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1tbls · 4 months

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some rambling thoughts on shivers (red bolding mine throughout):

so shivers says this to harry after he has a dance-induced seizure in the church, right:

YOU - But who am *I*? Why are you talking to me?

SHIVERS - YOU ARE AN OFFICER OF THE CITIZENS MILITIA. *AGENTES IN REBUS*, WHEN YOU WEAR YOUR COAT, YOU WEAR MY SOUL.

SHIVERS - YOU MOVE THROUGH MY STREETS FREELY IN MOTOR CARRIAGES AND ON FOOT. YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE HIDDEN PLACES. YOU ALSO CIRCULATE AMONG THOSE WHO ARE HIDDEN.

here's wikipedia on "agentes in rebus":

"The agentes in rebus were the late Roman imperial and Byzantine courier service and general agents of the central government from the 4th to the 7th centuries."

"Being outside the control of the provincial governors, some agentes ... were appointed as inspectors ... for which they gained a reputation as a secret police force. As their routine assignments brought them into contact with matters of great concern to the court, and as they reported back to the court on everything they saw or heard on their varied missions, the agentes can be seen to have had an intelligence function ... This role, as well as their extraordinary power, made them feared: the 4th-century philosopher Libanius accused them of gross misconduct, terrorizing and extorting the provincials, "sheep-dogs who had joined the wolf pack". Nevertheless, the vast majority operated quite openly, and the claims of the agentes operating as a modern-day secret police are certainly exaggerated."

hey shivers. why are you invoking the RCM as your secret police, via a term not just associated with collection of information, but with corruption and manipulation of power.

and, if you fuck up the dance check and call kim a slur, she says:

"SHIVERS - BY THE WAY, APOLOGIZE TO YOUR PARTNER AT ONCE. UNITY AMONG THE RANKS IS PARAMOUNT."

which sticks out to me, because earlier we have this encyclopedia check with noid:

NOID - "A life is true if it's free from fear and internal division among oneself. And others -- mankind has seeds of greatness in it. A germinal will come, a return to trueness. It will be hard core."

YOU - "How would you go about *returning* to this true life?"

NOID - "Beats and bright lights to shatter falsehoods. Nerve impulses for the collective body. We are very much alike in basic structure. A hard enough beat would awaken everyone to a truer calling -- in unity!"

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Rejection of the right-left axis, emphasis on *unity*, appreciation of some primordial mode of being -- what does that remind you of?

YOU - "Sort of like fascism then?"

now, i don't think either noid or shivers are outright fascist :p but i do think the purpose of this encyclopedia line is to highlight how those criteria are flawed and damaging, how they are red flags, whatever the intention.

some comparisons:

1. return to trueness. le retour. the return of... what? in both cases, truly quite vague except for the idea of some dramatic upheaval of the current order, the idea of "returning" to some idealized past state or event.

2. nerve impulses. shivers. "appeal to nature" type fallacy, appeal to a baser instinct... invocation of physical reactions as metaphor for political reactionism, perhaps?

3. unity. on the surface, shivers telling harry to make things right with kim is touching, certainly. but specifically "unity among the ranks" is an interesting framing 🤨 as though the crucial thing is that their forces are not divided for what's to come, regardless of kim's feelings, regardless of harry's potential racism.

likewise, noid's call for unity addresses... nothing at all. simply that everyone would be awoken from their petty, false divisions into unity. neither this nor his criticisms of left vs. right acknowledge that the division is not equal, that one side in most social power conflicts is invested in stripping the rights of the other... because that is simply not on the radar when the priority is unity above all else. in its way, unity is authoritarian where it does not abide difference or dissent in the interest of the of the stasis/power of the institution.

this is all to say. hey. let's talk about the inherent nationalist nature of la revacholiere, my problematic wife ♥️

#de tag #disco elysium #i feel like i could make this more coherent / essay-like but i just cant be bothered #im certain there's other shivers lines like this that had me like <__< girl........#racism ment /

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soloorganaas · 1 year

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Sirius, bipolar disorder and 1981

I’ve held the headcanon for a while that Sirius being bipolar was a fundamental part of his breakdown in 1981, that led to him believing Remus was the spy and failing to prevent Lily and James’s deaths, as well as ultimately being the reason Remus was persuaded that Sirius (not entirely consciously) betrayed James and committed mass-murder. so I’ve laid out all my thoughts about this below

Sirius’s breakdown leading up to Oct 31, 1981

bipolar episodes of mania/depression are not responses to external events in the same way regular depression or anxiety are. they will inevitably happen at some point however stable your life is. however, a traumatic event can sometimes trigger a period of mania/depression that spirals beyond the actual event itself

there is no doubt that Sirius was experiencing compound trauma by 1981. there isn’t any specific canon as to when he became involved in the Order, but we know by this point he was deep in the fight and presumably had been for around a year or more. he was living with the constant, extreme stress of being in potentially fatal missions, as well as the risk of losing his loved ones who were doing the same

Sirius’s friendship with James and the impact the danger he faced had on Sirius during this period is fundamental to his breakdown. James was central to his conception of safety and stability. he rescued him emotionally and later physically from his abusive home, and gave him a new loving one. without James, Sirius doesn’t have a home - and therefore the world simply doesn’t make sense. there’s no doubt Sirius would have been living in absolute terror of having his world quite literally torn apart. this would have been magnified tenfold when the specific threat to Harry and therefore James and Lily became apparent, and Sirius had to watch as a war against a fascist terror group became a defense of his best friend’s family being hunted by an unimaginably powerful dark wizard

part of bipolar disorder is the subconscious knowledge that you will at some point crash. there is a sense of inevitability of your world falling apart, like constantly living in a movie waiting for the third act tragedy. for Sirius, watching his world quite literally fall apart, this would undoubtedly have triggered that underlying fear. he is expecting the worst, knowing that it’s going to happen, because it always has

Sirius believing Remus was the spy

Sirius’s struggle with bipolar disorder would lead to his seemingly irrational suspicion of Remus for two main reasons

first is that the chronic instability and tendency toward self-destruction that Sirius experiences as a part of bd is inseparable from his relationship with Remus. breaking up in the heat of manic or depressive episodes is a common bipolar symptom. Remus with his own trauma and mental health issues would never be capable of creating enough stability for the both of them as their relationship formed, and adding into that the struggles of being a gay man in the 70s/80s, they never developed a strong foundation as teens

so the second point is how putting this under the pressure cooker of war doomed them from the outset. without external support or stability, Sirius was always going to spiral down, and Remus would always be unable to cope. by 1981 Sirius is overwhelmed with fear over losing James and utterly unable to think rationally. he’s being pushed to the brink on Order missions. he’s convinced his the world is going to crash down around him. he’s lashing out at the people closest to him and destroying things just for the misguided feeling of control. Remus is watching this happen but is also swept up in his own chronic terror and mental instability, and is utterly unable to understand what Sirius is doing or going through, let alone try and stop it. they are both crashing down around each other, with the very fear they have of losing each other tearing them further apart

at some point I think Sirius simply convinces himself its Remus - because he’s the one hurting him so much with his own part in destroying their relationship, because if anyone is going to tear his world to pieces it would be the one he’s most vulnerable to, because if you want to bring about the destruction by yourself of course you’d pick the person you can hurt the most, because the world is stealing everything from him so of course it would still the one beautiful, tender, miraculous thing he has

Remus being persuaded Sirius betrayed James and Lily

I’m writing ‘persuaded’ deliberately, because there is no way that Remus would instantly believe Sirius could betray James or even murder Peter and a crowd of muggles. they had been friends for over ten years, living in each other’s pockets and they knew each other inside and out. they had built incredibly deep and meaningful bonds as a group. Remus would struggle to believe that Sirius could kill Peter, but he may in the end come to accept it. but he could never, ever have watched Sirius and James for ten years and believe he would consciously betray him

instead, I think Remus came to believe through the persuasion of others (Dumbledore specifically, particularly if you go with the idea he had an interest in keeping Sirius in Azkaban) that Sirius had a breakdown and acted with such reckless self-destruction he inadvertently brought about James and Lily’s deaths. Remus had been dragged down in Sirius’s spiral for a year or longer; if they were by that point together, he would have seen Sirius at his most vulnerable and raw, and understood better than anyone his capacity for manic, irrational self-destruction. he’d seen Sirius do similar things the entire time he’d known him - the prank, for example, which easily fits into a similar theme. Remus knows Sirius is capable of this, he knows he was truly out of his mind with fear

and I think that’s where the anger comes from (aside from fury over him murdering Peter and other innocent people) - that Sirius had spent so long causing harm and never ever learned, that he’d refused to confront his own demons and take responsibility for his destructive tendencies, and in the end it had torn their worlds apart. the fire that had made him so passionate, so full of life, so brave, so loving and so devoted had also made him uncontrollably deadly - it’s not hard to imagine that when Remus more than anyone experienced one side so intensely, he could imagine what the other could lead to

I, personally, don’t think even in a manic state Sirius would ever come close to betraying James. but I think that for Remus, a terrified, traumatised 21 year old who’d lost both his parents and his best friends, had spent three years caught up in a war between two sides that both wanted him dead, and had watched his relationship with the love of his life break down in front of him, it’s a realistic conclusion to come to

Conclusion

mental health issues are intrinsically wound up with Sirius’s story and the tragedies he experiences. i think it’s a disservice to his character to overlook them, especially when fic takes only a shallow look at the sadder, messier parts of his life because it has a tendency towards simply trauma porn. bipolar disorder is my particular headcanon, and I’ve detailed a strong argument for it, but there are plenty of other valid interpretations as well. whichever way Sirius is written, though, at least complying somewhat with canon, the impact of mental health on the complexity of his character and story can’t be overlooked

the other side of the coin to this tragedy is the beauty of Sirius’s escape, formation of his relationship with Harry, and his reunion and reconciliation with Remus. Sirius’s fiery mania is turned into a positive, enabling the incredible feats of breaking out of Azkaban, and living on the rough for two years whilst evading the Ministry’s hunt. it also of course sees older, wiser versions of Sirius and Remus who can look their own and each other’s demons in the eye, face up to them with honesty and courage, and build the relationship they should have had all along.

#i am Sad #and deep in my PoA feels #wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #bipolar disorder #bipolar sirius black #ch: we choose who we really are #hp #hp meta

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morally-grey-girlbosses · 7 months

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Propaganda under the cut.

Edelgard:

we love an axe user 🙏 she has a whole alter ego/persona just for conspiracy against the church. yeahhh she does a little murder but like, she’s kinda right

Caused insane discourse over whether she was right or wrong that has been going on for four years and will never stop.

She declared a war against the church and the class system of the continent, because she wants a better world, and that's nice she looked hot while doing it too, but her methods are questionable.

She started a war to get rid of the monarchy system in her continent since she believed the system rewarded only those with luck to be born with magic crests rather than those who worked hard. Said system combined with an underground organization that wanted to exploit said crests, allowed for her and her siblings to be experimented on and for most of them to die. Edelgard is desperate to get rid of the crest system fast, since the experimentation on her while it made her more powerful it also shortened her lifespan, war was the fastest way to get rid of it. In any other route of the games that isn't hers, it's heavily implied she sacrificed some of her allies to have an advantage on the battlefield. In the route "Azure Moon" where you support her childhood friend and enemy, Dimitri, in the war, Edelgard will sacrifice her body to become a monster and finally be able to kill you both. Even after Dimitri forgives her, Edelgard will try to kill him. I love her Qwq In her route you can help her become better, and see her hopeful rather than sunk in her obsession for her goal.

Edelgard is a total badass, kind of a fascist, and head of the war crimes committee. She partnered up with a group of comically evil mages in order to destroy the Central Church and overthrow the Archbishop/dragon that had controlled the country for over a millennia, declared war before the school year ended, roping all of her classmates into the conflict, and is even the first protagonist and first female character to fall into the evil emperor archetype. But with all her war crimes, she had a reason for everything, as she was trying to free the continent from the oppressive Crest system that determined people's value by their blood and caused her to be horrifically tortured as a child.

Almalexia:

Killed her husband in order to become a god-queen (based), tried to kill everyone else when her powers started waning (cringe).

#poll #tournament poll #round 2 #edelgard von hresvelg #fe3h edelgard #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem #almalexia #the elder scrolls #tes

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Thinking about the Holocaust in Africa.

Here, European notions of anti-Blackness and antisemitism became intertwined.

There was a fusion between the dispossession and racism of European imperialism and colonization projects of the late nineteenth century, and the prison regimes imposed by European fascism in the early twentieth century.

Scholars Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum have recently written much about the importance of recognizing the trauma of labor and internment camps in North Africa during the second world war.

And I want to express my gratitude for their work. I want to share some of what they’ve written in a couple of recent articles.

In their words: “Nazism in Europe was underlaid by an intricate matrix of racist, eugenicist and nationalist ideas. But the war – and the Holocaust – appears even more complex if historians take into account the racist and violent color wheel that spun in North Africa.” [1]

France's prison camps in North Africa were filled with Algerians, local Jews, deported European Jews, Eastern European refugees, domestic political dissidents from France, people fleeing fascist Spain, Moroccan residents, Senegalese subjects of French rule, other West Africans displaced by French occupation, and more.

The anti-Blackness and antisemitism that had fueled Europe's colonial expansion was finding new expression in fascist Europe.

---

Seems France is a central antagonist in the story of evolving approaches to empire, racism, and resource extraction.

After their 1940 alliance with the Nazis, the Vichy French government maintained technical control of French colonies across Africa. Beginning in 1940, the French government “alone built nearly 70 such camps in the Sahara.” [1] This was in addition to another six labor camps which the French government built in West Africa (in Senegal, Guinea, and Mali).

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By the beginning of the twentieth century, French-influenced or -controlled territory in North Africa was home to around 500,000 Jews, many of whom had been living in the region for centuries or millennia, speaking many languages, “reflecting their many different cultures and ethnicities: Arabic, French, Tamazight – a Berber language – and Haketia, a form of Judeo-Spanish spoken in northern Morocco.” [1] The Vichy French government officially stripped North African Jews of formal citizenship and seized their assets.

Then, deporting residents of Europe and political dissidents in “early 1941, the Vichy authorities transferred hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees, including women and children, to the Saharan labor camps.” [2] Under French rule “in Algeria [...], it was estimated that 2,000-3,000 Jews were interned in camps [...] resulting in a total prisoner population of 15,000-20,000.” [2] France pursued an “unrealized dream of the nineteenth century” [2]: the completion of the Mediterranean-Niger railroad line in the Sahara, a transportation route across the vast desert to connect the prosperous West African port of Dakar with the Mediterranean coast of Algeria.

Meanwhile the “Vichy regime [...] continued racist policies begun by France’s Third Republic, which pushed young Black men from the empire into forced military service,” including forced recruitment from “Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and Mauritania; [...] Benin, Gambia and Burkina Faso; and Muslim men from Morocco and Algeria. In these ways, the French carried on a wartime campaign of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia, pairing these forms of racialized hatred from the colonial era with antisemitism. Antisemitism had deep roots in French and colonial history, but it found new force in the era of fascism.” [1]

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In late 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, the SS “imprisoned some 5,000 Jewish men in roughly 40 forced labor and detention camps on the front lines and in cities like Tunis.” [2] The fascist Italian government had been experimenting with racist and anti-Black policy in their colonization of East Africa; these policies were expanded in Libya. Here, “Mussolini ordered the Jews of Cyrenaica moved” as “most of the 2,600 Jews deported [...] were sent to the camp of Giado” while “other Libyan Jews were deported to the camps of Buqbuq and Sidi Azaz.” [2]

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Stein and Boum describe the diversity of prisoner experience: “In these camps, [...] the complex racist logic of Nazism and fascism took vivid form. Muslims arrested for anti-colonial activities were pressed into back-breaking labor” and “broke bread with other forced workers” including ‘Ukrainians, Americans, Germans, Russian Jews and others [...] arrested, deported and imprisoned by the Vichy regime after fleeing Franco’s Spain. There were political enemies of the Vichy and Nazi regime too, including socialists, communists, union members [...] overseen by [...] forcibly recruited [...] Moroccan and Black Senegalese men, who were often little more than prisoners themselves.” [1]

As Stein and Boum describe it: “Vichy North Africa became a unique site [...] where colonialism and fascism co-existed and overlapped.” [2]

They write: “Together, we have spent a decade gathering the voices of the diverse peoples who endured World War II in North Africa, across lines of race, class, language and region. Their letters, diaries, memoirs, poetry and oral histories are both defiant and broken. They express both faith and despair. All in all, they understood themselves to be trapped in a monstrous machine of fascism, occupation, violence and racism.” [1]

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[1]: Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “80 years ago, Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia - but North Africans’ experiences of World War II often go unheard.” The Conversation. 15 November 2022.

[2]: Sarah Arbevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “Labor and Internment Camps in North Africa.” Holocaust Encyclopedia online. Last edited 13 May 2019.

#holocaust remembrance day #swana

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itsmythang · 6 months

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Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Some characteristics of Fascism include a cult of personality at the top, a sense of victimhood, hyperbolic nationalism, control of the mass media, a disregard for human rights, a need to eliminate perceived enemies, and rigid traditional general roles. Regardless of whether they like it or not, no matter how they deny the truth, the Fascist Republican party is led by an Authoritarian they treat like a God.

He claims victimhood to justify calls for vengeance. He is a snowflake who screams everyone is out to get him. A hyperbolic sense of nationalism led directly to the violence of January 6 when he invited, incentivized, and sent Domestic Terrorists to attack the United States Capital. He dominates the media. They spread his lies, and are hyper-focused on his every breath.

Forced birth is a repression of human rights, and enforcement of rigid gender roles. The Fascist Republican Party believes opponents are “Vermin”, inhuman repose who should be eliminated. The truth is a bitter pill to swallow. Democrats are all that stand between the implementation of an Authoritarian who will surround himself with rabid yes-men.

They do not believe in Democracy. It is incumbent on all of us, our duty as part of a Civil Body Politic to speak Truth to Power: Fascist Republicans will end Democracy. The nation that is our heritage, our birthright, forged in blood, generational sacrifice, and sheer determination will not be recognizable. The Fascist Republican Party or Democrats. That is America’s real choice in 2024. Vote for Democrat Joseph R. Biden, or the Fascist Republican Donald John Trump who will be an authoritarian tyrant. If he wins the American Experiment will end.

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st-armand · 9 months

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Hobie Brown & Anarchism: A Discussion Pt 1

Authors Note: This is my dissertation for the discourse about Hobie’s politics being misrepresented as your friendly community radical leftist

Warnings: Political Ideologies, mentions of violence and oppression

Hobie Brown is an anarchist, he would be considered a radical leftist, not just by the ideological title of anarchism but by his own actions, he has killed cops, fascists, not just one, probably many considering the Oscorp and V.E.N.O.M worldbuilding where the police and military are symbiotes.

One of the primary bases for a fascist regime is a overly abundant police force, and the police worldwide are authoritarian figures meant to protect wealth and property not people.

Anarchists can go 70/40 on the violent revolutionary means discussion, but Hobart Brown is definitely pro revolutionary violence (we will define this later on), he doesn’t like violence in his everyday life but sees it as a measure to protect people, he also understands that not everyone’s place in the revolution is through armed liberation, but that all roles in the revolution violent or otherwise are all valuable to the end goal.

That being said a very contested discourse around radical leftist politics is the divide between Marxists/Maoists/Leninist etc vs Anarchists because Anarchists believe in a non-centralized, organizational systems, some anarchists can be anarcho-primitivists; they believe in a post-revolutionary society without the heavy industrialized civilization we have now I don’t think Hobie is, he enjoys technology too much to do so but he does believe in a social organization that is communally centralized, but regardless of his ideas of the organization of people post revolution he happily shares space and works in solidarity with leftists of other thinking and practices in the struggle and fight.

What is armed revolution and revolutionary violence? Armed revolution is the act of taking arms through guerrilla warfare, community protection, clandestine operations. Revolutionary violence is pretty self-explanatory, but these two interconnects as an understanding that liberation won’t come from within the systems that oppress us, and to instead arm the people towards liberating themselves from fascism, and state sanctioned violence.

I head canon that Hobie as Spiderman works within a clandestine underground armed forces with mixed ideologies and skillset, they’re all civilians who act as an unassuming threat who focus on assassinations and bank robberies, through those victories they help Spiderman redistribute funds.

Hobie’s praxis doesn’t just extend to revolutionary violence, but he puts labor into community gardens, refurbishing abandoned lots and buildings to be used as clinics, or schools, or housing, his skills especially are shown through his engineering and technical capabilities, like siphoning electricity from higher class neighborhoods for their buildings for free, fixing heating systems, or adapting heating and water systems so that they’re controlled in the community rather than by heating and water conglomerates.

He's also a part of a group of boosters who donate and barter clothes, food and other necessities, they sell their spoils in the middle of the people’s market.

Hobie is also the best comrade during protests, he’s a human shield whether as Spiderman or as a civilian, he’s the kind of person to go head to head with five police officers to de-arrest people who get snatched during protests, he’s returned with so many broken bones and large purple bruises from being wailed on by cops, but however much they hurt him, he can return much worse, especially with his enhanced strength, its actually a pretty cool sight, he’s more likely to kills cops while masked as spiderman, he’s almost entirely focused on defensive and evasive methods as an alternative since he has many warrants out for his arrest as Hobart Brown, but Spiderman has a list of federal and international offensives that he can easily navigate with the obscured identity.

During protests he’s evacuating people to safe zones, distracting cops from looters, defending people from being arrested, creating evasive plans to destroy or disable V.E.N.O.M. technology and weapons, he’s especially adept at guerilla warfare, navigating the skyline, sewers, and alleys of New London to gain a territorial advantage because the cops can’t traverse the projects and slums as easily as someone who lives in the grime of New London.

Books I think Hobie would’ve read;

Anarchism and the Black Revolution – Lenzo Ervin

A Soldier’s Story – Kuwasi Balagoon

Black Jacobins – CLR James

Conquest and Bread – Kroptokin

Anarchy & At the Café – Malatesta

More in the next parts! Platonic, Romance, Racial and Cultural

#hobie brown x reader #hobie headcanons #hobie brown x black!reader #across the spiderverse #miguel o’hara x reader #atsv #atsv hobie #armands sanctum

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magnetothemagnificent · 2 years

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I don't know if you're the right person to be asking, but I was hoping you could help me out with a question. Just saw an article on a Spanish town that was named "Fort Kill the Jews" and how a Jewish family moving in was "greeted" with bigoted graffiti. It brought to mind some old comments I had heard from some Jewish people on here (I think), which is that Spain has a very long history of antisemitism. Like, such a bad history with the Jewish people that antisemitism is baked into their actual culture (the tons and tons of pork dishes was one of the examples I got when I asked.)

I was wanting to know if you could provide any background to that, or confirm if there is any truth to it. Obviously, there is antisemitism there, considering a town with that name not only exists, but was allowed to stand with that name for 400 years. But as for the sheer volume and history of Spain's antisemitism, I haven't been able to find anything that provides a clear answer when I've Googled it. Mostly, it just pulls up articles of this current event and nothing else.

TLDR: my question is, I guess, is Spain as steeped in cultural antisemitism as I've been told?

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Spain has a long, long history of antisemitism, spanning not just from Christian rule but to even Muslim rule.

You may or may not have heard of the term "Sephardi Jews". Sephardi Jews are Jews who are descendents of those whose ancestors once made a home in the Iberian peninsula after the Jews were expelled from the land of Israel. "Sephardi" literally means "Spanish". Now, most Sephardi Jews today live in North Africa, West Asia, South West Asia, France, England, Israel, and the US. You may notice that Spain is not on the list. Why?

Well let me tell you about the Spanish Inquisition.

The Spanish Inquisition hit it's height in 1492, when the Alhambra Decree was enacted expelling all Jews and Muslims from Spain under the threat of death. Before that, Jews had slowly been being put in ghettos and restricted from public life across Spain.

But things didn't end once the Jews were purged in 1492. No, for the next few centuries, crypto-Jews, Jews who converted to Christianity but maintained their Jewish heritage, were persecuted and killed by the Spanish Inquisition. Many fled to the Americas and established communities in the Caribbean, South America, and Central America. But they still weren't safe from the Inquisition, because the Inquisition had control over the colonies as well. Many Jews died.

But there was antisemitism in Spain even before Christians took over. Jewish culture thrived in Al Andalus, but that doesn't mean antisemitism wasn't still a threat. Jewish people were at the mercy of whoever ruled at the time. Sometimes, they were friendly to the Jews. Sometimes, they weren't. And Jews were always subject to dhimmi laws which placed them as second-class citizens. Many people have heard of Samuel Ibn Naghrillah, the Jewish vizier and general to to King Badis Ibn Habus during the 10th century. He was regarded as one of the most influential Jews in Muslim Spain. But while he may have been able to attain great status despite his Dhimmitude, and was able to strengthen Jewish morale, there was still a lot of intense antisemitism within the people. When Samuel's son Joseph succeeded him, people let out their pent-up antisemitism. They were incensed that a Jew could hold such a high office. They crucified him on the city gates of Grenada, and massacred most of the Jewish population in the city.

But let's jump back to more recent times. During the Holocaust, Francisco Franco was the fascist ruler of Spain. While he may not have formally joined the Axis, he was a fascist and was sympathetic towards the Nazi movement. Under Franco, Jews were required to be registered to the government, and faced both governmental and social antisemitism.

And on a cultural level.....did you know that the reason Spanish food has so much pork and shellfish is because the Spanish would use it as a way to "sniff out" secret Jews and Muslims? Yeah. Let that sink in. It's that pervasive.

So yes, Spain is steeped in cultural and historic antisemitism.

Sources:

https://forward.com/news/9216/in-spain-inquisitors-tracked-conversos-by-their-fo/

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2430792/jewish/The-Spanish-Inquisition.htm

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-inquisition

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/samuel-ha-rsquo-nagid

#antisemitism #history #Spanish antisemitism #jewish history #spanish inquisition #spain #genocide

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dailyanarchistposts · 14 days

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A.2.8 Is it possible to be an anarchist without opposing hierarchy?

No. We have seen that anarchists abhor authoritarianism. But if one is an anti-authoritarian, one must oppose all hierarchical institutions, since they embody the principle of authority. For, as Emma Goldman argued, “it is not only government in the sense of the state which is destructive of every individual value and quality. It is the whole complex authority and institutional domination which strangles life. It is the superstition, myth, pretence, evasions, and subservience which support authority and institutional domination.” [Red Emma Speaks, p. 435] This means that “there is and will always be a need to discover and overcome structures of hierarchy, authority and domination and constraints on freedom: slavery, wage-slavery [i.e. capitalism], racism, sexism, authoritarian schools, etc.” [Noam Chomsky, Language and Politics, p. 364]

Thus the consistent anarchist must oppose hierarchical relationships as well as the state. Whether economic, social or political, to be an anarchist means to oppose hierarchy. The argument for this (if anybody needs one) is as follows:

“All authoritarian institutions are organised as pyramids: the state, the private or public corporation, the army, the police, the church, the university, the hospital: they are all pyramidal structures with a small group of decision-makers at the top and a broad base of people whose decisions are made for them at the bottom. Anarchism does not demand the changing of labels on the layers, it doesn’t want different people on top, it wants us to clamber out from underneath.” [Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action, p. 22]

Hierarchies “share a common feature: they are organised systems of command and obedience” and so anarchists seek “to eliminate hierarchy per se, not simply replace one form of hierarchy with another.” [Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, p. 27] A hierarchy is a pyramidally-structured organisation composed of a series of grades, ranks, or offices of increasing power, prestige, and (usually) remuneration. Scholars who have investigated the hierarchical form have found that the two primary principles it embodies are domination and exploitation. For example, in his classic article “What Do Bosses Do?” (Review of Radical Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 2), a study of the modern factory, Steven Marglin found that the main function of the corporate hierarchy is not greater productive efficiency (as capitalists claim), but greater control over workers, the purpose of such control being more effective exploitation.

Control in a hierarchy is maintained by coercion, that is, by the threat of negative sanctions of one kind or another: physical, economic, psychological, social, etc. Such control, including the repression of dissent and rebellion, therefore necessitates centralisation: a set of power relations in which the greatest control is exercised by the few at the top (particularly the head of the organisation), while those in the middle ranks have much less control and the many at the bottom have virtually none.

Since domination, coercion, and centralisation are essential features of authoritarianism, and as those features are embodied in hierarchies, all hierarchical institutions are authoritarian. Moreover, for anarchists, any organisation marked by hierarchy, centralism and authoritarianism is state-like, or “statist.” And as anarchists oppose both the state and authoritarian relations, anyone who does not seek to dismantle all forms of hierarchy cannot be called an anarchist. This applies to capitalist firms. As Noam Chomsky points out, the structure of the capitalist firm is extremely hierarchical, indeed fascist, in nature:

“a fascist system… [is] absolutist — power goes from top down … the ideal state is top down control with the public essentially following orders. “Let’s take a look at a corporation… [I]f you look at what they are, power goes strictly top down, from the board of directors to managers to lower managers to ultimately the people on the shop floor, typing messages, and so on. There’s no flow of power or planning from the bottom up. People can disrupt and make suggestions, but the same is true of a slave society. The structure of power is linear, from the top down.” [Keeping the Rabble in Line, p. 237]

David Deleon indicates these similarities between the company and the state well when he writes:

“Most factories are like military dictatorships. Those at the bottom are privates, the supervisors are sergeants, and on up through the hierarchy. The organisation can dictate everything from our clothing and hair style to how we spend a large portion of our lives, during work. It can compel overtime; it can require us to see a company doctor if we have a medical complaint; it can forbid us free time to engage in political activity; it can suppress freedom of speech, press and assembly — it can use ID cards and armed security police, along with closed-circuit TVs to watch us; it can punish dissenters with ‘disciplinary layoffs’ (as GM calls them), or it can fire us. We are forced, by circumstances, to accept much of this, or join the millions of unemployed… In almost every job, we have only the ‘right’ to quit. Major decisions are made at the top and we are expected to obey, whether we work in an ivory tower or a mine shaft.” [“For Democracy Where We Work: A rationale for social self-management”, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), pp. 193–4]

Thus the consistent anarchist must oppose hierarchy in all its forms, including the capitalist firm. Not to do so is to support archy — which an anarchist, by definition, cannot do. In other words, for anarchists, ”[p]romises to obey, contracts of (wage) slavery, agreements requiring the acceptance of a subordinate status, are all illegitimate because they do restrict and restrain individual autonomy.” [Robert Graham, “The Anarchist Contract, Reinventing Anarchy, Again, Howard J. Ehrlich (ed.), p. 77] Hierarchy, therefore, is against the basic principles which drive anarchism. It denies what makes us human and “divest[s] the personality of its most integral traits; it denies the very notion that the individual is competent to deal not only with the management of his or her personal life but with its most important context: the social context.” [Murray Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 202]

Some argue that as long as an association is voluntary, whether it has a hierarchical structure is irrelevant. Anarchists disagree. This is for two reasons. Firstly, under capitalism workers are driven by economic necessity to sell their labour (and so liberty) to those who own the means of life. This process re-enforces the economic conditions workers face by creating “massive disparities in wealth … [as] workers… sell their labour to the capitalist at a price which does not reflect its real value.” Therefore:

“To portray the parties to an employment contract, for example, as free and equal to each other is to ignore the serious inequality of bargaining power which exists between the worker and the employer. To then go on to portray the relationship of subordination and exploitation which naturally results as the epitome of freedom is to make a mockery of both individual liberty and social justice.” [Robert Graham, Op. Cit., p. 70]

It is for this reason that anarchists support collective action and organisation: it increases the bargaining power of working people and allows them to assert their autonomy (see section J).

Secondly, if we take the key element as being whether an association is voluntary or not we would have to argue that the current state system must be considered as “anarchy.” In a modern democracy no one forces an individual to live in a specific state. We are free to leave and go somewhere else. By ignoring the hierarchical nature of an association, you can end up supporting organisations based upon the denial of freedom (including capitalist companies, the armed forces, states even) all because they are “voluntary.” As Bob Black argues, ”[t]o demonise state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst.” [The Libertarian as Conservative, The Abolition of Work and other essays, p. 142] Anarchy is more than being free to pick a master.

Therefore opposition to hierarchy is a key anarchist position, otherwise you just become a “voluntary archist” — which is hardly anarchistic. For more on this see section A.2.14 ( Why is voluntarism not enough?).

Anarchists argue that organisations do not need to be hierarchical, they can be based upon co-operation between equals who manage their own affairs directly. In this way we can do without hierarchical structures (i.e. the delegation of power in the hands of a few). Only when an association is self-managed by its members can it be considered truly anarchistic.

We are sorry to belabour this point, but some capitalist apologists, apparently wanting to appropriate the “anarchist” name because of its association with freedom, have recently claimed that one can be both a capitalist and an anarchist at the same time (as in so-called “anarcho” capitalism). It should now be clear that since capitalism is based on hierarchy (not to mention statism and exploitation), “anarcho”-capitalism is a contradiction in terms. (For more on this, see Section F)

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unhelpfulfemme · 10 months

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Okay, but do you know all the weird takes about how it's kinda okay that the Empire is a fascist hellscape run by a sadistic death cultist because unlike the Republic they also abolished slavery and that's the reason Anakin/Vader supports it?

I can actually see this being true if Sheev had a little lightbulb moment in the middle of some kind of anti-slavery tirade of Anakin's and transformed it into a brilliant authoritarian policy strategy, because, look, if you think about it most OT-era works portray slavery in the form of prison labor and death camps, not Tattooine-style slavery that Anakin experienced.

In fact, I would be completely unsurprised if the early Empire on one hand cracked down on trad slavery harder than the Republic ever did just for the PR points (you see? Our GLORIOUSLY STRONG REGIME can now DEAL WITH CRIME in ways the Republic could only dream of!) while constructing a huge machinery of exploitative prison labor and a justice system that sends you there for any small infraction or any hint of dissidence (as portrayed in Andor) on the other.

This would also do what Palpatine best loves doing - further centralize power, because while slaveowners work for their own personal interests and seem to often be criminal cartels, if the slave labor is prison labor it's the authoritarian state that's controlling the, uh, means of production.

And, more importantly, Anakin would be completely untroubled by this, because if there's one thing that we know about Anakin, it's that he is 100% cool with people being treated very cruelly as long as they're bad people.

In fact, this should probably have been a Clone Wars arc, except so many people IRL are fully onboard the "it's okay to give inhumane treatment to criminals/bad people" bandwagon that it would probably have been widely misunderstood.

Also, no real world parallels at all here! Nothing to say about the for-profit prison systems and how they tie into slavery, nope!

#star wars #star wars andor #anakin skywalker #darth vader #sheev palpatine #tcw

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anarchywoofwoof · 8 months

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As you learn a new skill or your brain intakes further information, a complex dance of chemicals, cells, and physiological reactions begins.

An insulating layer forms around each nerve cell in the brain and spinal cord called Myelin. As you learn or begin to understand information, the myelination process reinforces new neural pathways. Myelin forms a thick sheath of protein and fat that acts in the way that an insulator around an electrical cable would, strengthening and speeding electrical signaling in the nerve pathways that connect one neuron to the next.

In addition to the formation of myelin, novel experiences cause a rush of Dopamine, a neurotransmitter, in the brain’s ventral tegmental area. From there, it’s released into the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine is the chemical that mediates pleasure and, thus, is often referred to as the “pleasure chemical,” but this is a misnomer, and the assertion is flawed; dopamine doesn’t actually produce pleasure. It does, however, reinforce feelings of pleasure by connecting sensations of pleasure to certain behaviors.

It is, nonetheless, an indisputable fact that a wealth of dopamine has been expended, afforded, and consumed in this journey. And it is no less accurate that the nerve cells within my mind are as well reinforced as the most secure of bank vaults. They remain securely guarded, cased in myelin as they travel through vast regions of what some might call superfluous space, occupied by names and dates and facts and figures stored away haphazardly like dusty manila folders, crammed into overflowing taupe squares, stacked thrice tall and teetering ominously.

This, of course, a parable to the chaos that rests somewhere between the frames of my eyeglasses and my central nervous system.

But standing – and note, I do mean standing, as nary a Midwestern gale or fascist shoulder could upend me – here on the far side of a disaster twice removed, I can make a declaration of sorts:

“To be optimistic in such exceptionally pessimistic times is a unique, beautiful, and rewarding insanity.”

Do not mistake this for placidity or stubborn positivity in the face of a wholly negative reality. It is accurate and valid that you will find yourself in moments that do not warrant a positive perspective. In these moments, the key is empathy, care, validation, love, support, and rebuilding when the time is right. There is a warranted time to despair.

Despair; “to be overcome by a sense of futility or defeat.”

Despair naturally destroys courage and stops all effort, yes, but what lies underneath could very well be a kind of courage and intense activity founded upon the sense that there is nothing worse to be feared. Quoting George Eliot, “What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” To be greeted with these feelings in our darkest times, when the understanding that there is no recourse of action left but to endure, is to be wrapped in the embrace of a love whose absence was largely unrecognized.

Thus, I look to hope, eager and famished, seeking respite. And in my quest for hope, I find all I need and more. When I turn to myself and take inventory of the tools I have at my disposal and the control I have over my own destiny, I am at peace. The choices are not easy; the road is not paved in gold, but what road is? And so I forge ahead in the name of those too tired to carry on, knowing the tacit agreement must be fulfilled, that we must do it for ourselves & thus, each other.

#text #bork bork thoughts

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workersolidarity · 8 months

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youtube

In case you feel like being completely sickened by the deprivation of the US Empire in its quest to remain a Global Hegemon, learn how the CIA engineered the Coup against Allende in Chile on Sept. 11th 1973, or how the US recruited (surprise!) literal Nazis from Germany who escaped to South America after the War to coup and destabilize Socialist governments across the Global South.

Nothing really new. We know for instance that various Nazi Commanders, U-Boat Commanders, Panzer Corps. Staff Officers and even a Goebbels Assistant were all recruited by NATO and became Commanders-in-Chief of Allied Forces in Central Europe and AFNORTH such as Friedrich Guggenberger, Sturmfuhrer Dr. Eberhard Taubert, Johann Von Kielmansegg, Karl Schnell, Ernst Ferber, Franz Joseph Schulze, Ferdinand Von Senger und Etterline, and Hans Speidel.

All were prominent Nazi Commanders, all became prominent NATO Commanders.

NATO is an Offensive Fascist Alliance. The US is a Fascist Empire.

The US is and has been for a long long time, a Fascist Empire with a smile, with useless elections where Wall Street controls the ballot so the outcome doesn't have to be controlled.

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morally-grey-girlbosses · 8 months

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Propaganda under the cut.

Morgan Le Fay

Sure she may have come up with several plots to kill her sister King Arthur and also had her child through the use of merlin the dick wizard but she is hot and people tolerate her she also calls herself your wife no matter your gander

Edelgard Von Hresvelg

we love an axe user 🙏 she has a whole alter ego/persona just for conspiracy against the church. yeahhh she does a little murder but like, she’s kinda right

Caused insane discourse over whether she was right or wrong that has been going on for four years and will never stop.

She declared a war against the church and the class system of the continent, because she wants a better world, and that's nice she looked hot while doing it too, but her methods are questionable.

#poll #tournament poll #round 1 #morgan le fay #fate grand order #fgo #edelgard von hresvelg #fe3h edelgard #fire emblem #fe3h

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mariacallous · 1 month

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Turkish politics is interesting again. For years, Turkey’s opposition was moribund. Under the leadership of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) had trouble attracting more than 25 percent to 30 percent of voters.

Then suddenly, last weekend, the opposition broke through. It’s not just that the CHP held on to mayoralties in big cities such as Ankara, Izmir, and Istanbul, where the sitting mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, has established himself as the most dynamic Turkish politician since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was himself mayor in the mid-1990s. Making matters worse for the Turkish leader, the CHP and other parties soundly defeated mayors from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 15 other municipalities.

Just five years ago, the AKP’s orange almost entirely covered Turkey’s local electoral map across a wide belt from east to west and in a mostly uninterrupted swath from north to south in the middle of Anatolia. Now the party controls barely contiguous blots of orange from 15 provinces stretching from the northeast to the central part of the country where it hits a thick wall of CHP red. And despite Erdogan’s best efforts to undermine Kurdish politicians, the purple of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) dominates the southeastern quadrant of Anatolia. The royal blue of the fascist-adjacent Nationalist Movement Party appears as eight disparate splotches across the landscape. Although pictures allegedly tell a thousand words, the Turkish electoral map needs just one: drubbing.

Yet the results of Sunday’s vote were unexpected. Not because the AKP is strong. It is, in fact, a shell of the dynamic party with a compelling vision of Turkey’s future that it once was. That AKP is long gone. Rather, Erdogan and his party have been able to prevail over the last dozen or so years because he has become a practiced and shrewd authoritarian who leveraged the press, the courts, and parliamentary procedure to make it more difficult for the opposition to compete. He also employed a fair amount of intimidation and violence against opponents.

It is a testament to the political fortitude of Turks and the continuing strength of Turkey’s democratic practices—without the country actually qualifying as a democracy—that people still came out in droves last weekend to register their disapproval of Erdogan and the AKP. At least for the moment, Turkish voters have tempered the idea that the current age is one of illiberalism in which non-democratic leaders can leverage seemingly democratic institutions to advance anti-democratic agendas and consolidate their power. Erdogan was at the leading edge of this phenomenon (even before Hungary’s Viktor Orban became the poster boy for electoral authoritarianism) but now confronts the most serious rebuke of his political career. For the first time in many years, without stretching credulity analysts can imagine what a post-AKP Turkey might look like.

It is actually worse for Erdogan than one thinks. While there are plenty of losers in Sunday’s election, there is really only one clear winner: Imamoglu. Imamoglu scored a thumping 51 percent victory against the AKP’s Murat Kurum, who received 39 percent. This result was not, in fact, a race between Imamoglu and Kurum; it was a contest between Imamoglu and Erdogan. In his effort to support Kurum, Erdogan employed every strategy, including sending 17 cabinet ministers to campaign in the city, as well as making numerous appearances himself. The pro-Erdogan media did their best not to provide coverage of Imamoglu out on the hustings. None of this prevented him gaining one out of two votes in a race where more than 8 million citizens voted, however. The mayor’s reelection represents his third consecutive victory (twice in 2019) in contests with Erdogan’s hand-picked candidates and, for the AKP, the most worrying.

Imamoglu is the political rival the Turkish president fears most, and he is the most likely to challenge Erdogan for the presidency, currently scheduled for 2028. His 51 percent result far exceeds the national support for the CHP. It is hard not to wonder, had Imamoglu been at the top of the opposition’s ticket during the May 2023 presidential election instead of the hapless Kilicdaroglu, how different Turkey might look today. It is plausible that last Sunday, President Imamoglu would have congratulated the opposition on a strong showing. Imamoglu’s victory over Kurum was about the same percentage difference (~10 percent) that Imamoglu was projected to win the presidency had he been the nominee to challenge Erdogan.

Whether Imamoglu will be in a position to face off against Erdogan remains an open question, though. Imamoglu could be banned from holding political office if a frivolous lawsuit that a prosecutor filed against him in 2019 is upheld by an appeals court. If the court upholds the lower court’s decision, it will prevent Imamoglu from running against Erdogan or remaining mayor of Istanbul.

Given the vehemence with which Erdogan had vowed to retake Istanbul and Ankara ever since those cities were lost to the opposition, it is shocking that Erdogan failed. But it is not necessarily surprising. The AKP fielded terrible mayoral candidates who lacked charisma and were perceived to be out of touch with voter sentiment. To compensate for the AKP’s C-team lineup, Erdogan assumed a role of campaigner-in-chief and attempted to be the candidate behind the candidate in many mayoral races. Powerful may be Erdogan’s rhetorical skills, but they could not make up for the crushing economic conditions felt by citizens, notably consumer inflation over 120 percent.

Behind the tough economic times, it seems that after almost 22 years, Erdogan and the AKP have worn out their welcome. Long gone on the stump is Erdogan’s positive vision of Turkey’s future. In its place are a bevy of threats bellowing to crowds that if they did not vote for the AKP, then he would suspend local government services. The bad candidates, the terrible economy, and Erdogan’s bellicosity all came crashing down on Sunday. Not only did Imamoglu romp in Istanbul, but the CHP incumbent in Ankara, Mansur Yavas, crushed his AKP opponent by almost 30 points, and the opposition turned over what were thought to be AKP strongholds throughout the country.

Can Erdogan do anything to turn this grim picture around? It seems unlikely. A man who has always rebounded from political downturns, like the coup attempt (2016) and the Gezi Park protests (2013), appears to be politically weakened beyond repair. In the early hours of April Fools’ Day, Erdogan delivered a concession speech in Ankara, which many TV channels switched away from, as Imamoglu began his victory speech in Istanbul at the same time. While Erdogan looked deflated and worn, Imamoglu was full of energy, addressing a jubilant sea of voters. Yet Erdogan was not prepared to take the defeat lying down. Just hours after the election, sought to block the winner in the city of Van’s mayoral race==from the Kurdish-based DEM Party—in favor of the AKP candidate who lost badly. Violence broke out until the High Election Board demonstrated atypical spine in the face of Erdogan’s pressure and recognized the rightful winner.

Going forward, there are not many good options for Erdogan. If he taps the court to ban Imamoglu, this could result in a massive public backlash, well beyond the boundaries of Istanbul. Similarly, removing Imamoglu does not alter the CHP-dominated electoral map of Turkey that has appeared. True, these were local elections and not necessarily determinative of a national race, but Erdogan would not risk an early presidential race now. Attempting to reset the AKP to its factory settings and returning to 2002 will not work. The entire AKP brand is tarnished by corruption, arrogance, and Erdogan’s authoritarianism. Never count Erdogan out, but it does seem that Turkey is on the cusp of a new era. Erdogan will cling to office, but it seems clear that the future now lies with Imamoglu.

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