#or like. We Generally Agree That Antisemitism Is Bad

[rustchild]

ok i get the desire to push back against annoying dominant christian interpretations of the torah/old testament. i really do. however i also wish that people would stop being like “actually, the jewish perspective on this is--” before listing off one (1) jewish perspective, usually either reform or humanistic, that also happens to be the most politically convenient and moral according to the standards of tumblr. like y’all if anyone tells you that there is only one jewish interpretation of something you should know that they are probably wrong, there’s at least one jew out there who would vehemently disagree with them, and also judaism is a complex living culture that you really should not put on a pedestal

#like. yes the binding of isaac can be interpreted as a test that abraham failed. that's one interpretation #discussed in some sects by some rabbis #however. #there very much are also jews who interpret it as #a sign that jews specifically must be ready to sacrifice anything for g-d #in order to hold up our end of the covenant #there are jews who interpret it in completely different ways as well #like i can't list out all of them because #i don't know them #and am not a theologian or rabbi or even all that observant #so my interpretation isn't going to be very helpful #but can we please not oversimplify judaism to present it as the Good Abrahamic ReligionTM #it's a complex living tradition with a whole wide range of different ideas #some of which i personally hate! #because that's culture for you! #the one exception to the 'one jewish belief on x' thing is like #messianics #we basically all do not like messianics #or like. We Generally Agree That Antisemitism Is Bad #but when it comes to biblical interpretation? #four jews twelve opinions #always #jewish things #something something leftist philosemitism

[blackpearlblast]

hey, if my ask is insensitive or simply too much work/you dont want to give your opinion/energy thats ok, and im sorry for bothering you if it is. ive seen many jewish people say "from the river to the sea" is a dogwhistle/generally antisemitic phrase to use, but you used it in your golem art's text part(incredibly moving text btw.) im asking you bc you mentioned youre jewish and i thought you might have insight or thoughts to give on why you use it/what you think about the first statement about the phrase?

hi, yes, i would be glad to talk about my perspective on this! first of all, i do want to say that i think a lot of palestinian bloggers have already talked about this and their voices will always be what you want to seek out first when educating yourself. however, i do know the crowd of people claiming that "from the river to the sea" is antisemitic/genocidal has been very loud so i understand why you would want to hear a jewish perspective on it too. second, in order to explain why i think "from the river to the sea" is not antisemitic will involve me comparing it to actual antisemitic, nazi slogans and dogwhistles and talking about what they mean. so just a heads up for that before it comes up.

the full phrase is "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free!" i think a lot of times in accusations of antisemitism people leave off the second half of the phrase in order to claim it is calling for something else to happen from river to sea (like the expulsion or execution of all jews.) but that's just like, not, ever, a thing? that is said? you can tell the pieces of the phrase go together because they rhyme and also are said together by palestinians and allies near constantly. it's "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free." and i think all of the fearmongering relies on a good bit of ambiguity beyond that too. "what does a 'free palestine' mean? could it meant they want to throw all the jews into the sea?" - some zionist when i tried to look up the origin of the phrase in case there was anything really important i was missing that i should cover in this. there's like this idea that they can't really be asking for a free palestine, there has to be some kind of catch.

i think it's also important to look at the circumstances that this slogan was born under. the thing about modern day palestine and occupied palestine, on which israel tries to build itself, is that even though spatially the land stretches from river to sea, the people's experience of it does not. because of the apartheid system of checkpoints, ID-based restriction of movement, and blockades (in the case of gaza), there exist great gulfs in the land that are impossible or near impossible for people to cross. there can be a place a couple miles away, that due to lacking the "proper credentials", is more distant for palestinians living under apartheid than perhaps a destination a cross-country trip away would be for you. so i see the call for a free palestine specifically "from river to sea" to remove those gulfs and allow freedom of movement for everyone. i find very little of this has to do with jews, personally. the only connection is that the people who set up and maintain this system of apartheid happened to be jewish. and i hope that we would all agree that resisting one's oppressors- even if those oppressors are also marginalized and oppressed in other ways- is not a bad thing.

but it is true that many white supremacist/antisemitic slogans may focus more on the creation of a (white) nation than actually the jews themselves, since they have already established among themselves that a white nation has to mean no jews. so let's look at some of the more famous nazi rallying cries and how different they are from "from the river to the sea."

the fourteen words are most primarily known to be "we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." wow! i guess we could find some superficial similarities between this and river and the sea, like if we really wanted to stretch it. but personally, there's a ton of alarm bells in my head that this phrase sets off while river to the sea doesn't. the emphasis of "we" and "our" when used in this way really implies an us versus them narrative. and here the ambiguity really is present and malevolent! a "free palestine" is a palestine unrestricted by apartheid and colonialism. a "secure existence" and "future for white children" is uhhh, what does that Mean. like, we Know what that means right. but they aren't saying it. we can very easily find people saying what a free palestine means if we listen to palestinians. please, please listen to palestinians. there are so many people talking about what their idea of a decolonized palestine looks like, but the basics are generally one state, for all people, with equal rights for all, and the ability for those who were expelled from their homes in the nakba and all of the many long years following it, to return.

"blood and soil" is even vaguer. but thankfully(?), nazis were very enthusiastic about explaining what the phrase meant to them. "blood" is the superior aryan bloodlines and eugenic values that they wished to propagate and the "soil" represents the land of germany and the desire to "reject modernity and embrace tradition" by leaving urban life behind and living in the idealized countryside. (see we got a twofer here!) the only possible connection i could make to from the river to the sea here is the emphasis on the land but that on its own doesn't feel significant to me. land and the place where you live is very important to all kinds of humans all over the world. and i think another particular aspect of "blood and soil" is the emphasis of how you are living on the land. it's not just enough to be able to live in your homeland with freedom of movement and the ability not to be killed with impunity by occupying soldiers (lucky you!), you want to live there in a state of racial purity exemplified by eugenic values. in general, in nazi slogans, there is a particular fixation with a society shaped to represent these specific values. the call is not for freedom from repression, from an actual occupying colony, but instead from the considered bad actors and impure values coming from within their society. freedom from having degenerates sullying their perfect aryan nation. there is a plea to be able to get rid of those who do not match their view of a perfect society. the plea for a free palestine is, so much, a plea to be able to keep their family members, their friends, the friendly stranger down the block. that is not a fascist ideology, that is the will to live. and though i am referring to the ideology surrounding "blood and soil" in past tense because i am referencing the coining of the phase, these sentiments and slogans are obviously (and unfortunately) alive and well today. though, there is a particular irony to white american neo-nazis chanting it on stolen land.

"they will not replace us"/"jews will not replace us" refers to the "great replacement" theory, that jews are orchestrating a mass replacement of white people with immigrants (specifically non-white, often muslim immigrants.) i do not think this slogan has even any superficial similarities to from the river to the sea. you could definitely compare this sentiment to israel's attempts to maintain an artificial ethnic majority, since in many ways the potential "solution" to the "great replacement" would also need to involve creating/maintaining an artificial ethnic majority. (this is obviously not saying that israel subscribes to the great replacement theory, but that the tactic of maintaining artificial ethnic majorities is shared between zionism and great replacement theorists, since both ideologies rely on a specific ethnicity being the majority in their country.)

dogwhistles like 88, triple parenthesis, etc. rely on being vague symbols so that only those who know what the symbols stand for know what they mean. (88=HH=heil hitler, the triple parentheses representing the supposed (((echoes))) of jewish influence throughout history.) "from the river to the sea, palestine will be free" is a complete phrase that directly names its cause. people who say "free palestine" want you to know they stand with palestine. i guess if you wanted to be going for the most bad faith reading possible you could say "free palestine from what?", to which every palestinian and everyone who has been remotely paying attention to what palestinians are saying would shout: "from apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and currently, very open and deliberate genocide!" like, it is true that if you felt you did not glean every aspect and detail of what the people in the occupied territories are calling for, you would be correct! but they are answering this. they want to talk about it. the reason i do not believe from the river to the sea is genocidal or antisemitic is because i have been reading and listening to what palestinians are saying and none of them have said they want to kill all jews. they do not want genocide, they want to go home! they just want to go home. i don't know most of this was written pretty tongue in cheek because i was talking about nazi slogans and nazis are pathetic and even more pathetic when held up against a movement of people who are legitimately trying to fight against a great wrong that was committed against them, but i just get so sad saying this. they just want to go home. haven't you ever felt that way before?

in the end, words mean things, and even more importantly, the contexts they're said in mean things. and while it's true that antisemites do hide behind dogwhistles and vague statements for plausible deniability, the alternative meaning does have to actually be established somewhere for them to be effective. from the river to the sea lacks an established alternative meaning. fearmongering from people who refuse to listen to what palestinians are actually saying does not make sense to me as legitimate definitions of the phrase.

also!!!! i'm sorry this got so Fucking long, thank you if you actually made it this far! i intentionally used "from the river to the sea" in my artists statement because it frustrates and upsets me so much to see people making such a big fuss about it when actual antisemitism goes unpunished. like a lot of the phrases i talk about here were chanted at the charlottesville neo-nazi march in 2017 and while many people were deeply upset and angry at what happened, the jewish community was not rallied around even Close to as much as it right now. and with joe biden saying "if it weren't for israel, not a single jew in the world would be safe" at a fucking hanukkah celebration i just. i don't know. the push back against "from the river to the sea" has so much to do with backing colonial and imperial interests and so so little to do with our actual safety. the concept of our identities and safety is being weaponized against palestinians, and at the same time makes it harder to identify actual antisemitism. and that hurts.

#received #no sources and minimal proofreading because i already spent way too long on this but everything i mention #should either be easily google-able or my opinion #nazism #antisemitism #racism #islamophobia #ask to tag

[antianakin]

What are your favorite and most hated tropes?

In general?

I don't know that I've thought about it that much, honestly. I personally believe that tropes are (mostly) neutral and any trope can be either really incredible or really awful depending on the context of the story and how well executed it is.

The only ones I hate are the blatantly offensive ones, all of the sexist, racist, antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic tropes that we all tend to know about.

In Star Wars specifically, I obviously hate the trope of blaming the Jedi for everything unironically. I don't mind looking at how the Jedi were turned into scapegoats by Palpatine and the galaxy and how regular people might often end up blaming the Jedi for things because they genuinely just don't know any better (a galaxy is a big place and misinformation is obviously quite rampant). But I don't care for the trope that's starting to show up WAY too often where the narrative SUPPORTS that the Jedi are to blame for the things that happened to them and to the galaxy. I particularly hate all of the Jedi survivors scapegoating themselves (and again here, it's one thing when it's an Inquisitor who's been broken and tortured into thinking this way or a Fallen Jedi like Bode and Malicos who are explicitly already evil says something like this, but it's another thing for Cal to agree with them or for Yoda to blame the Jedi for the war).

I'm also starting to get really tired of the clones and Jedi just getting killed off for pathos over and over again when it isn't actually necessary and actually probably makes the story worse sometimes. I dunno if that counts as a trope or not, but whatever, I'm putting it here.

Other than that, I feel like I'm generally fairly neutral on tropes. Any trope can be done really well or really serve a particular story, there's no trope (outside of the ones that are based on prejudice and bigotry) that is inherently bad all the time or inherently great all the time. A trope I might really love in one story might feel really corny in another, and vice versa. It's almost never the trope's fault that it doesn't work. "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn this way" and all that.

#star wars #jedi #pro jedi #tropes

[matan4il]

It seems like there are a lot of good reasons to dislike the security council’s resolution but I disagree somewhat with the sssertion that “it’s bad because Hamas likes it” mainly because that’s kind of operating on the same the logic of antisemitic leftists

I.E “if bad people like it that means it’s bad”

The US military and Republican Party supported Israel up until recently that doesn’t mean the state is inherently evil at its core or needs to be destroyed.

This ask is in relation to my update post about the anti-Israel UN resolution allowed to pass the other day.

Anon, beyond my general impression, that the US military does not support any country independent of US foreign policy, and that the Republican Party is not a hivemind any more than the Democratic Party is, I also wouldn't think that either body deserves to be compared to a genocidal, antisemitic, Islamist terrorist organization, responsible for the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, which is also likely the second deadliest terrorist attack ever.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not attacking this ask, I do agree that normally, "person I have reservations about likes thing X, therefore X is bad" isn't a good criterion, but Hamas is truly so much worse than most "bad guys" you can think of. As a Jew and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I think today, Hamas is probably closer to the legacy of the Nazis than even most neo-Nazi groups, because while the latter more closely adopted the genocidal ideology of Hitler, Hamas are the ones actually carrying out regular terrorist and rocket attacks, and perpetrated a massacre, that are driven by their desire to kill every single Jew there is. So, when the closest thing we have today to the Nazis likes something, I think that carries far more weight than what the average "bad guys" like (not even getting into the fact that in many cases, "bad guys" is a pretty subjective term).

But more than that, I wasn't bringing Hamas' joy up as a way of generally basing my assessment, of whether the resolution is good or bad, on who supports it (though I obviously think this does add to everything else I pointed out in my post), I'm saying the fact that a genocidal, antisemitic, Islamist terrorist organization was so encouraged by the resolution, that its leader was standing the following day in Teheran in front of cameras without any fear, announcing that this is proof Israel can't even achieve its diplomatic goals, let alone its military and strategic ones, THAT is hella worrying. Especially if you consider that other Islamist terrorist organizations are watching and learning from what Hamas is getting away with. That's why I didn't say, "this should concern anyone supporting Israel." It should concern all of us who do not wish to see terrorist organizations, which have no regard for the value of human life, learn from and be motivated by Hamas' perceived success.

I hope that helps brings across my point better!

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

#israel #antisemitism #israeli #israel news #israel under attack #israel under fire #terrorism #anti terrorism #hamas #antisemitic #antisemites #jews #jew #judaism #jumblr #frumblr #jewish #israelunderattack #ask #anon ask

[txttletale]

Re: your Jewish anon as a Jewish communist, myself. I think people (including our community) greatly overestimate the antisemitism in the USSR in comparison to the treatment of Jews and antisemitic policy in the western Capitalist world. Antisemitism in the west was codified and socially accepted in all facets of life. I think it’s ridiculous that we as Western Jews (or anyone in the West, for that matter) can criticize the USSR while ignoring the antisemitic violence and discrimination proliferating in the West.

While antisemitism in Eastern Europe was already popular (as you mentioned, Imperial Russia was aggressively antisemitic) after the USSR had been formed, I genuinely that there were efforts made to curb antisemitism. Most notably, material aid, access to public commodities, and integration into the academic and working world. Simultaneously in America during this time, we see continued barring of Jews from academia and legal “gentile only” businesses, resorts, and golf courses. The west was/is also responsible for the harboring of nazi scientists after the Holocaust, and then manufacturing double-genocide theories to delegitimize it.

Furthermore, immigration in the United States requires us to declare that we have no ties or allegiance to, past or present, Communist organizations. If our ancestors were to get into the United States, they would’ve had to state this (truth or not). These lies often pass down to our generation. Many of us are also told that our ancestors had their names changed due to immigration services not understanding them, where in reality this too is often a lie (many Jews changed their names as a way to prevent antisemitism). My point is that the narratives we hear from our ancestors are not always fully truthful and ways to keep us safe; while some of the these narratives are truthful, we also have to evaluate beyond the anecdotal. I have no reservations in stating that the average Jew enjoyed more freedoms in the USSR than the United States in the mid-1900’s. Sorry to rant Shavua tov :]

i am always personally wary of understating the antisemitism of the USSR, but--just like all its social ills--i definitely agree it gets exceptionalised in bad faith by anticommunists who have nothing to say about the concurrect equally bad or in some cases much worse treatment of jewish people in the capitalist world ! thanks for sharing your perspective -- i appreciate hearing it :)

#ask

[ghostpalmtechnique]

I regret to inform you that prejudice (of the banal traditional kind) is not inherently right-wing

I.

Karl Marx wrote:

...Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement. We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism...

Iosif Stalin's death, not long after his fabrication of the Doctors' Plot, spared the world from another wave of the great terror specifically against Jews. Even with him gone, discrimination against Jews remained the de facto policy of the USSR until its dissolution. And de jure policy, if one includes the fact that Soviet internal passports featured one's nationality, and Jews (except for the children of mixed marriages) were not allowed to identify as "Russian", "Ukrainian", etc.

If your definition of the ideological Left and Right does not place Karl Marx and Iosif Stalin on the left, your classification system has effectively lost all meaning.

II.

I don't want to pick on Twitter user rev_avocado (who generally writes mostly good things) in particular; this is an example of a more widespread phenomenon. I made this post now after reading the Sam Kriss essay posted by @prudencepaccard and @triviallytrue. I thought the essay was 98% excellent. The one flaw, in my view, is this one. It posits one specific psychological mechanism to explain the bad behavior of some left-wing Westerners on social media. It's not even that it cites a reason to dismiss the possibility that perhaps even a small fraction of these people genuinely don't value Jewish lives; it's that it never even considers the possibility in order to dismiss it. I suspect this is because some people just assume that prejudice against Jews is inherently right-wing.  "My comrades are left-wing; ipso facto they cannot be antisemitic.”

And. It. Just. Isn't. So. [x] (Sadly, I cannot agree with Corey Robin that this is exclusive to Europe. Possibly, if he wrote that post now, he wouldn't either.)

Lest there be any confusion about the point of this post, I emphatically do not think that those like rev_avocado or Sam Kriss are themselves displaying antisemitism.

You know those polls where they asked people how common cheating in school was, and the people who themselves never cheated assumed everyone was like them, and said it was rare, while the cheaters assumed everyone was like them, and said it was near-universal? I think this explains both some of the utterly counterproductive celebrations of civilian massacres and the bafflement of the people marveling at their tactical insanity.

Again, to be as clear as possible about this, the vile people are the ones with an incorrect perception. Antisemitism is obviously much less common on the left (well, the social-democratic left; Tankies are horrible about this, but Tankies are horrible about everything) than on the right. But I would greatly appreciate it if the left-wingers who are ostensibly my friends and/or comrades would stop reflexively assuming that the number of leftists who despise me for my ethnicity is zero. It is a minority, but that is not the same thing as "it is insignificant".

#antisemitism

[wonderlandleighleigh]

So its early but I'm on Tumblr, and like.

You know. Saw a post. Like you do.

And it's about appropriating Jewish mythology and symbols and terms. And there is so much "DON'T DO THAT" in the post.

But I think the post gets it a lil wrong. What we're really looking for is respect. Respect our things. Our culture. Or symbols. They're not Happy Meal toys. Make some effort.

I saw a lot of comments on the post saying that people had never met a Jewish person, and that we are "professional victims."

Well hello. I'm a Jewish person, and we've been run out of more countries than you've had hot dinners, so we're more like professionals at getting the fuck out of places where people want us dead.

Let's do an edit!

Golems: if you're going to use them in your fantasy, please treat them with respect. They're a mythological creature borne out of the desperation of a people constantly on the run from assholes trying to burn down their lives, and thought of as protective. Don't use them as a weird monster. It's easy to find the lore. Read up.

Kabbalah: is so much stranger than you know, and worth doing research on. Please be respectful if you intend to use it in a story, or even try to practice it.

If it's Hebrew and it doesn't have anything to do with Judaism...man that is a weird one. Cuz it's our religious language but also people who aren't Jewish live in Israel and speak Hebrew but this one feels funny.

The Star of David: it's not a pentagram. It's not a generic symbol. It's pretty specifically Jewish. Sometimes it gets worn by people who want us dead? Uncomfortable.

Goy: isn't considered polite but is more polite than "fuckin goy" which I sometimes use when some goy is being a terrible asshole.

Lenny Bruce had a whole bit on this one:

Gentile: less rude. You non jews are just gentiles.

Antisemitism: that funny feeling in your bones when you know someone either doesn't like you because you are Jewish (those fuckers who wear the "6 million was not enough" shirts. IE; Hitler shoulda kilt more Jews), or when someone says shit like "you guys control the banks so I bet you'll get all 7 days of Passover off soon enough." We don't control the banks. I fucking promise. We don't control shit. Whatever power white Jewish people might have is allowed by the white gentile power structure and can be easily taken away.

When the big orange goy was president, and employed Steven Miller (Jewish. A piece of shit) I used to tell people that "we'll all wind up in the same train car anyway. He's no safer from the hate than the rest of us." I'm still right.

The word Jew: context matters. "The Jews" is an easy shorthand. The Jewish People takes longer to say. One time in a bar, in Mississippi, the director of another department from work pointed at me and yelled "JEW!!!" and that felt.

Bad.

It felt bad you guys.

1. Being singled out for what you are feels bad.

2. Mississippi feels like a place you don't want to be singled out for being Jewish.

3. "Jew" often gets bent into "jewy" which is derogatory. Women were sometimes called "jewesses" which was a little like being called a witch they wanted to burn at the stake.

Probably safe bet to just say Jewish People.

We've been around a long time, but there aren't a whole of us left. But we also come in all different types. A bunch of us are white, but some of us are Black or Latinx or Asian or Middle Eastern. We don't agree on any one way of doing things and we have a lot of opinions and sometimes some dude wanders around The Rockaways in New York with a machete looking for the closest synagogue because Kanye told him we're all evil.

We are constantly on the lookout for people who don't like us because WE KEEP FINDING THEM. Like sometimes you think somebody's cool, but it turns out they think we have horns and eat white Christian baby blood.

For the record, white Christians don't season their food, so that shit is too bland. Not enough dill. We'll pass.

But yeah. Just some thoughts on my culture. Thanks for reading.

#my judaism is funky fresh #jewishness #judaism #Youtube

[eretzyisrael]

By Hillel Fuld on X/Twitter

This is really really huge news.

The morally bankrupt organization called the United Nations just approved a decision calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. They want Israel to take Ramadan into account and stop the war. Ya know, the same way Hamas took our holiday into consideration.

Ok, that’s not news. The UN has always been a moral disgrace. The UN are a bunch of Jew hating low lives.

What IS new is that the U.S., our so-called ally, did not use its veto power to cancel the resolution.

This is an unprecedented diplomatic disaster that is so significant, it might very realistically be the beginning of the end of the friendship between Israel and the United States.

Now, to some people, this might be a surprise, but it isn’t a surprise to those people who have been paying attention.

Whoever thinks/thought that Biden cares about Israel or the Jewish people, you are clearly not paying attention.

Biden could not care less about us.

Now let me tell you how this plays out.

In the short term, this is genuinely scary for Israel. Without our U.S. ally, we are basically totally diplomatically isolated. Yes, there are still one or two countries that kinda have our back, but without the U.S., we are alone.

Scary.

But let’s take a few steps back and look at today’s news from a historical perspective.

We just celebrated Purim.

The comparison between Haman and Hamas writes itself. I’ve already spoken about that.

But the comparison between the evil king in the story of Purim, Achashverosh, and the most powerful leader today; the leader of the free world, Mr. Joe Biden wasn’t 100% clear.

Are they really comparable?

Well, today we have our answer and it’s an unequivocal yes!!

The king in the story of Purim didn’t care about the Jews. He agreed to annihilate them. But then, when his wife pleaded for her people, it says that Achashverosh went into the garden to contemplate.

Till now, Biden has been in the garden contemplating whether to choose the unpopular but moral choice of standing with the Jews or join the mob and scapegoat the Jews.

Today, Biden has made a clear decision to abandon his ally.

So what happens next?

Netanyahu has said he won’t send the delegation that was supposed to leave to Washington. He’s canceling that. As he should!

The rift between Israel and the U.S. will only increase and eventually, the relationship will disappear completely.

The United States of America was good to the Jews for many years, but it’s now the end of an era.

You might look at this decision not to veto the UN resolution as something small and insignificant. You would be dead wrong! This is a massive change in policy.

So what happens when an empire turns on the Jews?

The Jews try even harder to assimilate and prove that they are no different, but to no avail.

If you thought antisemitism was bad till now, you ain’t seen nothin yet. Now, those Jew hating lunatics have the backing of their government, a government that’s calling to reward the Hamas rapists and pedophiles.

Now, as far as the war goes, Israel will obviously not listen to the UN but that’s not the point. The point is, the kid who was being bullied in school but had protection from one of the big guys in the class, is now alone and the bullying is about to get a lot worse.

So then what?

Here’s the script that’s repeated in every generation.

The Jews are comfortable. They reach the top of the society. They assimilate. Antisemitism begins to show its face. They assimilate more (I think we’re up to about 72% assimilation now.). The Jews think that if they assimilate, the hatred will stop, when in reality, the opposite is true.

The more we assimilate and tell the nations how much we are just like them, the more they respond “No, you’re not. You’re not just like us and we have a tool to illustrate that. It’s called antisemitism.”

Then things get really bad, really fast.

We have some hard years ahead of us.

The good news? Every single empire, with zero exceptions, that came after the Jews, is now extinct.

Turns out that siding with the enemies of the Jews is a really bad strategy.

This won’t happen tomorrow or next week, but the United States of America will now join the long list of empires that came after the Jews and disappeared.

Here’s a partial list of those empires:

Babylonian

Roman

Assyrian

Persian

Greek

Soviet

Nazi

Today, America took its first meaningful step toward joining that list.

Again, I doubt this decision in the UN will be taken seriously by Israel, let alone implemented, but that’s really not the point.

Today, the love affair between Israel and the U.S. is showing very real signs of an imminent break up.

Now, something else will happen once that breakup is complete, in addition to the U.S. losing its world dominance.

Israel will be independent and will manufacture its own military equipment. Now, that’s a scary thought. If you knew how much each iron dome missile costs, you’d understand why that’s scary.

The F35 jets, the M16 rifles, and almost all other equipment, down to actual ammunition, originates in the U.S. Without that partnership, Israel is going to have to figure out how to bank roll all of this.

But we’ll figure it out.

We are a nation that stood alone throughout history. Any time we depended on anyone else besides ourselves and our God, things didn’t end well.

So we’ll break up, we will ramp up our military manufacturing, and we will finally understand that we can’t depend on the U.S. or any other country to defend us. We can only depend on ourselves, our army, and our God.

With this fragile friendship that we had with the United States, we were kidding ourselves into thinking we can bank on it. We can’t and that became clear today.

The Torah describes the Jewish people as:

הן עם לבדד ישכון ובגויים לא יתחשב

A people who dweels alone and does not take other nations into consideration.

Finally, this is true. We are going to dwell alone and we will no longer look to our fake friend for protection. That’s it. Those days are over. The end of an era.

The good news is that we know how this ends and it’s a happy ending, at least for us, not so much for America.

Today's ceasefire vote was supported by the UK too. How shameful.

The bottom line is that Israel will stand by its promise of never again with or without the US. The U.S. turned Jews away in The Holocaust, and they are now turning their back on the Jews yet again.

This news is highly disturbing, on the one hand, but it’s also a call for celebration. We knew this was going to happen. We expected it. Or at least those who know history expected it.

If this came true, the rest of the script will come true and the prophecies are now one step closer to reality.

Dear President Biden,

You should be ashamed of yourself and you have now secured your place in the history books as the first President to fully turn his back on the Jews. Yea, Obama was pretty bad, but this move today, is the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Israel relationship. Congratulations, you are a coward and a weak leader who will regret today’s decision for as long as you live.

Dear the United Nations,

You never miss the opportunity to remind the world how immoral you are but you’re not just immoral, you’re also unimportant and irrelevant. Go take your Jew hatred elsewhere. You fulfilled your role in this world by giving us our state. Now you can disappear into the history books. No one will miss you.

And to all the countries that voted in favor of this repugnant resolution, you are weak and pathetic. You know what Jews around the world did yesterday? We celebrated the fall of an evil enemy who tried to annihilate us. That enemy was eliminated along with his ten sons and all those who supported him. We will celebrate your downfall too and it’s around the corner.

Folks, this is one huge step closer to the plot unfolding and the Jews coming out victorious.

Don’t worry, today’s news changes nothing other than the realization that we can’t depend on America or anyone else. Hopefully this will make us look inward, strengthen ourselves from within, and turn to God asking Him to give the IDF the strength to achieve complete victory.

Thank you, President Biden for finally taking off your mask. Now we have the clarity we need to do what we need to do.

As for you and your empire, enjoy it while it lasts because your end is near.

Very very near.

This monumental (not in a good way) decision makes me sick. Biden makes me sick. He is no friend of Israel’s and we need to stop pretending he is. That show is now over!

#joe biden #israel #united nations #empires

[thechaoticreader]

Popular Books I Read and HATED

*Disclaimer: If you like any of these books, slay! I'm happy for you! These are just my own consumer choices, and imo negative book reviews are just as helpful as positive ones!*

This list is not long because I don't actively dislike many books that I read, and I have a very good sense of what I will and will not like, but there are some I had to read/were misled into reading so here we go:

1. Tender Is The Flesh

by Agustina Bazterrica

My rant review is above if you want more details but recently I've seen a few videos that articulate my feelings in a way that I couldn't before so im going to add a few reasons here that were not included in the original post:

It gave very Qanon and general antisemitic vibes: i.e blatant conspiracy made up by the "wealthy liberal elites" to encourage cannibalism for their own enjoyment (I know she's Argentinian however that doesn't mean im not allowed to get the ick from it)

Purposefully inaccurate depictions of meat industry and disrespect for farmers (context: im a vegetarian from farm country with a roommate who works in the cattle industry - Angus beef if you're curious - so im very familiar with the process and cannot say in good conscious that it is all bad -> just support local farmers <3)

world building makes little sense

COWS DO NOT EQUATE TO HUMANS NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO !!!!!!!!

the "disease" doesn't make sense (even if its made up who would believe it)

No themes were treated with the depth nor nuance they require (capitalism, feminism, veganism etc.)

I think thats all I haven't covered but this is the only book I have ever read where my hatred of it continues to grow with each day. I went out of my way and deleted it from my reader and get annoyed every time I see it. And for the record (because yes i'm salty) I didn't hate it because it was too disturbing, in fact I've read and loved worse and ive been an avid horror reader since I was (admittedly too) young. I hate it because there wasn't a well done story underneath the gore. I'll say it loudly for the people in the back GORY HORROR BOOKS STILL DESERVE A GOOD/INTERESTING STORY, especially if you want to try to put complex themes in it. If you cannot write a deep story but you're good at and enjoy gore, write yourself a lil 100 page splatter punk and we can all have a good time <3

Unlike with Tender Is The Flesh I don't have a ton of thought out critical reasons for the rest of these soooooo I'm going to give my highly subjective reasons -> I totally understand why some like them <3

2. The Handmaids Tale

by Margaret Atwood

hated the writing style

It didn't keep my attention

disliked the ending so much I actually threw it across the room <3

3. The Hobbit

by J.R.R Tolkien

hated the writing style

male centered fantasy is not my vibe

my ADHD cannot handle long incredibly descriptive sections in books -> I physically fell asleep multiple times while reading this book

honestly even with the movie I fall asleep every time

0/10 book I want to read

10/10 bedtime story

4. Lord of The Flies

by William Golding

hated the writing style

hated most of the characters (and not in a slay anti-hero way)

was forced to read it in high school and it single handedly sent me into a 4 year reading slump... I missed so many good books because of this and will forever hold a grudge

5. Romeo & Juliet

By William Shakespeare

I'm too jaded and gay to enjoy this -> every single character is so painfully stupid

tbh im just bitter that his (imo) better plays get less love than this one, its way over hyped

but I will give it points for boring me so much that I wrote my first fanfic (Romeo x Mercutio if you're curious ... no its not posted anywhere and it never will be <3)

sidenote -> Shakespeare plays I love incl:

Hamlet (duh im a depressed emo gay on Tumblr)

Macbeth (also duh, witches and female manipulator... need I say more)

Othello (a slow burn for the true crime girlies)

Measure for Measure (absolutely underrated, please please please look into this play -> I saw a production of it and it was incredible)

#bookblr #book blog #booktok #reading #bookish #goodreads #books #book review #books I hate #book hater #tender is the flesh #tender is the flesh hater #romeo and juliet #shakespeare #anti book club #anti booktok #the hobbit #hobbit hater #tolkien #tolkien hater #lord of the flies #books I had to read in highschool #bitter book review #books and reading #book club

[bokettochild]

Very sorry to bring this up again but about the server.... Another thing that had people upset was the antisemitism (they were literally debateing wether a jewish person in the chat counted as a person/had the right to speak to them) so thats another thing

I do agree with you though. I deeply hope this is just a case of a miscommunication that led to a situation the original poster couldn't control and I do belive that nobody deserves mistreatment for just being Christian, especially if they don't hold these toxic ideals.

They. Were. What?

Okay, so my opinion now is that this is seriously messed up.

Wanting a safe space to enjoy your fandom and faith? Good for you!

Creating a space that should be safe and then debating a person's right to speak/validity as a person for their race?!?!?!?!?!?! Okay, that's just a load of horse shit!

JEWISH PEOPLE ARE GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE!!!!!! Like, yes, the New Testament shows that Jesus turned his hand to the Gentiles and offered them a place in His Kingdom too, but that does not in any way mean he turned his back on the Jews! The Bible literally states that those who harm the Jews will be cursed, that those who seek to cause them harm will be punished, what the actual heck? How do you treat a person who is literally of the chosen people so badly? Especially after the Nazis?

Official Opinion from Ketto: This server was messed up.

We would benefit from having a safe space for Christian LU fans, yes, but this doesn't sound like it was a safe space for ANYONE! I've had a couple people who were in it come forwards in the last half hour and share that it was actually making them uncomfortable with how they treated others and just....

My goodness, this was a dumpster fire.

I still think we can all exist together, and no, I don't think anyone should be going after anyone for this crap, but yeah, I'm seeing that this server had some extreme issues and it sounds like the shit wasn't just somebody using careless wording.

My apologies guys, I was seriously hoping this was a well meaning kid trying to make a safe space, not...this.

I still don't support going after them or hating or generally causing harm (although I understand the urge to express the anger) because, again, it makes everyone look bad and just spreads the hurt further, but yeah.

Please don't judge all LU Christians by this standard. Please do not target them with hate. Please do not be an ass.

My suggestion is we all collectively just put this server nonsense away from us and try to exist as respectful people who all recognize that someone messed up and hurt others but we don't need to be the same way. I hope you guys will too <3

#asks and answers #the server shebaggle #my heaven #and here i was really hoping it was a misunderstanding

[memoriaedamnatio]

Aliakai

TW: Antisemitism

Aliakai#0945

253038952934670336

The pagan YouTuber Aliakai (she/they) attempts to present herself as a community figure, but is rife with problems ranging from toxic debatebro rhetoric and misinformation to antisemitism.

She is a hypocrite, constantly railing on Christianity and the Bible, including the Old Testament, which Christians barely use, and treating the Odyssey as a Bible. This is neither historically accurate nor the intended purpose of ancient Greek myths.

Her anti-”monotheism” runs constantly throughout her platforms, and one could say this is their most consistent issue.

Tweet archived here.

As for Aliakai’s antisemitism, it requires a deeper look. In this video, we find multiple instances of their antisemitism. Referencing the Old Testament to try to defeat the Christians just ends up being antisemitic almost every time. They repeatedly bring up Elohim and specifically Jewish stories in their attempt to “debunk” or “out-logic” Christianity. The Old Testament isn’t meant to be a strict rulebook - it’s also a collection of stories, a fact which Aliakai seems to purposefully ignore.

They talk about Sodom and Gomorrah and the sins committed therein as if the two cities were not specifically written to be bad examples. Additionally, ancient Greeks famously abducted women as the spoils of war. It is incredibly hypocritcal to judge mythical Sodom and Gomorrah without even a mention of the known, historical practices in ancient Greece. She then ties homophobia to the fact that God smote people with hemorrhoids, once again, in a Jewish tale. She is aware that the infamous Leviticus quote is likely about pederasty, but continues to use it to try to posture Judaism and Christianity as inferior anyway.

Aliakai criticizes the God of the Old Testament for smiting Job when Apollo also smites Cassandra in an equally cruel manner.

She then claims that Exodus is actually about punishing Egyptian gods and that the pharaoh is somehow the true victim in the story, not the enslaved Jews.

She also implies everyone takes the Bible literally, committing the common fallacy of equating all Christians with dangerous evangelicals. There is no “common Christian theology” as she claims. They are also condescending to trinitarians, while simultaneously assuming all christians are trinitarians. The text of the Bible does explicitly refer to the Trinity, contrary to their statement.

Any attempt to try to find plotholes in the Bible is pointless, and the amount of time and energy Aliakai wastes is akin to an atheist in 2016.

Here are some furtner examples of Aliakai’s antisemitism:

(Archived first link)(Archived second link)

Here she implies Christianity and Judaism are the same faith, which anyone knowledgeable in either should be able to tell you is both incorrect and a dangerous statement.

(Archived here)

This shows an incredibly poor understanding of how religious oppression is currently functioning in society, and again demonstrates their anti-monotheism. Do we need to discuss Myanmar’s militant Buddhist genocide of Rohingya Muslims, for example? Or Hindu lynchings of Muslims? The list goes on.

Aliakai’s archived talk for the Hindutva org Indica here. To her credit, she did sever her relationship with Indica (archived). However, for a politically inclined youtuber who can research, this is a dangerous lack of vetting. Same can be said of the others who partook, of course.

Despite disavowing Indica, they never disavowed Butler, who is undeniably a fascist. In fact, Aliakai continues to recommend Edward Butler a year after the community-wide revelation of his fascism.

Here is her only acknowledgement of Butler's fascism (archived), without explicitly agreeing or disagreeing with the blogger's criticism of him.

In this Tweet (archived), they are making a lot of assumptions about Butler here and being too generous.

They give Butler a lot of leniency despite his years-long, public love affair with fascism. This is an extremely weak willed response to finding out an associate is fascist. This is not antifascism. This is not accountability.

In this video, Aliakai tries to present a case for making an SPG more official of Ares and mental health. In this video, around 8:03, she hints that Ares is the god of police officers who brutalize protesters. Considering police brutality and the unjust use of police violence, this is incredibly insensitive and quite racist. Police do not have anything to do with justice, and claiming as much for a shared community experience is bold.

Performing a Hellenic ritual for Ukraine with a Heathen without involving any Slavic pagans is morally questionable, as is claiming Ukraine is dedicated to Demeter’s arts. This is an act of further colonialism against a country currently being invaded by imperialist forces.

Asking viewers not to invoke Eris simply because of personal beef for a supposedly aid based ritual is infantile.

#aliakai #hellenic paganism #pagan community #paganism #pagans of tumblr #witchy #witchcraft #hellenismos #helpol #hellenic polytheism

[hindahoney]

Tbh even at my synagogue there's so much anti orthodox sentiment and it makes me really sad. We're liberal/progressive which of course means we generally don't always agree with typical orthodox values, we would go to an Orthodox synagogue instead of this one if we did, but I hear a lot of talk among our community that I find really disrespectful of Orthodox Jews! Things like blanket accusations of homophobia and sexism which just...isn't true if you even glance in the direction of all the queer Orthodox Jews that exist. I swear people just like to say "Orthodox is bad to gay people!!!!" and all the gay Orthodox Jews are like "uh no it's not, we're actually a huge influential part of the Orthodox community, you can't just ignore that we're here, and youre choosing to ignore all the work that queer Orthodox Jews have put in to make our spaces safe and accessible" and then others still go "it's so sad how no queers can thrive in Orthodox spaces :(( sometimes it's like I can still hear their voices"

It's very much not the same thing but for the sake of analogy, it reminds me of American queers who say shit like "The southern states are so homophobic there's nothing there for us this is so sad <\3" while completely ignoring that the south is actually full of queer people, some will live their whole lives in those places and aren't any less queer or influential there than elsewhere, and it's super homophobic to make statements like that. Like sure just go ahead and assume gay people in the south are all completely trapped and powerless and tragic and nonexistent instead of acknowledging that there are thousands of fully realised queer human beings there whose experiences shouldn't be swept under the rug to accommodate the popular narrative that South Bad.

Im not saying Orthodox communities never have issues with things like racism, homophobia, sexism etc, but like?? So do Reform and Liberal communities??? Stop pretending we're absolutely perfect while being so grossly antisemitic *to other Jews*. I've had encounters with transphobic Jews at my synagogue and while I was able to sort it out and get them to a place of understanding my upset and showing remorse and changed behaviour, it feels like people just want to ignore that this shit can still happen in progressive spaces, because it doesn't fit their narrative of Reform Good Orthodox Bad.

I considered going down a conversion route to become Orthodox a few years ago and didn't go through with it, but I did get to engage with my.local Orthodox rabbi and hoooooly shit it's been so saddening and eye opening the way every Orthodox Jew I've spoken to has, very early on, gone "don't worry I'm not sexist I promise!!" because they KNOW people are going to make horrible assumptions about them just based on their culture. Like fuck it tells a sad story about the way people including other Jews must treat them. Straight up antisemitic

I promise not all Liberal, Reform, progressive etc Jews feel negatively about Orthodoxy, it's just irritatingly common and I really heavily sympathise with all the shit you must have to go through. You aren't without allies but I don't blame you for feeling alone when this is how you're often treated.

(ik this isn't my blog but @ goyim: comment on this and i will bite your head off, this is a threat.)

Thank you for sharing your story. I by no means am saying I don't have my own qualms with orthodoxy, and things that I disagree with my community about. But that's okay, it's encouraged to disagree.It depends on who you ask whether they would call me orthodox or not, certainly more liberal Jews would view me this way. But out of respect for the orthodox community, I don't feel comfortable taking on that identity yet, but ultimately that's the goal. For right now I feel comfortable calling myself "frum."

It's incredibly painful when I see Jews throwing other Jews under the bus, because I take the term "tribe" seriously. When Cain asks HaShem "Am I my brother's keeper?" the Torah, and as consequence, the Jews, answered unequivocally yes. A Jew across the world that I've never met is, in my eyes and my entire soul, my family. So when I see my family fighting with each other over complete misunderstandings that could be solved if we just listened more, it hurts.

I feel like when people see me they assume I'm socially backward, as if there's no way I can square my religious beliefs with acceptance of LGBT+ people (as if I myself don't/can't identify as queer), or with women having a more involved role in services. They just assume we are a monolith, as if we're a group of worker ants that all operate and think the same exact way.

There are queer orthodox Jews who have made their space in orthodoxy. There are women who feel like they thrive in orthodoxy, who are NOT "ruled over" by their husbands, and are not forced to dress modestly, but choose it for themselves because they feel more comfortable that way.

#orthodoxy isnt for everyone and thats okay #that doesnt mean we are evil though #anyway i wish the divide wasnt so great #jumblr #frumblr #ask

[taylortruther]

i think matty was too dismissive of people's concerns and he should really, truly apologize for all of the shitty, racist crap he said.

but at the same time, I think some of what he said is real. like all of us being so worked up online over one person is a bit ridiculous. representation matters and who we hold up in our society matters, but if we really don't like him and don't like taylor for dating him, then we as individuals should just move on, not give him/them our money, stop running our fan blogs, etc. writing pages and pages about someone online is something people do ultimately just to make themselves feel better and like they're a good person.

or, if you still want to be a taylor fan, we don't need to see your long, drawn out explanation for why that's ultimately still justifiable because x y and z. just say you are still supporting her without writing a whole explanation about why you're actually still a good person.

i generally agree with you. no comment on whether matty should have apologized better, really. i think he should've but i absolutely did NOT expect it and will not expect it in the future.

this reply got super long but it was inspired by conversations i've been having with some pals in dms and irl, and how the conversation has evolved (or not evolved) online. so i might be guilty of your last paragraph here and if i am being a holly stallcup right now, so be it!

but there are two things i personally believe about this situation:

a) matty has said and done gross things and now taylor is associating with him (to put it lightly), and people are struggling to cope with that. it's deeply unpleasant to know she wants to date this idiotic edgelord.

b) remaining a fan of taylor's music is truly not indicative of how you personally feel about the issues of racism, sexism, antisemitism, bigotry, and so on.

i think most of fandom on tumblr shares both of these feelings. however, it's a process. some people idolize taylor way and so the idea of giving her up, or changing their perspective/relationship with her, is REALLY hard. a lot of fans are just thinking out loud and processing in real-time, and i think that should be encouraged, because i believe acknowledging taylor's different political opinions or behaviors is critical to moving on to more productive political engagement. it's a good mental exercise, especially for people who are in the early stages of their social justice education.

on the other hand, i see a lot of in-fighting going on; there's been a lot of shaming of other fans, posts suggesting you are "bad fan" or "bad person" if you aren't loudly decrying taylor enough.

and the thing is, the real issue here is racism and bigotry and creating a more just society. a symptom of this issue is that matty, and men as a whole, make comments or jokes like this as a matter of course. why is that? how do we coexist with men who find violence against women, and especially women of color, joke-worthy? if, at the end of the day, we share the same larger political goal as matty, of wanting a better and more just world for everyone, then how do we make sense of his "jokes" in relation to his politics? is it possible you can have a deeply shitty view of x and y issues, and still care about justice in some form (ie, can men in the dirtbag left still add value to social justice movements)? and when we hold people accountable for those hurtful behaviors or words or beliefs, what are we expecting? is it reasonable? do we want education and forgiveness or do we want to exile people who fuck up? what level of fuck up requires exile and which require forgiveness? what are the pros and cons of each and how do those decisions get us to the overall end goal of creating a just world for everyone?

these are, imo, the real concerns. these are what we are trying to talk about when we talk about matty's racist comments. the real issue is not whether you still enjoy reblogging gifs of taylor or if you still want to go to her concert or if you still listen to her music. and unfortunately a lot of the well-meaning conversations people are having end up sounding like taylor is the biggest problem here.

[sailorsharky]

On Hogwarts Legacy and allyship.

TW/CW: J.K Rowling, Hogwarts Legacy, Transphobia, Antisemitism mentioned. Right. CW out of the way, let me preface this by saying that this may turn out to be a long ramble, but I feel the need to voice my grievances in some way as a non-binary person. First of all, let's set some boundaries. Arguments in bad faith and trolling shall be ignored and/or reported/blocked. Lately, with all this hassle going on about Hogwarts Legacy, I felt the need to air my frustrations. We have all seen many different arguments from across both sides, but I will try to keep this as short as I can.

This game has been talked about well before launch, and many trans and enby folks, as well as Jewish people have asked for people to show solidarity by not buying the game. As an ally, it's important to note that it's not a lifetime pass. Many think that being an ally just means saying you support something or be generally neutral and not saying slurs. That is not the case. To be an ally you have to listen to what marginalized groups are saying. The release of this game and the widescale purchase of it by people only talking the talk and not walking the walk has shown many of us under the Trans umbrella (as well as our Jewish comrades) that we cannot trust those we called allies.

I am not saying that playing this game automatically makes you a bigoted person. Some folks I know got it and one admitted that the last JKR controversy he recalled was the whole "Dumbledore is now gay" debacle. (Pretty solid rock you've been under. Room for one more? /j) My ire is not pointed towards people that were genuinely ignorant of the situation, though my disappointment still stands and my trust in them as allies is gone. What mostly draws my ire is the knee-jerk reaction of supposed "allies" when pointing out that they have crossed the picket line and attempt to rationalize their purchase with arguments such as "I'm only supporting the devs", "I'm seperating the art from the artist", "What will 60-70 bucks change?" and "It's okay though because I donated as much/more to a Trans charity!" and so on. Let's go through them one by one. I'd like to keep this as short as possible however as many others have pointed out why these fall flat. 1. "I'm only supporting the devs". If you ONLY support the devs (of which the lead dev and a voice actor share JKR's horrific viewpoints), why aren't you buying EVERY single game on every storefront you make use of? This is a non-argument. If you buy games ONLY to support the devs, then by all means, bankrupt yourself to do just that. But you don't. You wanted to buy this game for nostalgia's sake. 2. "I'm separating the art from the artist" As a fan of HP Lovecraft's work, I understand the want to separate the art from the artist. But 1) Lovecraft is rotting in the ground as we speak. JKR is very much alive. 2) It's hard to seperate the art from the artist when said art is used as a cudgel to infringe upon human rights and dignity. Every act of consumption of her IP she sees as a vote of confidence in her brand of hatred. You may not personally see it that way, but she does, and she relishes in it. "But you just said you like Lovecraft's work! He was VERY racist and xenophobic!" Yes, absolutely! Let's HAVE that conversation, but not on this post. I agree that Lovecraft's art needs to be talked about in a critical light and the setting needs to be reclaimed and distanced from his fear and hatred of all things Not-From-New-England.

For now, moving on to... 3. "What will 60-70 bucks change?" In the grand scheme of things? Nothing. But this was never about trying to ruin JKR's pocket book. This was a litmus test for allies. Stand side by side or cross the picket line and play a mid-tier magic game filled with propaganda and caricatures of Jewish people (among other things). No, I will not entertain statements such as "But I don't see that! If anything, you seeing Jewish caricatures means you are the antisemite!" No buddy, no no no, that's not how propaganda works. There are other posts that delve into this. But in short; recognizing when something is a racist caricature does not make you a racist. Nor does not recognizing it immediately make you a racist, it simply means that you do not recognize propagandic imagery and it's important to listen to people who do know about it, specifically people that have been so unfavourably depicted in the past and present. Moving on. 4. "It's okay though because I donated as much/more to a Trans charity!" Martin Luther would like to have a strong conversation with you. Specifically 95 Theses long. Karma is not a linear scale. Buying something that ends up directly harming people and then turning around to pledge the same amount of money (or more) to a charity is not going to fix the broken trust, nor will it actually help at that point. What might help mend the fence is recognizing what the issue is and listening to the voices of those affected. Granted, many of us feel that they can no longer trust former allies because of this. Once broken, trust is hard to repair. It's important to keep that in mind and not get upset when we point it out. Personally, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but with that said, I won't be so trusting of people calling themselves allies when they choose to spend 60-70 bucks on a game that directly benefits Queen TERF (Royalty cheques are a thing, remember? You ARE directly financing her hate) rather than saving the money or putting it to a different game or charity. In short, my advice for folks that call themselves allies is this; If you want to call yourself an ally, actually listen to what is being said and learn from it. We all make mistakes, but launching into a kneejerk reaction is simply degrading what little trust remained. Don't just virtue signal, but stand beside the voices of the marginalized in solidarity.

That is all I can spare at the moment. Please keep the responses civil among one another. Asking for clarification is a-okay. Repeating above mentioned "arguments" and more like them is not. P.S: Do forgive me if I forgot some key points, I've been running on very little sleep at the moment and I needed to air my frustrations in a constructive way.

#tw antisemitism #antisemitism #tw transphobia #transphobia #tw jk rowling #anti jkr #anti harry potter #anti hogwarts legacy #rant #long rant #vent post #venting #trans #nonbinary #anti radfem #terfs not welcome

[paperstorm]

i know you said you didn’t want to talk about this and you can delete this ask when you get it but speaking into the void here

i personally as an arab never expected ronen to give a both sides are bad let peace prevail kind of statement (im aware that is what he is posting now and has reiterated that palestinians aren’t responsible for hamas i haven’t ignored that)

fully acknowledge that this is painful for him given his personal family history and just the generational trauma jewish people have lived through and antisemitism raging in the states for the past few years and spiking drastically since the bombing started

so him sticking by israel no matter how much of a bitter taste it leaves in my mouth lmao i understand why but what genuinely hurt was him reposting videos from violently islamophobic and racist right wingers like nathan*el buzolic calling it “palestinian propaganda” and who dont care about jews or israel but in his eyes brown arabs are the devil and need to be gone (ronen could very well not know what that man stands for but doesn’t change that its who he’ll be associated with henceforth cuz everyone knows and noticed)

celebrating biden sending weapons to israel knowing full well who exactly its being used against and pushing the “human shield” bullshit to justify it all makes it hard to digest seeing babies pulled out of rubble and dying and never not once admitting that collective punishment isn’t right or mass starvation isn’t right

i dont think anybody is ignoring his sentiment of wanting peace between communities but compared to what he’s been pushing it makes it harder to acknowledge when the most hes said about palestinians is “oh life will be lost on both sides no can do” and not voicing support for a ceasefire and doubling down against people trying to kindly show him a more nuanced view and flat out blocking people

i’ve long since stopped caring about celebrities and their political opinions cuz they need woke points but since we’re all a part of the same fandom i guess its making rounds more

(and also a general thing, the fact that antisemitism and islamophobic hate crimes are spiking should push politicians to call for a ceasefire instead of doubling down on their money making tactics from defence contracts and stocks cuz as long as people see videos of palestinian parents losing their children and vice versa and weeping in the streets and IDF soldiers in uniform eating mcdonalds in a full face of makeup and acrylics its just going to keep getting worse cuz the disparity is getting more obvious)

It's not that I don't want to talk about it, it's that every time I do like clockwork about 30-45 minutes later the death threats and 'kys' anons roll in and that isn't easy to deal with. But I do think these things are massively important and I do want to talk about them.

And I agree with all of this. It feels so silly sometimes to care about him or what he's saying when there are babies buried under rubble from genocidal bombs dropped purposely on apartment buildings and bakeries and hospitals and funded by American taxpayers like ... he's a random C list celebrity and we aren't the victims here by any stretch of the imagination. But it still hurts. It seems to me like he is extremely misinformed. Uninformed, ignorant, uneducated, whatever adjective you want to use. If he's bought into the human shields propaganda then he's bought into all of it, and the US/Israeli propaganda machine is one of the strongest the world has ever seen (I mean you have a state indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of children and you have the whole Western world terrified to say "hey maybe don't do that", it would be impressive if it wasn't so horrible) so he isn't the only one who's fallen for it but it's ... sad. I dont' know, it's just sad. All of that and all of what you said is context for his response to this, but context doesn't make it hurt less. It sucks that we're going to have to do the heartbreaking work of separating him from TK in order to keep loving our show and not feel like we're de-facto supporting genocide. We're not the victims in this, especially those of us who are white and not Arab and not Jewish and are far less likely to face any consequences here, but it still sucks. I don't have any answers but I'm there with everyone who feels let down by him right now.

#911ls asks #palestine #israel

[max--phillips]

Not to be like, a bitch and make callout posts (I don’t really think that is what this is, I’m mostly just complaining and considering I’m complaining on an entirely different platform she probably won’t see… Eh. Also I like being a shit stirrer sometimes.)

So, there’s this tiktoker I followed, BeckTheFeministLawyer, who recently made a video praising the Satanic Temple in Tennessee for starting an after school program in contrast of some Christian after school programs, which is awesome, we love that. 100% on board so far. The Satanic Temple is really cool for doing shit like that. But, then she starts talking about how “all religions are cults—yes, even yours” and immediately alarm bells are going off. She then talked about how any organization that demands your blind faith is a cult, and bad. People who think that way simply don’t sit right with me, especially given the fact that claiming Judaism is a cult is like, historically an antisemitic thing iirc. So, hoping to have a somewhat constructive conversation because she hasn’t said anything overtly inflammatory yet, I make a comment.

(I will provide screenshots at the end, but because TT is the way it is, it doesn’t display comments in chronological order, so I’m going to put a transcript here.)

My first comment read: A huge part of a lot of Jewish practices is questioning God.

She responds: Agreed, however- that god is said to be in control and working within a divine plan that faith demands you don’t question.

Me: That suggests you don’t agree, then. I would encourage you to look into why insinuating Judaism is a cult is antisemitic.

Her: I’m anti-religion generally.

Me (this comment was broken into two parts due to the character limit): And that’s fine. But especially now, with everything going on, checking antisemitism is very important. I realize your video isn’t about Palestine, but being that it’s the main topic on everyone’s minds right now, it’s important we all make sure we aren’t adding fuel to a related fire that’s bad for everyone.

Her: I hear your point and you’re barking up the wrong tree on that.

Me (again, split for character count): Respectfully, what do you mean by that? I am not asking you to abandon your beliefs, only reflect on how you might inadvertently be upholding a system of oppression that has affected an entire ethno-religious group for millennia.

Her: Cool.

At this point I drop it because, like, it’s the internet and I know it’s not going anywhere from there. But… yikes, lady, could you be any more clear in your antisemitism? And that doesn’t even get into how she probably feels about like, Islam or more insular cultural practices. Anyway. Here are the screencaps, under the cut bc I don’t wanna take up any more of your dashboard:

#max says things #tori says things #tiktok #beckthefeministlawyer #also obviously I’m not Jewish and I don’t know everything abt Judaism #so like. correct me if I’m wrong on anything but I feel pretty confident I was in the right here