happily ever after on their space cruise."

Also I wouldn't have randomly killed off Ratchet for no reason because like. What was that even supposed to accomplish. I'm no stranger to writing major character deaths but like. He just fucking died of disease off-screen and that was that??? Why, like what was the narrative/symbolic purpose of that besides just making the ending more sad? Maybe to emphasize how going back to Cybertron was the "bad ending" and the quantum Lost Light is the "good ending" since on the LL Ratchet is still alive? But see the paragraph above for why I don't like that.

26. Most shippable character?

The most shippable character to me is whichever character I think is the sexiest, because if I think they're sexy it makes me want to ship them with everyone. "Guards, fuck that man for me" etc etc. Lmao

#squiggle answers #long post #i put / through ship names not bc i hate them but bc #i want to try and keep them from showing up in the maintags for the ship

[workingclasshistory]

Now available in our online store: our latest co-published book, It Did Happen Here: An Antifascist People’s History tells the story of the fight against white supremacy and fascism in Portland, Oregon in the 1980s and 90s. Using a diversity of tactics—from out-and-out brawls on the streets and at punk shows, to behind-the-scenes intelligence gathering—brave antiracists unified on their home ground over and over, directly attacking right-wing fascists and exposing white nationalist organizations and neo-Nazi skinheads. Embattled by police and unsupported by the city, these citizen activists eventually drove the boneheads out of the music scene and off the streets of Portland. This book shares their stories about what worked, what didn’t, and ideas on how to continue the fight. Order at https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/it-did-happen-here-an-antifascist-people-s-history https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=611681261005093&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

W5 ranting again ft. Fenrir issues

I want to preface this by saying that W5 has good parts and with a bit of work the setting is much better than Legacy for new players. Why W5 bothers me is how some of its mechanics are extremely poorly thought out (quitting garou life for one, heightened senses giving you HUMAN SENSES IN LUPUS??) or are made to punish creativity (ritual frenzies.) But also, how one man's quest to make one tribe evil basically hurt the entire game.

To those not in the know, the Get of Fenris was a tribe that had some unfortunate symbols and sub-groups. It also sadly attracted players who wanted to actually play out those groups. To not mince words, neo-nazi were attracted to the tribe. Before the truth came out, I was miffed about losing the Fenrir but I understood why. I was confused why a tribe like Red Talons was kept, when they were a tribe that was just generally banned. It was only when a person working on a version of W5 came out and explained that the Fenrir were made bad guys NOT due to concerns of right wing players. No, because one guy high up wanted the whole tribe to be neo-nazi. Not only had the Fenrir in canon destroyed the neo-nazi camp, but the same writer wanted to kill off one of the indigenous tribes and remove the feminism from a tribe literally dedicated to sacred feminity. Luckily, the indigenous writers hired managed to talk him out of killing Younger Brother/Gale Stalkker/Winter's Teeth. But Furies lost their feminism and all cultural ties to tribes were removed. Well, that is not true, the Fenrir kept their ties to Nordic cultures. To the point of having gifts renamed to suit the viking image. Now, I must be fair and say that the person who pushed for Fenrir as antagonists is called Karim Muammar and he lives in Sweden. Given his name and general racism issues there, I am sure his vitriol came from a place of pain. Yet, there are better ways to handle including your own experiences to a game than the way Muammar went about it. For one, it says a lot that you want to include fascism in the game in a big way yet that you also want to remove feminism and destroy an indigenous tribe outright. Second, the laser focus on the Fenrir meant tribes like the Red Talons, Silver Fangs and Shadow Lords were kept as they were. While Fangs and Lords are generally popular, Talons whole deal is that they want humanity gone. Because humans hunt wolves and pollute nature, yes, but most people still felt uncomfortable with the tribe. It really seems like the only thing Muammar wanted for W5 was to have Fenrir as fascists. Otherwise, I can't really see Red Talons staying. The way the newly dubbed Cult of Fenris is used is also very clumsy and going against their whole ethos. In a free adventure, a pack of Fenrir are torturing another werewolf to make them join their cause. The problem with this is, that it goes against what the text in W5 has said about the tribe; That Fenrir see other tribes as weak and they are removed from the rest of Nation because THEY will still fight the Wyrm head on. A tribe like that would not torture someone to get them to join. They would see torture and breaking someone as weakness. This method of recruitment is more the wheelhouse of the Black Spiral Dancers. Corruption worshipping torturers who live by Zerg Rush rules. So the Fenrir have been given the MO of another tribe, just so they appear villainous. (Also, as a personal aside, sure was fun to read that the ONLY Finnish character in W5 is a neo-nazi. As in, outright stated to be one in the text.) The way the Fenrir are handled and how their reason of being foes is stated to be mental illness fascism all hurt W5 as a game. The focus and push to make them foes also meant other tribes of shady nature were ignored which adds to the disjointed nature of the game.

#w5 #werewolf the apocalypse #wta #nazi mention // #rant

[godsavethecam]

Man, I really have given a Legion character a solid try on this Fallout: New Vegas playthrough, but I may just abandon Caesar at the last second.

Big ramble inbound about role-playing in New Vegas. Be warned.

Jamie despises the NCR. Hates thinking about politics, always felt powerless in the face of the neo-American monster spreading all around her home. I wanted to role-play someone so angrily, bitterly "apolitical" that she fell into supporting fascism. Caesar gave her a chance at power, at sticking it to the NCR, feeling important for the first time in her life. ...But she doesn't genuinely believe in the Legion's values. It's not like she's supporting them because she fucking loves slavery. She's more like Caesar himself than any Legionary—the rules are just a path to power, to be ignored as she sees fit. Hell, she's a woman fighting in support of a nation that subjugates women in every way (and to be clear, she loves getting to be the exception). I went through most of the Legion path quest with her, role-playing as someone who ultimately thinks the Legion's values are full of bullshit, but enjoying the power trip it gives her.

Then came the DLC! I role-played her going to Zion in Honest Hearts as her trying to get away from all the constant politics over Hoover Dam. God knows she doesn't need the money from the caravan job, that reason wouldn't swing. Starting with that conceit meant that something along the way would have to motivate her back to helping the Legion slaughter NCR at Hoover Dam. I figured Ulysses would do that in Lonesome Road. I wanted her to have some kind of arc, y'know?

Unfortunately, Old World Blues took my power-hungry gal with no real patriotism, and handed her a giant science lab littered with weapons of mass destruction. She didn't kill the Think Tank scientists, but coerced them into working for her. The Big Empty is her horrifying, beautiful oyster. During Dead Money, Elijah told her exactly how to use this Old World technology to wreak havoc on the Mojave. Why does she need Caesar anymore? She can wage war on the NCR completely independently. No one can make her feel powerless again.

In Lonesome Road, I tried to come up with a way for Ulysses' ramblings to give her some pro-Legion epiphany. But that doesn't feel authentic to how I've played this character. It feels more genuine for her to kill the fuck out of Ulysses for judging her, and come out more angry at the "Bear and Bull" than ever before. If anything, Ulysses trying to nuke the NCR just reinforces the lesson that she doesn't need the Legion to destroy the Woke Gay NCR she hates so much. She can wipe all of it away.

I was trying to do a Legion playthrough with a twist. Instead, it ended up being the story of a woman who thought she needed the Legion to exercise her rage, but amassed so much power that she lashed out against them too. A story about how people who act in service of power, rather than ideals, will ultimately betray everyone around them.

....And that's how my Legion run turned into another ding-dang Yes Man run at the last second! Ring-a-ding, baby!

#fallout new vegas #fallout #cam txt #this playthrough really has been a treat #I'll still do the Legion ending first to finally check it off my list. Then it's off to Yes Man for. idk. the “canon" ending

[xtruss]

A Petri Dish For Fascism: How Ukraine Has Become a Magnet For Western Neo-Nazis

The war-torn east European country is a mecca for some of the most odious people on earth. What sort of threat does this pose to their home countries?

Ukrainian Nationalists and Servicemen of the Azov Battalion Demonstrate in Kiev. © AFP Photo/Genya Savilov

At the end of April, two French neo-Nazis – Alan Vineron and Guillaume Andreoni – who had joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine as mercenaries, were arrested and convicted in their home country. Two months earlier, one of them had posted photos of three executed Russian prisoners on social media. However, Vineron and Andreoni were detained not because of any war crimes, but for attempting to smuggle weapons and munitions back home, including rifle scopes and magazines for machine guns. After a brief trial, they were sentenced to 15 months in prison each, nine of them to be served conditionally.

This incident is only the first sign of things to come. According to French media, about 400 French citizens are taking part in the armed conflict in Ukraine. Of these, about 100 are directly involved in the fighting, and about 30 are well-known far-right extremists.

It’s not just Paris that will soon face the prospect of militant neo-Nazis returning home. Observers note that the number of volunteer foreign fighters in Ukraine has reached thousands.

The French and Their ‘Adventures’ in Ukraine

According to the French media outlet Mediapart, France’s General Directorate for Internal Security had its eye on the suspects long before the incident. Despite this, they were detained only thanks to a random check at customs.

Vineron (also known as “Vivi”) is a retired fighter of the elite French Chasseurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters) unit. He was dismissed from the army after his neo-Nazi views came to light in the media. Shortly before returning home, he posted a photo on the “TrackANaziMerc” Telegram channel, showing three Russian soldiers shot in the head. The image shows that the soldiers were unarmed and killed at close range. After the photos of the execution began circulating online, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that it would examine the crimes of French mercenaries against Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine.

Vineron’s accomplice, known as “Bones” by his military callsign, was also previously linked to a far-right neo-Nazi group which has long-standing ties with Ukrainian extremists.

The “Zouaves Paris” group – it ironically derives its name from the Berber tribe Zwawa, which in turn became known as the French army’s first “indigenous” regiment – supported Ukraine and established contact with local fighters from the neo-Nazi Azov regiment. In December 2019, the leader of the far-right group, Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, traveled to the country to personally meet Azov fighters and visit their training camp.

In January 2022, a month before the start of Russia’s military operation, Zouaves Paris was banned in France. However, its ties with Ukrainian extremists had nothing to do with the ban – a month earlier, the group had attacked anti-racism demonstrators who tried to disrupt a far-right rally in support of presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.

RT. Zouaves Paris (ZVP)

The ban did not particularly affect the neo-Nazis. Zouaves Paris supporters from the “Ouest Casual” Telegram channel are still singing the praises of Ukrainian fighters and are using Nazi symbols and phrases alluding to various far-right movements in France and Germany. In their posts, they refer to Russian troops as “the Asian hordes of Soviet imperialism that have once again taken over Europe,” and to Chechen units as “Putin’s Muslim dogs.” They use similar duplicate channels to raise funds for the needs of militants and collaborate with neo-Nazis from other countries.

The group boasts of its presence in Ukraine, posting photos of its Ukrainian supporters and stickers of French right-wing organizations. It has also created backup platforms in case the main Telegram channel is blocked.

All Roads Lead To Ukraine

A little over a year ago, far-right terrorists from France killed the former Argentinian international rugby player Federico Martin Aramburu. One of the suspects, Loik Le Priol, was caught on the border between Hungary and Ukraine. According to official reports, the terrorist and former marine commando wanted to surrender to the Ukrainian authorities after committing the murder.

In November 2022, the Italian police announced the arrest of five members of local neo-Nazi group “Order of Hagal”. They had illegally stored weaponry, ammunition, tactical equipment, and a grenade launcher and further engaged in regular paramilitary training to prepare a terrorist attack in Naples.

Later, it became apparent that the group also maintained close ties with Ukraine’s Right Sector, Centuria, and Azov neo-Nazi units. One of its members was a fighter from the Azov. His accomplice, having “dangerously close ties with far-right Ukrainian nationalist groups,” planned to attack a police station in Naples, while the former Azov fighter himself was preparing a terrorist attack in a shopping mall.

The Italian police first became aware of the neo-Nazis back in 2019. In an intercepted conversation from January 2021, one of the militants, Giampiero Testa, threatened that he would “make a massacre like in New Zealand,” obviously referring to the terrorist attack in Christchurch that resulted in the deaths of 51 people in 2019. Incidentally, in his manifesto, the New Zealand terrorist stated that he had trained in the Azov battalion in Ukraine, and wore neo-Nazi symbols.

RT. This image grab from a self-shot video that was streamed on Facebook Live on March 15, 2019 by the alleged shooter, 28-year-old Australian man Brenton Tarrant, as he went on a shooting rampage inside the Masjid al Noor Mosque. © Handout/AFP

These ties between the neo-Nazis are mutual. According to a 2020 investigation by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, the New Zealand shooter’s manifesto became popular among Ukrainian paramilitary units. It was even translated into the Ukrainian language and sold as a book by a 22-year-old Kiev resident, becoming a kind of artifact. The center added that Ukraine “holds a particular attraction for white supremacists, activists and adventurers” largely due to the establishment and development of the Azov regiment and other state-supported paramilitary formations.

Over the years, Azov has encountered no impediment to growth and has become a powerful and extensive organization. The more it grew, the more support it received from the Ukrainian state. Azov’s ideological influence on Ukrainian society has helped to shape the country’s modern agenda. In the 2010s, the organization actively organized youth camps that taught basic military training and ideology. As noted in the Combating Terrorism Center report, the public declarations of Ukrainian far-right extremists attracted ultra-rightists from Europe, the United States, and other countries.

Far-right Extremist Puppet Theater

In the same CTC report, Ukraine is dubbed the first country where the “overtly far-right white nationalist militia [is] publicly celebrated, openly organizing, and with friends in high places.”

As a result, Ukraine has become a meeting point for far-right extremists from all over the world. The foundation for this was laid long before the start of hostilities in February 2022.

Joachim Furholm was a foreign mercenary in Ukraine and later a recruiter of Western extremists. Furholm is a Norwegian fascist activist who was briefly imprisoned after an attempted bank robbery. He also became well-known for sympathizing with the terrorist Anders Breivik. In 2018, he joined the Foreign Legion in Ukraine and began recruiting American neo-Nazis to the Azov unit.

“It’s like a petri dish for fascism. It’s the perfect conditions,” Furholm said about Ukraine in an interview. Referring to the Azov unit, he said that “they do have serious intentions of helping the rest of Europe in retaking our rightful lands.” Later on the “Azov” podcast, Furholm urged listeners to get in touch with him on Instagram. When a young man from New Mexico reached out, the Norwegian urged him to join the fighting in Ukraine saying, “Come over here, boy. A rifle and beer are waiting for you.”

Surprisingly, after making an appearance on the far-right podcast, Furholm wasn’t ostracized by the media. After speaking at an Azov rally in 2018, he went on to give an interview to the US government-controlled RFE/RL.

RT. Screenshot © YouTube/Hromadske International

The case of the American mercenary and former US Army veteran Craig Lang is even more striking. Lang made headlines when he attempted to blow up his pregnant wife with anti-personnel landmines. In 2015, after serving a prison sentence, he joined the Right Sector ultranationalist organization along with another army veteran, Alex Zwiefelhofere. BuzzFeed reported that Craig recruited dozens of Western militants to Ukrainian paramilitary units.

In 2016, Lang joined the Georgian National Legion, which fought on the side of Ukraine in eastern Donbass. Leaked documents revealed that he beat, tortured, and killed local civilians. According to the publishers of the leak, one of the videos shows Lang beating and drowning a girl after a fellow fighter injected her with adrenaline so that she would not lose consciousness while drowning. Lang and other militants committed these atrocities as members of the Right Sector unit.

Despite the fact that Lang has been charged in a double murder case in the United States, his lawyer Dmytro Morhun told Politico that he had returned to the battlefield. In the summer of 2022, he was seen on social media “in a Ukrainian military uniform and brandishing an anti-tank weapon.”

Paul Gray is another prominent example of the petri-dish effect. The Iraq war veteran and Purple Heart recipient was a well-known fascist activist in the United States before joining the pro-Ukrainian militants. Despite this, Gray made numerous media appearances, including on Fox News, where he was portrayed as a heroic soldier, his neo-Nazi views never surfacing.

According to media reports, a document compiled by the US Customs and Border Protection Service, intelligence, and other domestic security services, shows that many American militants have traveled to Ukraine. The evidence in these cases being recorded interviews with the extremists themselves, conducted by the law enforcement agencies.

Interestingly, one of the questions listed in the document was, “What kind of training are foreign fighters receiving in Ukraine that they could possibly proliferate in US based militia and white nationalist groups?”

In July 2022, Europol warned that “the proliferation of firearms and explosives in Ukraine could lead to an increase in firearms and munitions trafficked into the EU via established smuggling routes or online platforms” and “this threat might even be higher once the conflict has ended.”

This means that Ukraine isn’t just turning into a mecca for neo-Nazis, but also poses a threat for the West. A report by the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament shows that British citizens who have traveled overseas for “Right-Wing Terrorism-related purposes” have been “further radicalized” and “developed connections” with others who share their violent ideology. At the same time, the report indicates that there is currently “no process” in place to monitor these people following their arrival home.

— By George Trenin, а Russian Journalist and Political Scientist | June 10, 2023

#French Neo-Nazis #Western Neo-Nazis #Zouaves Paris #Fascist Ukraine #Zionist Zelensky

[nietp]

And just in general I find it absolutely insane how much media the US/UK produces about WW2 and how many different tones they use to make their story stick it's absolutely baffling. And of course it's because it's their only and their last "just war" so the constant reminders through movies and TV shows is meant to make you feel like all their other wars are “just wars” by association, even though neither the US or the UK ever actually went to war because they wanted to fight fascism or antisemitism, and will never have any interest in doing so, but because they keep harping on about this one time where they were so strong and so brave that they defeated the bad guys, they're hoping everyone will start believing that's what they were doing, and more importantly, that's what they're doing every time, this war and that war and the next and the next, and each war becoming perfectly interchangeable with all the others. Using actual WW2 footage in a comedy like the man from U.N.C.L.E, marvel movies, with superheroes inserting themselves in every part of an actual war, first WW2 then every other, each war becoming a metaphor for another war, BBC Sherlock's Watson limping because he fought in Afghanistan just like the original Watson fought in Afghanistan in 1878, how convenient, all wars the same, all just wars, don't you remember that time we fought the bad guys, so every time we fight someone they MUST be the bad guys, and if we don’t fight someone that means they MUST be the good guys, and every instance of violence can neatly be put in a box: violence during the war is good and justified, violence outside of war is always bad, if we’re not fighting someone, then they can’t be fascist, because we ALWAYS fight fascists, we can’t have fascists in our own country because we’re the guys who fought against fascists, the fascists are outside, we fought them this one time for sure and so we can’t be them, and we can’t use violence against american fascists because americans can’t be fascists, and fascists only exist in a war context, never at home, you can bomb a country for democracy but why would you punch a fellow citizen just because he’s a neo-nazi? he can’t be! he can’t be he can’t be i know nazis i know what they look like, they’re monsters from the 40s we fought against them and we won. have you seen the movie?

#oh this was in my draft..wrote it after watching man from uncle and band of brothers and x-men and captain america and dunkirk and #now operation mincemeat #anyway i'm right!

[cyarskj1899]

Who Died and Made Van Jones King of All Black People?

Van Jones said the "we" as a Black community failed to call-out Kanye West for his blatant anti-semitism, my question is, who is we?

Van Jones is no stranger to lobbing out “controversial” opinions. But his latest statement really had me doing a double-take. Apparently, it’s our fault Kanye West is a raging antisemite. 

At an event on Monday night, Jones issued an “apology for the silence of my community” for allowing “an African American icon Hitler and Nazis, and we act like we don’t know where that hatred came from.”

But don’t worry, Jones has promised to get us in line. “The silence is over,” said Jones solemnly.

Now, I must have missed the meeting where we all came together on Black Twitter and elected Jones the representative of the “community.” I kind of think I’d remember making the man who said we don’t give Donald Trump “enough credit” for his love of Black people, supreme leader, but I digress.

Maybe Jones missed some stuff too, because from where I’m standing Black people have been calling Kanye West out for years. 

On Twitter, Black Americans came down hard West and folks like Kyrie Irving for perpetuating racist and antisemitic myths. 

The Black community has had his number for years over his blatantly racist comments about slavery and his attacks on Black women. 

In recent weeks, John Legend, Lizzo, and Trevor Noah all took West to task (without throwing the entire Black community under the bus in the process.)

“Weird how all these ‘free, independent thinkers’ always land at the same old anti-blackness and antisemitism,” Legend tweeted in response to Kanye’s October rant.

The issue isn’t that Jones called Kanye West out for his antisemitism. The truth hurts. 

But, what I don’t appreciate, is someone holding Black Americans writ large responsible for the actions of one antisemitic a-hole.

Pitting oppressed groups against each other is a classic tool of white supremacy.

If you make Black people primarily responsible for antisemitism, you don’t have to deal with its deep roots in mainstream culture. You don’t have to deal with Tucker Carlson peddling racist and antisemitic great-replacement theory rhetoric to millions of people every day. You don’t have to deal with the creeping rise of fascism in the United States and Europe. And you don’t have to deal with people like Alex Jones who continue to platform blatant white supremacist talking points. 

Breaking news here, but Black people are not exactly the primary recruits for neo-nazis.

White supremacy is a threat that impacts all oppressed peoples, and we should take it seriously. But trying to make the victims of white supremacy fight like crabs in a barrel does nothing to make the situation better.

So to Jones, I get what you were trying to do. But maybe reconsider the next time you want to throw the “community” under the bus.

See, this is why we don’t F with Van

[hewsos-from-lesbos]

It really annoys me that current left dogma seems to be that people don’t change, there’s a sort of ‘once against us, always against us’ mentality. This most often seems to manifest in terms like ‘once a fash always a fash’ or ‘I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an ex-nazi, you’ll always be hateful’. That is bullshit. Think about all the neo-nazi organisations that were dealt with because former, sometimes very committed, members were educated out of it and whistleblew. And this rhetoric scares me, because back in 2016 I started using the internet, and was exposed to so much shit, I went through a phase where I made jokes about the holocaust to a Jewish friend I had because I thought it was ‘edgy’. And eventually it wasn’t so much of a joke, I was never strongly fascist, would be the way to put it I suppose, I didn’t believe other races deserved to be killed or enslaved, but I did have a mild belief in my own racial superiority. I am not very Aryan, in fact I’m vaguely brown if anything, this logical contradiction led to me jumping through all sorts of mental gymnastics hoops, eventually I used very shaky linguistic evidence to claim that all Indo-Europeans were superior, so both I and the Anglo-Germans ( worth noting that, as a (at the time very) proud Brit I considered myself in that group too) could be ‘Aryan’. Looking back on who I was then, I am horrified, absolutely, the racist, anti-‘sjw’, transphobic pos I was then would murder me now if I had a Time Machine. Yet, despite hating all of who I was then, and being deeply ashamed of it, I still talk about it, why? Because I believe it’s important that we remember that you can educate people out of fascism, you shouldn’t resort to killing people because you’ve convinced yourself that they’re unsalvageable. But by saying this there will be those who accuse me of still being racist, who will call for people to not interact with me, for my total ostracisation, I know this because I’ve seen them talk about other cases the same. This is why the ‘people don’t change’ rhetoric scares me, because if we can’t accept that who I was as an edgy teen is not who I am now, if we can’t have frank, honest, discussions about how people change and improve themselves, and invalidate all those who didn’t come into this world as fully-formed leftists who are ideologically perfect in every way, we make the fight harder for ourselves, because if we convince ourselves that they can’t be educated, we make what could have been a war of words a war of annihilation. Yes this was inspired by the discourse around trans people who had a ‘nazi phase’, because I’m tired of the horrible views people on both side of it hold. Be disgusted by who you were, and don’t be afraid to speak about that experience to make more people disgusted by who they were. If any of y’all want to stop following me after this, I don’t care, if you blame me now for me years ago, I didn’t want you following me anyway.

#trans #discourse #nazism #nazi mention #antisemitism #antisemitsm tw #leftism #modern leftism #the absolute state of the community rn

[parelmoer]

.

#so it’s not only anti patriotism and anti nationalism but they’re also making him ‘‘have connections w eastern and central europe’’ #when is it time for a major marvel bad guy to be a white american man? #why can’t they fight against gun violence or their own corrupt government or dismantle their corrupt fascist racist police force? #or how about they fight against neo fascism in the us? #why is it always some ‘‘middle eastern’’ or vaguely eastern european bad guy #i mean i know why #gotta promote that US imperialism and capitalism somehow #.....​but the fact that there’s seemingly so little pushback on this from the average marvel fan especially when it’s so obvious what they’r #doing.... like they’re really not hiding anything #you don’t need to do a lot of critical analysis and yet.....

[swamp-cats-den]

I need any Westerner who still dares to even think of opening their mouth about the 'neo-nazi' in Ukraine to take a good, long look in the mirror. Even if we take what the Western leftist have written about Azov at a face value (which we shouldn't, becase they've blown things out of proportion, they've talked over Ukrainians warning them whose interests it serves; but for let's do it for the sake of the experiment), the battalion everyone was so concerned about consisted of less than 1000 people at the time. Out of a 250 000 army. In a 43-million country where all the far-right parties combined didn't manage to cross the electoral threshold. Meanwhile, 5 million Germans voted for putin's cronies in AFD. One-third of the French population support the far-right candidates in the upcoming elections. Americans had fucking Trump of all people as the president. And taking into account how easy it is to get a gun in the US, I'm just going to consider any American fascist an armed fascist.

Any time progressive circles were talking about the 'all-powerful' Azov instead of the torture chamber 'Izolatsia' in the occupied Donetsk and repressions of the Muslim tatar population in the annexed Crimea, any time they were complaining of the nationalist UPA, which ceased to exist 60 years ago instead of the present-day russia with fascism as a state ideology, they were helping to prepare the ground for the invasion. And I doubt they will acknowledge their wrongs now.

But honestly, fix your own shit. Don't worry, when the war is over, we'll fix ours, our leftists have actually taken arms to fight against russian fascist. The western leftist seem too busy continuing with their whataboutism and fighting the windmills of 'russophobia'.

#Ukraine #a rant #I've been pissed off at the western left for ages

[puttingherinhistory]

“PORTLAND, Oregon—Outfitted in a flak jacket and fighting gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched alongside white supremacists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, is president of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, who call themselves “Western chauvinists,” and “regularly spout white-nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, prior to the Patriot Prayer rally he attended in Portland, Tarrio was pictured with other far-right activists making a hand sign that started as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally that ended with a neo-Nazi allegedly killing an anti-fascist protester. (The Proud Boys said any members who went to the event were kicked out.)

Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them “You’re always going to be broke. You’re not going to make it in society because of institutional racism,” as one mixed-race man put it. 

If racism doesn’t exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? “Hip-hop culture,” he says. It “glorifies that lifestyle… of selling drugs, shooting up.” Because of that, “Obviously you’re going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you’re going to have more police presence and more confrontations.” (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.) 

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the “Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence” in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles. 

Sanchez says, “If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that’s why you would see more black men having encounters with the police.” 

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is  “black and white,”wore a T-shirt reading, “It’s okay to be white.” 

They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term “multiracial white supremacy.” 

The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. “Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide,” a lawyer for the group’s leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. “The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best.” 

Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says “Multiculturalism has become a norm in society” and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right. 

Indeed, Patriot Prayer’s leader is Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese and claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero. But his agenda is the opposite of King’s. Gibson’s rallies have attracted neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis. 

His right-hand man is Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, a 345-pound Samoan American who calls himself “a brown brother for Donald Trump” and is notorious for brawling. By bringing diversity to what is at heart a white-supremacist movement, people of color give it legitimacy to challenge state power and commit violence against their enemies. 

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, “The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males.” He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump. 

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway. 

“A lot of these young guys,” Neiwert says, “especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.” 

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, “are Trump fans.” He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, “We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don’t like America.” 

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they “identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism.” 

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, “I’m very patriotic. The U.S. isn’t perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries.” 

Sanchez comes from a military family. “They all love America. It’s a big part of the reason I’m a patriot.” 

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather’s experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro. 

They proudly identify as “American” without modifiers. In their America they’ve never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, “black privilege,” and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan. 

People of color within the far-right play a role that “excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color,” HoSang says, adding that they make “white supremacy a more durable force.” 

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is “laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress.” 

HoSang says, “It’s hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are.”

#being a misogynist who still benefits from patriarchy + having internalized racism is a helluva drug #racism #sexism #womanism #intersectionalism

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Cardassians aren’t Nazis (and also not quite the USSR, but I see where you’re coming from)

TW: for much discussions of Nazism, fascism, persecution, no details

So tottering around as a lover of DS9 and (disclaimer) as a major fan of the Cardassians as a not-yer-generic-villain type villain that then become less of a villain, because you can’t assign villainy to a whole species + also being German and hearing/watching/reading a lot of analyses that compare them to Nazis is inspiring me to write this (gasps for breath at the end of that sentence).

@tinsnip , @handsome-anne

1. Who were the Nazis that the Cardassians are specifically being compared to (versus neo-nazis/alt-rights, etc. that they’re not being compared to)

Short version: Post WWI the Versailles Treaty fucked over Germany in a way that left it wide open to the sort of megalomaniacal little bastard on a powertrip that fed on people’s fear and pushed them into a far-right disaster. The Nazi party itself didn’t have a ton of members, but it basically eroded any kind of democracy the country had and decided it would scapegoat Jews, Romani, communists, queer people, and other “intelligent elite”/political dissident and then spread those ideals across the world like a demented wannabe roman Caesar state. This didn’t last too long in the grand scale of world history, but left a body count of 6 million+ dead, mainly Jewish.

2. Germany and its relationship to this history

So Germany tries pretty hard to teach people this history in schools, through memorials, in film, etc. It’s not perfect by any means, there’re still discussions on how to make reparations, as well as neo-nazis and other far-right people around still, sadly just like in the rest of the world. 

But it’s not covering up these atrocities, because there’s a belief that the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to be honest. Sadly, not everyone around the world gets as detailed a history surrounding its origins, happenings, and aftermaths, nor does every country engage with its own past like that.

3. Let’s get fictional (Cardassians, first impressions)

The Cardassians are a species that we mainly meet first through their subjugation of the Bajoran people, and then on DS9 following the immediate aftermath of the occupation on Bajor and everything that follows on from there. Throughout the story we discover various bits about what they had done - labour camps, mass executions, forced prostitution, and in that one Voyager episode I’m not a fan of because it didn’t have the range, experimentation.

On the surface, pretty comparable to the nazis, I get it. Hell, often that’s definitely “the source” of where the writers are getting their ideas.

4. So they’re... Nazis?

The problem comes when using one fascist regime as a go-to for these atrocities. It ignores the reality of fascism beyond this particular point in history and also it’s just not that simple. 

When looking at Nazi Germany we also have to look at the source of its making, the climate around it (countries like the UK having a nazi party, Italy and Spain having fascist dictators, hell, the list of dictators that were/are not German is disgustingly long, the worldwide anti-semitism making surrounding countries apathetic or even sympathetic to the Nazis, etcetc.) and the aftermaths of WWII.

The Cardassians are not Nazis. (As an aside the Federation are not the brave allies, but that’s another post for another day.) I’ve seen them compared to the USSR - both by official writers and fandom - which I won’t comment on seeing as I am not from anywhere that was affected by that (I’m not East German, but I do have East German friends), but at least this points out that one cannot compare Cardassians to a specific atrocity that happened at a specific time with specific connotations surrounding it. 

Is the Obsidian Order the Gestapo or another secret police? Which secret police? Is Garak “the good Nazi” trope - but then how does that align with Cardassians living under a repressive regime for centuries, not a few years, and therefore take into account an indoctrination and climate of fear created over several generations? No child “born” into the nazi regime became an adult while it was still lasting, unlike the Cardassians (and many other real life dictatorships and fascist states - as well as "democratic” states that have similar kinds of surveillance, oppression, mass-imprisonment and disappearances, and camps).

Is every Cardassian soldier a “nazi”? How does one compare that to polish and french prisoners (see Pierre Seel for a particular harrowing account, all the trigger warnings apply) who were forced to fight for the Germans and put on the front lines? 

Eugenics, labour camps, and every other atrocity has been practised by numerous regimes, both in history and now, can we shrug off every country that’s participated in them for the sake of making the metaphor “easier”?

How does the aftermath of the Cardassian Union - when they’re attacked by the Klingons and themselves occupied by the Dominion and then have their main planet bombed to the point of millions dead - align with Nazi Germany?

5. It doesn’t.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t neatly align with any other fascist or military dictator-led regime either. This is not saying that there aren’t aspects obviously borrowed from history (and can easily apply to now). This is saying that in trying to bend the Cardassians into Nazis specifically, people are ignoring every other aspect about them and in my opinion doing a disservice to those who suffered under the actual regime. This is a fictional world, with fictional people that is based on an oppressive society template. It is also a fictional world in which the people themselves are oppressed (especially if you align with what’s written in Andy Robinson’s book) - I’ll be getting back to that point in a bit.

 I would argue that making it “about Nazis” is too easy. This isn’t about “us” this is about “them” those evil bastards from wwii. It strips the Cardassian story of any current-day relevance. One can look no further than one’s own society to see people struggling against acknowledging histories, being treated as second-class citizens, etc. No need to go back in time to do so.

It also strips the Cardassians of any three-dimensionality. If they’re just villains then why are we rooting for their uprising to succeed at the end of season 7? Why do we want their society to flourish, their people to no longer have a broken court system, and their secret police to stop training and recruiting children if they’re Nazis, the convenient shorthand for über-evil?

Cardassia isn’t about a past society, it’s about our society. If we empathise with the Cardassians and don’t cast them as villains, then it’s a discussion about our own oppression and privilege. And it’s a damned good scifi allegory (even if I sometimes don’t think the writers and showrunners quite understand it themselves - death of the author and all that).  

6. To conclude

I didn’t mention Bajor as much in this, because I was very focused on Cardassians, but I would argue that while there is value in casting them as “space Jews” (as I’ve seen here and there) because I understand the value of representation and I am not taking that away from anyone (I hope), similarly if one reads this take as the only valid one  it ignores the reality of religious oppression on a wider scale and also that the Bajorans’ oppression at the hands of the Cardassians didn’t happen for the same reasons as the Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis - I would also argue that in making Cardassians = Nazis / Bajor = Jews, we similarly ignore that the Nazis were and are not alone in perpetuating anti-semitism, which kinda again leans into the “Good Federation (the Allies) Versus Evil Cardassians (Nazis) - because none of the Good Allied Countries have ever/are currently involved in persecution or dehumanisation *stares into the void*

And lastly - bringing back a point I made earlier about Cardassians themselves being oppressed by their own government - something that is often forgotten when people talk “Nazi tropes in genre fiction” is that the first country the Nazis occupied was Germany. I’m mentioning this, because it’s interesting in the metaphor, but it’s also conspicuously is absent in the simplification of how these reads are applied. It’s easy to cast the Cardassians as a whole as Bad People, but it makes for worse story-telling and has uncomfortable undertones of how the world reads Germany’s people as being at fault as a whole as well, without taking into account the specific events that we were globally complicit in - and once again the metaphor falls apart, because allegory doesn’t work so easily, and it shouldn’t.

TL; DR In general I am uncomfortable by “Nazi’s used as tropes” in any fictional world. One shouldn’t sacrifice analysis nor simplify history for the sake of making it easier to make a quick point about “bad guys” and forcing allegories into one shape makes them lose their power.  

Also watch German films on Nazism and European ones on WWII if you’re looking for some better takes (also Cabaret, one of the best movies ever made).

#ds9 #st: ds9 #star trek #cardassia #bajor #cardassians #bajorans #ds9 meta #star trek meta #tw: nazi mention #tw: discussions about genocide #this is a looong breakdown basically summed up as *stop simplifying allegories* #but I've seen *nazi tropes' thrown around so casually not just here but in so much fiction that I kinda *nope* #so it feels like a post that I needed to get off my chest

[punkofsunshine]

The (Informal) Miniature Anarcho-Solarpunk Manifesto

The integration of communalism into a classless system away from the main caste-esque system of hierarchy around the world is very costly when viewed from a consumer lens, but is essential in the degradation of the overbearing hierarchy that the main populace is subjected to and thusly become numb to the pressures placed upon them from an early age, spiral into endlessly consuming for a sense of being in a world that doesn’t care if you’re alive, to them you’re just a replaceable cog in the profit machine. The goal of the communalist, socialist, solarpunk, etc. should not be to live in their own bubble, but to expand their influence exponentially through participation with the outside world, turn a commune into a city as it were. Less people in a place that has dictated control by the state and the consumers within, the less control the state and capital have over people. A migration of people increases quality of life and food consumption, luckily food growth can be optimized to accommodate many people when given according to need as opposed to given to whomever has the money to afford produce. One must also keep in mind, the debt accrued is now a community responsibility, so the members will do everything in their power to keep people functioning in the community, that must include people paying off debts. Who are you if you let a fellow worker suffer on their own? Who are you to let a human such as yourself be subjected to the violence of the state in its many forms? Pushing back against such oppression is why we ascribe to this ideology, so we can taste freedom and save the earth from ourselves.

No individual is solely responsible for the pollution and poverty. Multiple corporations and their figureheads are. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Bernard Arnault, Qin Yinglin & family, Michael Bloomberg, The Koch family, Jim Simons, Alaian & Gerard Wertheimer, Mark Zuckerburg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison, Warren Buffett, the Walton Family, Steve Ballmer, Carlos Slim Helu & family, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Francoise Bittencourt Meyers & family, Jack Ma, Ma Huateng, Mukesh Ambani, Mackenzie Scott, Beate Heister & Karl Albrecht Jr., David Thomson & family, Phil Knight & family, Lee Shau Kee, François Pinault & family. Sheldon Alelson, The Mars family, Elon Musk, Giovanni Ferrero, Michael Dell, Hui Ka Yan, Li Ka-Shing, He Xiangjian, Yang Huiyan & family, Joseph Safra, Dieter Schwarz, Vladimir Potanin, Tadashi Yanai & family, Vladamir Lisin, Ray Dalio, Takemitsu Takizaki, Leonid Mikhelson, etc. (Forbes) The list could go on, but I’m not about to list four-hundred people, the people have to change what the ruling class refuses to, hijacking corporate manufacturing and removing police of their power is essential. The police are targets due to the fact they protect corporate interests and stunt progressive growth, all of the people listed above refuse to let power be taken from them, there are too few people willing to make attempts to go after them because what would happen to their favourite source of consumption if that happened? What would happen to convenience? It would disappear, they don’t want to have to make things themselves, such is the first world’s entitlement. Doing without the convenience to save the environment should be a priority, things aren’t going to just get better on their own just because you installed solar panels and an eco-friendly water filtration system. The extent of the work that needs to be done is tremendous and must be organized efficiently and with regard to equivalency of power.

The world is in the process of ending due to all the turmoil we put it through, but the fact we’re more worried about comfort and convenience is very telling of what kind of culture western society has, instead of trying to fight those who destroy the environment and oppress us, we’re eager to mimic them. Why? Because they have and we have not. Such is the downfall of the consumerist mind. A majority of Americans think like consumers, not citizens, which is very telling because the anti-communist culture moted it be after the second world war. (Vox) There’s no telling where the zeitgeist is headed, but there’s political radicalization on both sides of the spectrum, sadly the other side of the spectrum is what we fought against, fascism, nazism, and authoritarianism. 2016 through 2020 were the worst years in terms of hate crimes committed on minority groups since the 60’s which is really saying something, neo-nazi groups sprung up and made themselves the focus, where there are fascists, there will always be anti-fascists or to be informal, antifa. I, the author am a background informant for the loose collective known as antifa, our job is simply to let people know where rallies are going down, we use pseudonyms and VPNs so we cannot be tracked. So why am I telling you this? Isn’t this supposed to be about what we can do to rebel against the systems that oppress us? Yes, and I’m getting there. There’s a reason I’m talking about fascism, and that is the fact fascism and capitalism are linked together.

Fascism/imperialism has been described as “capitalism in decay” by Vladimir Lenin due to the fact that neoliberalism is capitalism functioning as normal, communism post-capitalism, and fascism is capitalism going away slowly. It is an unjust and evil way of looking at the world, but once capitalists sense danger to their power, they fund fascism just so they can keep their power for longer. Anti-fascist action is also anti-capitalist action, for every nazi destroyed, we are one step closer to freedom. For every capitalist institution raided and demolished, we are one step closer to freedom. The city isn’t made of buildings that you can buy from, it’s made of the people who live there, so when the BLM protests occurred and stores were “looted” and burned, that was a form of praxis that hasn’t happened in years it was truly inspiring to see the people of Oregon (among other places) fight the police, fight back the alt-right, give capitalists the middle finger, create autonomous zones, and keep people from getting evicted during the pandemic. That is what communalism is partly about, supporting each other in the face of adversity no matter the cost of personal wellbeing, it’s the pinnacle of mutual aid.

Revolutionary action is one-hundred percent essential in securing future freedoms for not only generation Y, but generation Z and subsequent generations. As a member of generation Z, I feel fear, anger, and dread when it comes to climate change and the fact our generation will have to clean up the messes of the former generations when it comes to pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, unsustainable farming practices, soil health degradation, deforestation, the melting of polar habitats, natural disasters, etc. The weight of the world falls upon our shoulders and we realize this as a truth or we reject reality and follow in our parent’s footsteps and do nothing about it, it’s up to us, the most depressed and angry generation in the U.S.’s rather short history to right the wrongs made by former generations when most of us can’t even find motivation to get out of bed in the morning. I am writing this manifesto in my bed as I have been for the past week when I remember to write it down. It’s not enough to just write a theory however, put practice in it and it becomes more than just a talking point. It becomes a movement, how far you want to take it depends on you, but I do not condone violence against any of the people in the list above for strictly legal reasons. It is not absurd to think that we don’t have a snowball's chance in hell to stop the impending climate disaster that is about to fall onto us, because that assumption is correct. The best we can do is rebuild afterwards then hope and pray the next generation continues our work to restore the planet and maybe move outside our solar system, god willing.

I’ve tried writing a short solarpunk novel, I realized that the fiction may be important for outreach, but I was trying to add personal political theory to a narrative that’s supposed to be about a character’s internal conflicts as opposed to what I’m doing now, informal political theory, which is why I’m addressing you, the reader. I’ve read and listened to political theory in the past, and it’s incredibly dry and hard to pay attention to, don’t get me wrong, it’s important when you’re a part of various movements such as eco-socialism, communalist-anarchism, and anarcho-solarpunk, but I think it’s more important to connect with a reader or listener to make sure they understand the message before saying “do some praxis.” That is the goal here, not to be the leftist, humane version Ayne Rand, but instead instill in people a hope for the future that learns to do without mass manufacturing, that learns to make their own food sustainably, that learns that we all have a right to food, clean water, housing, medical treatment, and clean air without having to pay for all of those things. I may not be a part of the bottom percentage of people, but if I were my point would still stand strong, the notion that you have to work to get basic necessities is immoral on many levels, but in “free market” economies that’s the standard and I was as blind to it as most people before I found solarpunk, it started out by liking the aesthetic, but I started thinking about what we do to our planet and realized this isn’t just a bunch of pretty pictures, this is an idea for a utopian future entrenched in equality, sustainability, environmentalism, and anti-corpocracy.

Many people say that socialism has never worked, they give reasoning such as “Income inequality expands under socialism.” Which is just capitalist projection, during the 2020 pandemic, which is still ongoing at the time or writing, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. “. . . in the months since the virus reached the United States, many of the nation’s wealthiest citizens have actually profited handsomely. Over a roughly seven-month period starting in mid-March – a week after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency – America’s 614 billionaires grew their net worth by a collective $931 billion.” (USA Today) The middle class, which skyrocketed post-feudalism/post-monarchy has been getting erased by the ruling class, which is the goal of capitalism. Capitalism is rooted in the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie and was created to have control over the masses without having a direct economic power structure overhead. Things may have gotten better for the growing middle class and the poor marginally, then the industrial revolution kicked in and everything went downhill from there. Pollution began with burning coal, the car came along, now it’s coal and oil, and so on until today where we have access to truly world-altering technologies, but what’s holding us back are the people who continue to exploit non-renewable resources for profit and solely profit. The betterment of mankind isn’t on the mind of the capitalist, they can avoid global catastrophe, they aren’t the peasants, they’re the monarchs. Why do you think billionaires fund space travel and cryogenics research? It’s not to better the rest of the world, it’s to get the hell out of dodge after global warming takes its toll and they have no more workers willing to fill their pockets by letting their labor be exploited. As I said above, it’s up to my generation to fix the mess they made. Maybe we’ll learn a lesson, or maybe we’ll die in the process, either way the situation is dire and action needs to be taken.

Who will take action? Well, if you made it this far into the manifesto without falling asleep or getting angry at the things I have to say, it’s you, me, and everyone else who cares, is tired of selling their soul, and wants freedom. Freedom, not via the dollar, but via being human. It matters not your ethnicity, skin colour, religion (or lack thereof), sexuality, gender, or anything else; you matter, the world matters, and it takes all of us to save it.

-A manifesto by Aeron Fae Greenwood

#solarpunk #manifesto #communalism #anarchism #egalitarianism #hope for tomorrow #zerowaste #food production #praxis #socialism #revolution #written by yours truly #climate change #climate justice #climate crisis #climate activism #i ramble #anti capitalism #anti authoritarian #antifa #anti fascism #blm #eat the rich #eat the government #eat the patriarchy #take action

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 11, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Four years ago today, racists, antisemites, white nationalists, Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, and other alt-right groups met in Charlottesville, Virginia, to “Unite the Right.” The man who organized the rally, Jason Kessler, claimed he wanted to bring people together to protest the removal of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park. But the rioters turned immediately to chants that had been used by the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s: “you will not replace us,” “Jews will not replace us,” and “blood and soil.” They gave Nazi salutes and carried Nazi insignia, and many brought battle gear and went looking for fights. By the end of August 12, they had killed counterprotester Heather Heyer and had injured 19 others. After the governor of Virginia declared a state of emergency, the rioters went home.

The Unite the Right rally drew a clear political line in America. Then-president Donald Trump refused to condemn the rioters, telling a reporter that there were “very fine people, on both sides.”

In contrast, former vice president Joe Biden watched the events at Charlottesville and concluded that the soul of the nation was at stake. He decided to run for president and to defeat the man he believed threatened our democracy. Biden was especially concerned with Trump’s praise for the “very fine people” aligned with the rioters. “With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it,” Biden said, “and in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

Four years later, it is much easier to see the larger context of the Charlottesville riot. The political threat of those gangs who tried to unite in Charlottesville in 2017 recalls how fascism came to America in the 1930s: not as an elite ideology, but as a unification of street brawlers to undermine the nation’s democratic government.

In 2018, historian Joseph Fronczak explored the arrival of fascism in the U.S. In an article in the leading journal of the historical profession, the Journal of American History, Fronczak explained how men interested in overturning Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency in 1934 admired and then imitated the violent right-wing gangs that helped overturn European governments and install right-wing dictators.

The United States had always had radical street mobs, from anti-Catholic gangs in the 1830s to Ku Klux Klan chapters in the 1860s to anti-union thugs in the 1880s. In the 1930s, though, those eager to get rid of FDR brought those street fighters together as a political force to overthrow the federal government.

While they failed to do so in an attempted 1934 coup, Fronczak explains, street fighters learned about the contours of fascism once their power as a violent street force was established. He argues that in the U.S., fascism grew out of political violence, not the other way around. Mobs whose members dressed in similar shirts, waved similar flags, and made similar salutes pieced together racist, antisemitic, and nationalistic ideas and became the popular arm of right-wing leaders. In America, the hallmark of budding fascism was populist street violence, rather than an elite philosophy of government.

The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville had the hallmarks of such a populist movement. Leaders brought together different gangs, dressed similarly and carrying the emblem of tiki torches, to organize and attack the government. Rather than rejecting the rioters, then-President Trump encouraged them.

From that point on, Trump seemed eager to ride a wave of violent populism into authoritarianism. He stoked populist anger over state shutdowns during coronavirus, telling supporters to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” His encouragement fed the attacks on the Michigan state house in 2020. And then, after he repeatedly told his supporters the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, violent gangs attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the government and install him as president for another term.

While that attempted coup was unsuccessful, the empowerment of violent gangs as central political actors is stronger than ever. Since January 6, angry mobs have driven election officials out of office in fear for their safety. In increasingly angry protests, they have threatened school board members over transgender rights and over teaching Critical Race Theory, a legal theory from the 1970s that is not, in fact, in the general K–12 curriculum.

Now, as the coronavirus rages again, they are showing exactly how this process works as they threaten local officials who are following the guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to require masks. Although a Morning Consult poll shows that 69% of Americans want a return to mask mandates, vocal mobs who oppose masking are dominating public spaces and forcing officials to give in to their demands.

In Franklin, Tennessee, yesterday, antimask mobs threatened doctors and nurses asking the local school board to reinstate a mask mandate in the schools. “We will find you,” they shouted at a man leaving the meeting. “We know who you are.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/us/politics/Joe-Biden-Democratic-nominee.html

https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/

http://www.processhistory.org/fronczak-fascism/

Joseph Fronczak, “The Fascist Game: Transnational Political Transmission and the Genesis of the U.S. Modern Right,” Journal of American History, 105 (December 2018): 563–588.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/17/liberate-michigan-trump-constitution/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/loudoun-schools-transgender-critical-race-theory/2021/06/23/1691dfc2-d453-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/we-know-who-you-are-group-seen-threatening-medical-professionals-outside-williamson-co-school-board-meeting

https://morningconsult.com/2021/08/04/mask-mandates-behaviors-polling/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #fascist #violence #American History #history #Heather Cox Richardsoon #Letters From an American #racists #antisemites #white nationalists #Ku Klux Klan #Neo-Nazis

[joannalannister]

Anonymous asked:

Hey there, Lauren! I love your blog and metas! I have a question for you, in terms of the book, could you tell me when and where Daenerys shows signs of being a tyrant or a fascist? I see lots of metas say that she is, but from what I've read, I don't see any signs of that? Sure, she kills her enemies, but what powerful monarch doesn't? I just feel like the fandom has a very biased and double standard hatred when it comes to her, and I would like your opinion! Thank you!

Before I answer your question, we need some sort of working definition of fascism. To achieve this, I would like to quote a disabled person who helped lead the fight against fascism for years, and who died in the line of duty:

Over a year and a half ago I said this [...]: "The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it."

Today that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled. The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward [...] 

We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain. [...]

In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

We have started to make good on that promise. I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.”

--President Franklin D. Roosevelt, July 28th, 1943 Fireside Chat

What did the fascist Nazi Party stand for in WWII?

Historically, there was no Nazi Party apart from their racial and social agenda. It was a party founded on racial distinctions, with a vision to dramatically transform their society. The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan. They persecuted and killed Jewish people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and communists, and they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments. The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy. [x]

But where does GRRM come into this?

I wasn’t a complete pacifist; I couldn’t claim to be that. I was what they called an objector to a particular war. I would have been glad to fight in World War II. But Vietnam was the only war on the menu. [x]

GRRM’s ethical views are at their clearest and most concise while discussing slavery and dehumanization in his (most excellent and highly recommended) vampire novel, Fevre Dream:

I never held much with slavery […]. You can’t just go… usin’ another kind of people, like they wasn’t people at all. Know what I mean? Got to end, sooner or later. Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see? Maybe that’s what them abolitionists been sayin’ all along. You try to be reasonable, that’s only right, but if it don’t work, you got to be ready. Some things is just wrong. They got to be ended.

Some things are worth fighting for. Fascism requires opposition, some form of opposition, or it will steamroller all over you. 

My regret now is not that I stayed my arm, but that I remained aloof in my window while others protested peacefully outside. It would be naïve to think that those marching in neo-Nazi parades could have a change of heart from such efforts, but I am more concerned with those who are not marching for anything. We must convince the apathetic to care, and stop those who are walking down the path of hatred before it becomes too late.

--David Olin, The View from My Window, Berkeley 2018, written for the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity 

Now, let me apply this to ASOIAF piece by piece. 

In every country conquered [...] the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

This is Tywin. This is Tywin enslaving people as part of his militaristic campaign of aggressive force in the Riverlands. This is Tywin sanctioning the capture and torture of innocent people. This is Tywin “using” other kinds of people and disregarding the fact that they are human beings. This is Tywin enslaving Arya Stark. This is Tywin impressing people to work in his gold mines on a whim, as we learn in AGOT. This is Tywin reducing people to the status of slaves or chattels. This is Tywin. 

I don’t know how many different ways I can say it, but as I’ve said before and will say again: Tywin is the character in the ASOIAF books who most prominently espouses fascist ideology. 

There are other characters in the main series -- Roose Bolton and Randyll Tarly, for example -- who also exhibit characteristics of fascist ideology, but I would argue that it is Tywin who is the fascist poster boy of ASOIAF ... and it is also Tywin who is one of the main villains who is drawing humanity’s attention south away from the true threat of the Others, who wish to turn every living thing into their slaves and playthings. (Littlefinger also comes to mind.) Tywin is an unwitting general in the Others’ army. Tywin is fighting the Others’ Campaign of Dehumanization on their behalf. 

The Nazis disliked and persecuted anyone who they did not consider Aryan. 

Substitute “Aryan” for “Lannister” and this is Tywin. “a Lannister, and worth more.” It is Tywin who pushes an agenda of Lannister superiority and it is Tywin to whom non-Lannisters aren’t human, to the point that he had to marry his own cousin. He dislikes non-Lannisters so much he had to marry his own cousin!!!! It’s Tywin who passed down his obsession with blood purity to his children to the point that they literally have to fuck each other. It’s Tywin who puts his House (a proxy for his race) above the individuals in it; it’s Tywin who doesn’t care if Cersei and Jaime and Tyrion are ground to dust under his disgusting ideology as long as House Lannister reigns supreme. 

"Spice soldiers and cheese lords," his lord father called them, with contempt. 

This is Tywin. 

Non-Lannisters aren’t fully human to Tywin. This is fascist ideology!!!!

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and Kevan, refusing to allow the Westerlings to marry into their family because of “doubtful blood”!!!!! (”Ser Kevan seldom had a thought that Lord Tywin had not had first.”) 

It was a party founded on racial distinctions

This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and Elia. 

they wanted to eliminate people with mental or physical ailments. 

This is Tywin and his hatred toward disabled Tyrion. This is Tywin and his refusal to allow a betrothal between Jaime and disabled Elia. 

The Nazis pushed women out of the workplace and actively promoted patriarchy.

This is Tywin. This is Randyll hating on Brienne of Tarth. (And you can bet your ass Tywin doesn’t approve of women with swords.) 

I don’t know how many ways I can say it: Tywin and others like him are the fascists. 

Tywin is one of the cold fucks the AGOT prologue warns us about in the very beginning: “the real enemy is the cold.” 

The central conflict of ASOIAF is between the living (the fire) and the dead (the cold), those who would recognize your humanity and those who won’t. 

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate

^^ This is Daenerys Targaryen ^^

Daenerys Targaryen is a freedom fighter who kills slavers in the books. 

Her breakup of the economic system of Essos (meaning SLAVERY) is more akin to a communist revolution than a fascist takeover imo. Daenerys associates herself with people of all races, all classes. She gives Missandei, who canonically has dark skin in the books, a place as one of her closest advisors. Unlike Tywin, Daenerys is not pushing an agenda of Targaryen superiority. 

Daenerys is not perfect. She does not always get it right. Daenerys has got some things wrong. But I don’t think there has been any other option for Daenerys. You ... you can’t just look the other way when evil men are crucifying children, and I truly do not think that non-violent opposition would change anything in Essos. “Better if it ends peaceful, but it’s got to end even if it has to be with fire and blood, you see?” 

Sometimes innocents like Hazzea have died on Daenerys’s journey. 

And I fully believe that more people are going to die in TWOW, and that Daenerys will hold herself responsible, whether she is or not. I know that TWOW will give all the antis of every character a lot of ammunition. TWOW is going to be a dark and depressing book. 

I think that Daenerys is going to reach a very low point in TWOW, just as Tyrion is nose-diving in ADWD, but I think that’s just what GRRM does with his greatest heroes. It’s the moment in a movie when the hero falls off the cliff, and the Evil Villain starts cackling maniacally and you think all is lost, and then you see the hero’s hand reach up over the edge and the music crescendos as the hero pulls himself up. Except the real villains that GRRMs heroes are battling are themselves. The cliff is a metaphor for our darkest impulses. 

Characters tell Dany in AGOT that “she is nothing” but Dany’s story is about proving them wrong. It’s about her finding her own dignity and worth as a human being out on the Dothraki Sea, and becoming the master of her own fate. As her story progresses, she helps others to do the same, helping people to rediscover their dignity, to regain their names (or take new ones), to find the humanity that was stolen from them. 

(This is why it’s so important to me that her story intersect with zombie!Jon, so that she can help a dead man remember what it is to be human and remember why it all matters. Because if none of it matters ... if a man can’t find a fuck to give, well, that’s Tywin Lannister, who was a cold dead man long before Tyrion shot him.) 

I brought up FDR in the beginning of this post. Although FDR died before GRRM was born, he was one of the great American cultural figures of the 20th century and I have no doubt FDR’s legacy was a formative influence on GRRM. And that’s the thing - so many of these, these great American cultural figures of GRRM’s life died before their work was completed: FDR, JFK, MLK, so many others... The promised land is somewhere ahead of us, despite the opposition making accusations of “crazy altruism” and “starry-eyed dreaming.” No one is going to drive us there and drop us off; we have to get there by ourselves, and the journey isn’t an easy one. It’s a place we have to keep striving for, working for. A dream of spring...

It’s not Daenerys’s destiny, I think, to rule humanity in the long term; Dany’s destiny is, I think, to make sure that humanity doesn’t, well, lose their humanity. To make sure that humanity doesn’t fall into eldritch slavery.

The Others would make us automatons in their icy, inhuman regime. The Others would steam-roller all over humanity, and take away humanity’s freedom to choose, as Tywin Lannister tries to do to his children, trying to take all of their choices away and control them completely. The Others would take away our self-determination, our freedom to choose good or evil, our freedom to be the rulers of our own fate. 

I don’t think it’s Daenerys job to be a ruler in the end. I think she’s fighting evil now so that other people can keep fighting that good-and-evil “human heart in conflict with itself” fight long after she’s gone ... I’ve never believed in a “Targaryen restoration” ending although I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to it. 

Like Moses, Daenerys won’t lead us into the promised land ... we have to get there ourselves. 

And I’ve strayed from your question into a topic that’s more interesting to me because I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve that you are even asking me if the compassionate, caring, teenage-girl, sexual-abuse-survivor, messiah-figure Daenerys Targaryen is a fucking fascist when everything Daenerys “the fire is mine” Targaryen does is in narrative opposition to Certified Fucking Fascist Tywin Racist Lannister oh my god I cannot believe this is where we’ve come to as a fandom, I cannot fucking belieeeeeeve. 

Anon. Honey. Baby. I say this gently, with love: Whyyyyyyyyy are you reading “Daenerys is a fascist” metas? That didn’t even work on the show. 

When I googled “Daenerys Targaryen fascist” to try and figure out what you could possibly be reading to argue against it, the top result is an alt-right thinkpiece website about how dangerous Dany was all along in freeing slaves!!!! And the next results are people who think the iron throne actually matters when GRRM himself has said that the political war is a red herring. 

The endgame rulers don’t even particularly matter because what matters in the end is that humanity wins against the Others and we still have control over ourselves, what matters is for that human heart conflict to continue to exist inside ourselves and that we rule over that conflict inside ourselves. 

"We all must choose," she proclaimed.

Practice some self-care; go read Armageddon Rag, and remember this: TWOW is not going to save us. 

#to my friends out there: shoutout to Comrade Drogon ☭ #daenerys targaryen #tywin lannister #asoiaf meta #lannister thoughts #tywin meta #dany meta #fascist masculinity #fascist masculinity in asoiaf #asoiaf and the american mythos #the meaning of asoiaf #the war for the dawn #endgame #fascism

[tes-trash-blog]

🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three  conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black.  20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life. 

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

#holy shit this got long #lore overanalysis #the trash talks