thebobbu

[thebobbu]

first the holocaust was turned into the project of a sole madman who had an entire country under a spell, which suddenly vanished at the stroke of a pen when peace was signed, rather than being a continuation of centuries of scapegoating and antisemitism, enabled by western capital, direct funding to the Nazi party in some cases like the British aristocracy's, with the purpose of creating a massive slave workforce and to boost the German economy via looting, expropiation and a reduction in the worker population, an economy that had been reeling since WWI and propped up by directing all jobless people to work in the arms industry.

then, the (incomplete) victory over european fascism (don't look at Spain and Portugal and Greece) was methodically distanced from the true victors, the soviet people. They suffered an invasion and destruction of the majority of their industrial base, save for the industry relocated to the east, more than 20 million dead soviet workers who pushed the fascists from Moscow to Berlin, ending in an artillery barrage the magnitudes of which had never been seen, the symbolic raising of the red banner over the Reichstag and an enveloping of the city that forced many nazi officials to commit suicide. It was also forgotten how the Yugoslavs liberated themselves, managing to keep fascist forces constantly tied up during the war, how the Italian partisans captured Mussolini and hung him in public, the many uprisings throughout Europe and the concentration camps before the frontline reached them, the exiled brigadiers and republicans who first fought fascism in Spain and was later forced to fight fascism again, unable to return to their homes and under threat of being imprisoned. The indigenous resistance against colonialism in east and north Africa and southwest Asia, and the tens of millions Chinese, Vietnamese, Lao, Cambodian, Malaysians, Indonesians, Papuans, Thais, Bengalese, Indians, Filipinos, etc, who suffered both Japanese and western occupation. All of these struggles forgotten and erased, reduced to the USamerican, British, and sometimes French armies. Armies who advanced to witness a fraction of the suffering enabled and financed by their own states barely a decade prior. Even minor members of the western allies, such as Brazil, are often forgotten.

After the Holocaust was reduced to an unexpected and unprecedented event with no connection to reality, and after the struggle against fascism was reduced to the involvement of two or three countries, barely any fascists were punished. Anyone who wasn't a top official could claim to be simply following orders, even someone as important like Speer used this defence, he was allowed to live free and publish an autobiography in which he paints himself as the good Nazi, the mere architect caught up in a madman's rise. As if he ignored the plans for a future Berlin would be built by slave labor from the concentration camps, as if the minister of armaments from 1942 to the end did not know about the reliance companies like Krupp or Volkswagen had on slave labor. As if he didn't listen to Goebbels' speeches about total war and extermination and did not understand his armaments would be used. Some fascists were even integrated into the scientific and military spheres of the western allies, others given citizenship and a cushy home in places like Canada. Japanese fascists who had experimented on and tortured countless Chinese and Korean civilians and POWs to research chemical warfare were offered amnesty in exchange for the knowledge they gained doing these experiments. After German reunification, more eastern queer people were imprisoned than fascists were incarcerated or executed at the Nürnberg trials.

After fascists were exonerated and shamelessly integrated into the western states, and after some time passed, the war was turned into a cultural product. Countless war movies were produced, almost always showing usamerican soldiers in the European or Pacific front fighting a mindless horde with hakenkrauzs on their armbands all lead by a single man, or group of men, ontologically evil. It was too complex to examine the actual reasons for the war. Hitler was simply a charismatic devil who had duped Germany into following him (crucially, he was only charismatic for germans. No true American patriot fell for his tricks). Gradually, the figure of Hitler was transformed into a devil in human form who had appeared in München in 1932 to cause evil and fight freedom.

As a result, German fascism and the Holocaust are nothing more but a historical fact you look at with morbid curiosity, to feel disgust, maybe anger, and sigh in relief that it would never happen again. There is no reflection on how it was allowed to happen, how antisemitism was used, like it had commonly been used throughout history, to blame for economic downturn and how the expropriation of jewish property, the enslavement of other minorities alongside them (Slavs, non-jewish poles, homosexuals, roma, communists...) and the rapid stimulation of a military industry was used to save an recessing economy. No examination of how the Nazi party appealed to the German petit-bourgeoisie and monopolies like the aforementioned Krupp, Volkswagen, or IG Farben, by attacking communists and trade unionists, who were beginning to organize at a bigger scale and actually threaten german capitalists. Instead, some even try to paint the nazis as communists or as similar to them, through terms like totalitarianism, which was popularized by Hannah Arendt, a fascist sympathiser who also saw fit to label decolonial struggles as totalitarian.

Even more insidious than this is how Hitler has been mutated into a shorthand for evil, an entity beyond a single man who personifies the collective hatred of minorities by Europeans, a condensation of centuries of hatred and exploitation into an angry man between 1932 and 1945. By doing this we can rest easy knowing there will never be another Hitler because we are so civil now. It was Hitler's speeches that guided every SS member's hand to execute tens of thousands. It was Goebbels' propaganda that clouded the judgment of the millions of Wehrmacht soldiers who looted and massacred their way through Europe. It was Himmler's threat that coerced countless germans to spy and tattle on their neighbors. It was Göring who convinced the Luftwaffe pilots to bomb and terrorize civilians. It was Dönitz who made the Kriegsmarine target civilian ships and ruthlessly pursue trade convoys. And it was ultimately Hitler who controlled these men, and no German had free will or political conviction between 1932 and 1945.

The peak of this attitude I see most in the internet: Do you want to learn about Hitler's Bunker? Hitler's enormous artillery pieces? Hitler's train? Hitler's plans? Hitler's wife? Hitler's army? Hitler's rise through the party? Hitler's veganism? Hitler's dog? Hitler's car? Hitler's Germania? Hitler's camps? Hitler's possible escape? Hitler's military career? Hitler's architecture? Hitler's political maneuvering in the interwar? Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that Hitler was not omnipotent or omnipresent. He and his party was supported by German and western capital to oppose worker organization and to give an outlet to social tension around the inflating currency and failing economy. Just like in Italy and just like in Spain. Hitler is a cultural product sold to liberals so they can be reassured that they would never become evil. No liberal democracy has ever put an entire minority into concentration camps, no liberal democracy has ever used Zyklon B on dispossessed people, no liberal democracy has ever looted a conquered nation, no liberal democracy has ever killed workers for unionizing, no liberal democracy has ever used nationalism and supremacism to rally popular support, and a long etcetera.

[thebobbu]

i wish people didn't make it seem like your options for medically transitioning as a nb/gq person are "do nothing" or "the binary opposite of whatever you started with"

[thebobbu]

This isn't aimed at any one person, more of a general observation from my comments/inbox over the last few years, but the number of people who say things like "but that's normal" when I describe hypermobility compared to the number of times healthcare providers look at me like I'm a glitch in the matrix is a Ven diagram made up of a single circle at this point.

Like I feel like some people just aren't envisioning the things I'm describing properly and are imagining a normal range of motion, but I also think some of you might want to consider getting evaulated.

Especially when you send me messages like, "There's nothing wrong with me except for my debilitating joint pain, crippling exhaustion, and the fact that blood shoots out of my eyes once a month, but isn't it normal to be able to do X?"

[thebobbu]

Me, to every person who comes to me to talk about exploring their gender, or acknowledging their neurodivergence.

[thebobbu]

sobbing into my plate after overhearing a conversation between a mom and her tiny daughter in this shopping centre food court

[thebobbu]

The devastating difference between how much time it takes to write something vs how fast people read it lol

[thebobbu]

How many times can the same thing break your heart?

[thebobbu]

The Spectrum of Humanity

An excerpt from an essay published by Arak'Antos, professor of Humanology at a renowned university.

The sheer scope of humanity’s variety necessitated the creation of an entirely new field of study.  Never before in the history of galactic civilization has any one race been so uniquely bizarre that they could not be encompassed in standard xenobiology and xenopsychology courses.  Even before the body modifications that they are so fond of, it can often be different to tell that two humans belong to the same race, as they can differ in every plausible physical and psychological way.

Their skins’ pigmentation ranges from a deep brown that approaches true black, to rare individuals that possess no pigments whatsoever, leaving them entirely white.  They can have hair covering most of their body, or have none at all.  They can range in height at adulthood from four feet tall to eight feet tall, with some notable exceptions on both ends of the spectrum.  

The psychological differences are just as pronounced.  Several humans have agreed to extended observation as part of my ongoing research into their nuances, and the findings have been striking.  One volunteer shunned physical contact at nearly any cost, and avoided social interaction whenever plausible.  He would sometimes sit as his computer in silence for long periods of time, once going nearly three days without moving, without even eating.  I did not interrupt, as I wished the observation to be impartial, but once I felt I had collected enough data, I asked him about it.  Was it difficult to go that long without nourishment or rest?  His response:

“Not really?  I guess I just lost track of time.”

This has been observed in other humans as well, to lesser degrees, with them being able to “lose track of time” as they focus on a single task, be it something as trivial as assembling a model or reading a book, for hours.  Inversely, I have also observed humans who would be, simultaneously, working on a report, listening to music, watching video, and participating in one or more conversations through voice communications or text programs.  When denied one or more of these stimulants, they would become noticeably on-edge, and their productivity would, somehow, suffer.

There is no known correlation between mental and physical attributes, either.  Every few months I see some naïve young researcher publish a paper that “proves” a link between human appearances and behavior patterns, only for humans to “come out of the woodwork” and present themselves as living evidence of the falsity of their claim. 

In short, no matter how much we study humans, only the most basic of understandings can be applied to them as a species.  To understand a given human, one must study that specific human.

[thebobbu]

You are the wind’s interpreter. What’s it saying?

[thebobbu]

I’ve invented ‘The Knife-Wielding Tentacle'👍

[thebobbu]

to any teenagers reading this i just wanna say that you're right. homework is bullshit, not accepting late work is bullshit, tardies are bullshit, having to ask to use the goddamn bathroom is bullshit. any adult who tells you differently is either lying or doesnt remember how much it sucked

[thebobbu]

My hypothesis is that in like 10 years gen z is gonna have a big cult boom the way the boomers did in the 70s

[thebobbu]

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[thebobbu]

what im learning is that you cannot avoid your way into a life you enjoy

[thebobbu]

IG : @emperorofmischief

[thebobbu]

TTRPG plot hook.

The Prophecy (you know the one, everyone knows it, it's a bedtime story passed down the generations) is coming to pass; the Cataclysm is rising, and the Signs have illuminated the Chosen One.

Your party is assembled to accompany this Chosen One on their prophesied quest to save the world, where it is foretold they will stand between all life and the abyss, where you will be their honour guard, clearing their way and recording the tales of their exploits to come, new verses added to the great saga which has echoed through ages before their birth.

Problem is, one day out of town, barely out of earshot of civilisation, they slip down a river embankment and fucking drown. You're 110% sure that wasn't in the story but it is now.

Good luck.

#I definitely wanna run this

[thebobbu]

#I would legit wear that Magneto fit