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arlingtonpark · 6 years

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SNK 110 Review

#cultoferen4life edition

You know what’s a face you don’t want to find yourself making during a high stakes poker game? Confusion and surprise.

The fact that the EFC has the upper hand in this game of political cat-and-mouse is becoming more obvious by the chapter - no, by the page.

In this one chapter the Eldian Freedom Caucus has:

Infiltrated the military.

Killed Paradis’ leader.

Busted Eren out of jail.

And turned the people against the government.

Let me be clear here: this is it. It’s game time. Zero hour. The EFC is making its move, and as for our heroes?

“What’s going on right now?”

They’ve been caught with their pants around their ankles!

And so the trend continues. The EFC acts, the moderates react. They leak information to the public, Paradis reacts by jailing them. They secretly meet with Eren, Paradis reacts by jailing the volunteers. And the one time Paradis tries to take the initiative, by labeling Zeke DOA and feeding him to Historia, is foiled, presumably by Zeke’s machinations. The extremists are always five steps ahead, meanwhile the moderates are struggling just to keep up. The bad guys are winning, here.

Words cannot describe how fucked they all are right now.

But on the plus side- things I predicted that have been confirmed by this chapter:

The presence of a right-wing nationalist faction among the population.

That these people look to Eren for leadership.

That they do it because he’s a war hero and has the Founding Titan.

Bow before me for I am your new King!

It’s not surprising at all that Eren is in league with the nationalists. Yeah, Eren cares a lot about his friends and about the Eldian people in general. That’s not a bad thing. That’s also not the point.

I cannot stress this enough.

It’s beside the point that Eren is (presumably) doing this because he wants to protect what’s important to him. Eren is a bad person because he thinks in a bad way. He thinks like a nationalist. And it’s not just him.

Floch, Louise, and reaching into our world for examples, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, these people and Eren are all cut from the same cloth. They all think the same way. That is what binds them.

The thing that’s important to understand about these people is that dominance plays a huge role in how they assess the world. People like Eren have a very brutalistic worldview. They think there are only two kinds of people in this world: strong people and weak people, with the strong naturally dominating the weak.

That Eren sees things this way is made clear in the very first chapter of the series. In fact, it’s the very first thing he says:

“That day, the human race was reminded of the terror of being dominated by them and the shame of being held in a bird cage.”

The narrator is obviously supposed to be Eren and that’s been clear since chapter 1. The tell is when Eren describes humanity as being in a bird cage, which is exactly how the narrator described humanity’s state of affairs in the opening.

(As an aside, if Eren is the one telling the story of SNK to us and he’s still caught up in his right-wing nationalist mindset, then that basically tells you everything you need to know about how the story ends.)

The titans keep humanity from going out beyond the walls and Eren frames this as humanity being dominated. Furthermore, and tellingly, Eren describes this situation as being shameful.

Think about that.

How would you describe humanity’s situation?

Dire? Untenable? Awful? Besieged?

Now look at how Eren describes it.

Shameful.

Humanity has been forced to live on a limited tract of land with limited resources and the only thing Eren can think about is the indignity of it.

Like a nationalist would. The indignity of injustice being visited upon a tribe is a common trope amongst nationalists. It’s what fuels the sense of grievance they use to propel themselves to power.

Eren hated the titans even before they attacked Shighanshina. The reason why was expounded upon in chapter 73. It’s because they prevent him from experiencing the world outside the walls. This fact makes Eren feel an unnatural amount of anger towards the titans, even though the titans aren’t sapient and thus are unworthy of that anger.

The titans are not intelligent beings, they are, as far as the walldians know, a force of nature; being Eren levels of angry at them before the Grim Reminder is like being angry at the laws of physics for preventing us from exploring the universe.

“And that’s when I knew I wasn’t free. I realized I had been living in a birdcage all that time. And that gravity had taken my freedom. The universe was so big, but it’d forced me into a tiny cage. And when I realized that I knew I could never forgive it.”

The irrational animosity Eren displays against the titans reveals a certain kind of egomania on his part. Eren is pissed at the titans because he thinks they’ve taken something that belongs to him. He thinks he has a birthright to the world. We know he does because he flat out says so in chapter 14.

“Why did you ever want to go to the outside world?”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s because I was born into this world!!”

That’s ridiculous.

Eren, and everyone else for that matter, has no birthright to the outside world. As a person, Eren has the right to live as he chooses and that includes the right to live where you choose. But a couple things:

First, rights are not absolute. They can be justly limited, and there are exceptions to them. You have a right to freedom of speech, but you cannot slander others. You have a right to freedom of movement, but your right can be limited in the form of being required to fill out paper work and have a passport to travel. You have a right to life, but, under some circumstances, someone can kill you and not be in the wrong. Self-defense is the go-to example of this.

Second, rights cannot be violated by non-persons. Titans are not people; they are incapable of intelligent thought. Because they are not people, they are also not moral agents. Being a moral agent means you are capable of being held morally responsible for your actions. Because of that, titans are exempt from moral judgement. They cannot take your freedom any more so than a tornado can. To make such a claim would be completely irrational.

Yes, the titans physically limit Eren. Because of them he cannot go where he wishes to go. In that sense they have taken away his freedom. But it is important to distinguish between freedom as it pertains to getting what you want and freedom as it pertains to enjoying certain rights you are entitled to.

When it comes to Eren, the object of what drives him is the former, but he thinks of it in terms of the latter. In other words, he thinks he has a birthright to something by virtue of the fact that he wants it. He believes he has a right to see the outside world in the same way one may think they have a right to fuck a really hot person. Because “I was born.”

Seeing the world? That is a luxury. Especially in a world where 90% of the population lives in poverty.

Eren wanted to see the outside world but was prevented from doing so, and he hated the source of that prevention, the titans. He hated them because they dominated him, because they had power over his life. The fact that they had this power over him was not unfair. Concepts like fair/unfair, just/unjust, right/wrong cannot be applied to non-persons, as I just said. He hated them anyway because of the position of powerlessness it placed him in.

This is indicative of his dominance-centric mindset.

Implicit in Eren’s dominance-mindset is zero-sum thinking. Zero-sum thinking is a way of thinking about the world. People who think this way believe that if you win, someone else necessarily loses. There are only two kinds of people in this world: winners and losers. The strong and the weak. The dominators and the dominated.

Prediction time! I’m sure some people were floored when I pegged Eren as a right-wing nationalist as early as chapter 105. Now I’m back with an even wilder prediction: I think Eren might be a racist.

Seriously. His dominance-centric worldview. His zero-sum thinking. The underlying fundamentals of racist thought are there. Add in the fact he rejects the notion that the races can coexist and it’s hard to not speculate.

Racism here refers to the belief that there are fundamental differences between the races and that because of this the only way they can coexist is in a society where one dominates the other.

Eren’s focus on dominance leads him to obsess over strength and being strong. If you think we live in a world where the strong dominate the weak, you naturally want to be strong. You want to be the dominator. Eren’s obsession with being strong is a through line for his character.

When Hannes is killed, Eren wails about how he’s still too weak to protect anything he cares about.

As they’re making preparations for the Battle of Orvud, Eren flashes back to his mother’s death. She died because he was weak. That’s what Hannes told him, though in a more tactful way. As recently as the end of the Uprising Arc, that’s how he thought of it. He punches himself, trying to beat a “useless, pathetic brat” out of him. Implicitly, he’s pledging to be strong and make a meaningful contribution.

Because they see the world in terms of dominance, Nationalists naturally are also obsessed with strength and shows of strength. Chest-thumping bluster is a common hallmark.

These two facets of Eren’s thinking, dominance and strength, come together in the moment he vows revenge on the titans.

“Mom’s gone!! I’m never going to see her again. Why is this happening to us? Is it because humans are weak? Is crying the only thing the weak can do?! I’m going to destroy them!! Every last one of those animals that’s on this Earth!!”

Revenge is another common nationalist trope. In a nationalist context, the term for it is revanchism. Revanchism, the word, is derived from the French term for “revenge.” After losing a war with Germany in the 1870s, part of France’s territory was subsumed by Germany. French nationalists vowed revenge. The Germans had taken their land from them. They were trespassing on land that belonged to the French people. Not the French government, but the people of France.

In more modern times, people like Donald Trump speak in revanchist terms. They speak of taking back what was theirs and punishing the ones who took it from them. Eren thinks the same way. Taking back America and punishing Obama and his followers. Taking back Wall Maria and punishing Reiner and Bertolt. Revanchism is the common denominator.

That moment in this chapter when Eren takes the proffered Hoodie of Douchebaggery and assumes the role as EFC leader has been a long time coming. It is a culmination. Eren has matured. What he has matured into is monstrous.

The titans may have been eradicated, but Paradis is still crawling with mindless monsters. They congregate near government buildings where their calls can be heard for miles.

“Slaughter the Marleyans!”

“Eren Yeager will deliver us unto the Promised Land!”

“Eren is soo hot!”

You know at least one person in that crowd was thinking that.

So you’ve got this guy. He’s an outlaw, but not just any outlaw. He’s an outlaw because he speaks the truth. He’s an outlaw because he stands up for the little guy and fights the corrupt, incompetent establishment. As far as the people of Paradis is concerned, that’s basically Eren, right? We can all agree on that, right?

Yes? Okay, good, in that case I’m probably going to have to skip the next chapter because if this is what Eren is to the people then you know what’s coming.

Eren Yeager: Folk hero.

God have mercy on us.

This is all Eren’s fault.

What did Eren spend the whole first half of this series calling for? He spent it calling for the people to see themselves as part of a singular group whose survival was at stake and to fight back. His plea was basically a nationalist one.

(Nationalism is, arguably, not inherently bad. If you are a genuinely oppressed group, some degree of nationalism could be a good thing.)

Well, Eren got what he wanted. He won. The people see themselves as a singular group under threat and are prepared to fight. Now they’re calling for genocide.

Killing all titans makes sense. Giant, non-intelligent animals that are a threat to you? Yeah, knock yourself out. But human beings? No, God no.

Eren has always called for the walldians to fight the titans. Implicit in that is the fact that this would be a fight to the death. Only one side was going to make it out of here alive. Either the titans kill all humans or humans kill all titans.

Eren’s plea, implicitly, was for the walldians to kill all titans.

That is what he was calling for and he got what he wanted. By the start of the Return to Shighanshina Arc, the people were cheering the Survey Corps on.

But titans aren’t the enemy anymore. The enemy is other human beings and you just can’t call for killing all humans because that’s fucked up. And yet here we are!

“Slaughter the Marleyans!”

The situation has changed but the kill all titans mentality Eren strove to cultivate in the minds of the people has carried over. The Eren’s plea for more walldian nationalism has well and truly backfired, though that’s assuming Eren himself sees this development as unfortunate.

Which he may well not.

And yes, if the walldians lose they will all be killed. But just because the Marleyans are swimming in the gutter doesn’t mean the walldians have to join them. This doesn’t have to be a “loser dies” type of situation. It only becomes that if both sides are committed to genociding the other in the event of victory.

What Paradis needs, what all sides to this conflict need, are more people like Armin. People who are willing to be compassionate and forgiving even to their mortal enemy. People who are willing to de-escalate the situation and turn away from the brink.

The same is true for Marley. If some Armin-type character were to gain power in Marley then the chances of peace would shoot up dramatically. That’s how situations like this usually end up with a peaceful conclusion. Both sides are willing to make a good-faith effort at peace.

But that doesn’t seem to be coming. On Marley, no one in a position to do so is calling for peace. That’s not surprising given the attack they suffered. On Paradis, people like Armin are in greater supply, but they feel, accurately, that they have to fight to survive.

We are moving, inexorably, towards disaster and the brakes aren’t working. Even if the titan powers were to excised from the Eldian people there would still be war. There’s just too much bad blood at this point.

You know, sometimes I can’t believe my luck. When I first started covering this series my biggest worry, aside from my poor grammar, was that I would struggle to find material with which to write about. I suck at character analysis; I just don’t have the attention to detail for it.

But wouldn’t you know it? I have a deep interest in politics and it seems I’ve jumped aboard just when politics is starting to dominate the narrative.

This recent batch of chapters have been very political in their content, and, it turns out, in a way mirrors American politics. The scene where Zackley gets boehnered by the Eldian Freedom Caucus is hilarious. And who can forget Jean grimly wondering what Eren and Zeke discussed, especially in light of the former’s inexplicable pro-Zeke attitude? I can’t believe that moment actually exists!

It’s actually hilarious how much the situation on Paradis parallels the Republican Party. Seriously, just think about it:

Floch and his team – The House Freedom Caucus, a group of right-wing extremists who’re a constant thorn in the side of the more moderate Party leadership even though both factions actually agree on what they want. Among all Republican politicians, they are the most obsequious to Trump.

Zeke Yeager – Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, a clear threat who seems to exercise some sort of control over Donald Trump.

Eren Yeager – President Donald Trump, the shithead President of the United States who inexplicably acts as though he’s under Putin’s control.

The denizens of Paradis – The Trumpistas, the faction of Republican Party voters who support Trump to an almost cult-like extent. Unfortunately for the party leadership, which is seriously put off by Trump, these people are actually the majority of the party’s membership. This forces leadership to be accommodative towards Trump for fear of a popular uprising that will destroy them.

Paradis’ leadership – The Republican Party leadership, the leaders of the party who fight hard for what they believe in but find themselves surrounded by fucking stupid people. Ostensibly, they’re on the same side as the Freedom Caucus, but in practice they’re actually at odds with each other because the HFC thinks they aren’t extreme enough in their methods. Even though they’re the leaders, the majority of party members don’t actually like them, but those same members fucking love Trump, so leadership is forced to live with the threat of a popular uprising unless they kowtow to this fucking twerp even though his impulsive actions are counterproductive. Leadership is seriously put off by Trump, mostly because of his coziness with Putin. They deal with this situation by trying to be “the adults in the room.” They try to mitigate Trump’s worse impulses and stand ready to pull the plug on him entirely if things get too hairy.

Needless to say, this all amuses me to no end.

#snk 110 #snk chapter 110 #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #spoilers #eren jeager

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