#post war modern germany

[dashalbrundezimmer]

mauritiuswall // köln mauritiusviertel

time and again you come across hidden gems of modern architecture in cologne. it's worth wandering through the side streets and discovering them.

immer wieder stößt man in köln auf versteckte kleinode der modernen architektur egal welcher stilrichtung. es lohnt sich durch die nebenstraßen zu streifen und sie zu entdecken.

#brutalism #brutalismus #architecture #photography #architecture photography #design #cologne #köln #köln mauritiusviertel #nrw #rhineland #nachkriegsmoderne #nachkriegsmoderne köln #nachkriegsmoderne rheinland #nachkriegsmoderne deutschland #nachkriegsarchitektur #nachkriegsarchitektur köln #nachkriegsarchitektur deutschland #nachkriegsarchitektur rheinland #post war modern #post war architecture #post war architecture rhineland #post war modern rhineland #germany #post war achitecture cologne #post war modern cologne #post war modern germany #post war architecture germany #brutalismus germany

[determinate-negation]

genuine question: why do you say that zionists engage in holocaust revisionism and denial? I've seen a few posts of yours talking about this but I don't think I fully understand what you mean. Thanks in advance

so much of the history american politicians are obliquely referencing when they compare palestinians to nazis is COMPLETELY incorrect and they are obscuring americas enthusiastic support for the nazis and apathy towards the jews, both before they entered the war, during, and after the war. before 1941 there was a lot of support from american politicians for nazis. they were reported on very favorably for years, major american industrialists and businessmen worked with nazis, people were unsure what side of the war the us would join on, the american public in fact generally blamed jews for antisemitic persecution and didnt want to allow in jewish refugees. there were pro nazi rallies in madison square garden with thousands of people. henry ford got a medal from hitler. during the war americans didnt believe a genocide was taking place, 'reputable news sources' questioned jewish eyewitnesses and death tolls. during the war american companies made millions off of the holocaust. after the war the us government protected high ranking nazi officials and put them in the american government. american politicians historically love nazis, they protected nazi war criminals, and they fund european neo nazis today. jewish holocaust surivors lived in displaced persons camps for years mistreated by american troops after the war. the holocaust was not even in public consciousness until decades afterwards, this entire culture of responsibility or whatever is completely superimposed retrospectively. every time that they try to invoke some memory of the holocaust to justify what they are doing in gaza its a shameful and cynical lie because america never cared, they love nazis and they have always allowed genocide to happen. ken burns did a documentary on this called the us and the holocaust thats really good

also the book Hitlers American Friends and this book

and zionists continue to make the insane claim that hitler didnt want to kill all the jews until palestinians convinced him even though this is just softcore holocaust denial about germanys central role in it. also this is not my main point, but the allied bombing of german civilians in dresden was in fact a controversial action, so the way that senate guy is talking about it is historically crazy. and bombing an industrialized fascist nation with a modern army like nazi germany is not remotely comparable to bombing a literal ghetto like gaza which can only fight using asymmetrical guerrilla warfare

#posting this publicly just bc it has info #ww2 #shoah #history

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Israel has published intel retrieved on Dec 18 from Hamas headquarters in Gaza, on how Hamas was using a network of fake Facebook profiles, pretending to be Israelis living abroad, and looking to hire Israeli Jews to make deliveries for them. First, they were meant to be innocent deliveries, in order to "groom" the Israelis for the moment when they will unknowingly be helping Hamas to deliver explosives. This was carried out by, among others, terrorists released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit hostage exchange deal (where Israel exchanged 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for the release of one captured Israeli soldier), who had a better knowledge of Hebrew and of Israeli due to their time in Israeli prisons. The terrorists released in the Gilad Shalit deal include Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers in Gaza have reached a cemetery for British soldiers who died there during WWI. The Brits usually buried their soldiers where they died. Among the British soldiers who fought and died in Gaza during that war were Jewish ones, too. I've seen people using the good state of their graves to claim that in Gaza, they are very respectful of Judaism itself, that it's evidenced by how they treat Jewish graves well, and it's only Zionists they have an issue with. What they leave out is that this cemetery was so well preserved because it's NOT a Jewish one, it's British. I found a pic where you can specifically see the grave of a Christian soldier, with a cross on the tombstone, buried next to the grave of a Jewish man, with a Star of David engraved. In comparison with this British cemetery, we can talk about the ancient Jewish synagogue in Gaza, that was appropriated and turned into a mosque (that they then used for terrorist activity, leading to its destruction in this war), or the modern synagogues left behind by Israel when it withdrew from Gaza in 2005, which were burned down by the Palestinians.

For several days now, protesters have been headed down south to where aid trucks pass from Israel to Gaza, in an attempt to block them. I wanna emphasize that they are NOT looking to deprive civilian Gazans of aid, they are just saying that humanitarian aid should be given in exchange for humanitarian aid making it to the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. On different days, the protesters have been sometimes more successful, sometimes less, but what's clear is that Israel is doing its best not to allow this, arresting protesters, and temporarily declaring the roads leading to the Gaza crossings as closed military areas.

In Sweden, a suspicious object was found next to the Israeli embassy, meaning they fear it was an attempted bombing. In an interview, the Israeli ambassador said that the staff is sure that's what it was, that the Swedish police is handling it, and they have no further information. The Israeli embassy in Sweden has recently been a target for Hamas' terrorists in Europe.

If you're interested, Reuters has uploaded the House Hearing on the future of US support of UNRWA. You can watch the whole thing here:

Sweden is now the 18th financier suspending their funding of UNRWA. In Germany, there are voices calling for the dismantling of it completely. I'm gonna attach a piece about that in Hebrew, but the Germans being interviewed are speaking in English, so it shouldn't be a problem to understand them. The first speaker is Uwe Becker, an amazing ally to Jews, who has been in charge of fighting antisemitism in the German state of Hessen, the rest belong to the democratic liberal party FDP, which is a part of the coalition.

Meanwhile, Norway, Ireland, Spain, Denmark and Belgium are continuing their funding to UNRWA, despite its ties to Palestinian terrorist organizations. Let it be remembered that Norway, Ireland, Spain, Denmark and Belgium have no issue with their money going to antisemitism and anti-Jewish terrorism.

The amount of pics and vids coming out of Gaza, showing weapons and rockets being hidden inside UNRWA schools, facilities and bags is insane, so I kinda stopped repeating myself with them at some point, but here's another one, fresh from today, explosives and mines found inside a bag with the UNRWA logo.

It only took several decades of people in the music industry knowing Roger Waters is an antisemite, and several very long years of the public starting to see it as well, for Waters to be fired by his music company, BMG. People are now connecting the news to an interview he gave back in November, in which he of course accused Jews for his firing.

This is 24 years old Ran Gevili.

On Oct 7, he was at a hospital, awaiting surgery. When he heard the news, he didn't hesitate and left for the area attacked by Hamas terrorists to help. At 10:50 in the morning, he sent his friends a message on WhatsApp that he's been shot twice in the leg. He was thought to be kidnapped, but today it's been confirmed that he had been murdered that day by Hamas, and his body is being held hostage in Gaza. May his memory be a blessing.

(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-a-former-nation]

Germany: “Did you drink again?...” Prussia: “.....Noooooooo.” Germany: “...I told you not to!! It’s not good for your health!” Prussia: “You deprive me of every joy in my life.” sob @ask-mr-germany (I hope it’s okay lending your muse once again!)

---

(Fun facts: Prussia is not a fan of modern movies. Especially action movies. He prefers old “Heimatfilme”, post war movies which often depicture a peaceful, rural world. Like the very successful Sissi-Trilogy he is watching right now.

Also, Prussia wouldn’t be still here without the care of his younger brother. It “stretches” his lifespan. Though Prussia doesn’t always agree on Germanys caring methods.)

#omg i finished it #finally #okay the second fact is not really fun #hws #hws germany #hws prussia #hetalia #hetalia germany #hetalia prussia #gilbert beilschmidt #ludwig beilschmidt #hetalia world stars #hetalia ask blog #hws ask blog #bunny ma #ask-a-former-nation

[communistkenobi]

people have brought up that andor has not treated its Black characters very well and like, the weird thing is that for a very long time Star Wars has not really grappled with the racial elements inherent to fascism, all the while drawing heavily from contemporary white supremacist fascist movements (Lucas stated that the rebels were inspired by the Vietcong, making the empire both an analogue of the United States and Nazi Germany, etc). and in general I think Star Wars has not really had a strong historical perspective about its own canon, presenting it almost like a history that came from nowhere - the empire rose to power because of a dissatisfaction with a declining republic and unnecessary war, sure, but like, the ideological bits that make up a fascistic empire have not really been well established, nor have they been situated in a proper historical context. I’m not saying this never happens, but in the mainline canon (ie movies and live action shows), this is not really a subject given any real thought.

and Andor seems to be explicitly trying to rectify that in some way by showing the course of history and how revolutions are started. It seems to correctly diagnose the base ideological components of the imperial machine, it explicitly deals with how history produces new forms of political thought - Cassian listens to Nemik’s manifesto right before going to Luthen and formally joining the rebellion. This is a story of a man being radicalised and that is a textually political one. It’s also a story that is impossible to divorce from the modern political climate in the real world. Tony Gilroy, the director of the show, has even mentioned that Andor is drawing from historical events like the Russian and Haitian Revolution. But where this falls a little flat is that, again, Andor is building from this haphazard history that lacks political dimension, and so like. I’m struggling to put this fully into words, but even when we see Star Wars canon framed in political terms, it doesn’t seem interested in including the racial elements of those politics. I’m not laying the blame solely at the feet of Andor because this is a wider issue in SW - this idea that fascism does not have a racial character to it, and further still, that humanity is post-racial and all racial antagonism is actually disputes between species. So you’re in this weird place where Star Wars sort of refuses to engage with race properly, doing it only in these coarse “what if aliens were racist to each other” kind of storylines, while still being narratively racist in casting and writing decisions. So again this history from nowhere appears, apparently agnostic to the racial elements of fascism while devaluing the Black characters they have in the story without that devaluation being a textual part of the story. So really you get this double whammy where racism is like, not a thing space Nazis care about but the writers creating the space Nazis are being racist.

Anyway I think that on the whole this does temper the story andor is telling, and it’s shitty because a story that seems to otherwise be fairly aware of the material it’s dealing with seems uncaring about, like, the role Black people play in modern antifascist movements in the west lol

#sw.txt #andor #andor spoilers #about 2 go get high sorry if this does not make sense #I’m sure someone has said a better version of this I need to go looking for more posts

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Daniel Greenfield

The Associated Press recently made headlines by falsely claiming that the Israeli campaign against Hamas “sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history” and was even worse than “the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II”.

The Washington Post argued that “Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza” while The Wall Street Journal contended that it was “generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.”

That’s all the more impressive since even accepting the Hamas casualty figures (tainted and inflated numbers in which there are no terrorists, only civilians, and fighting age men are really children) as the media does, this is still probably one of the least violent conflicts in the region.

In 2016, the Washington Post described the Syrian Civil War, with a possible 250,000 deaths, as “the most destructive conflict in the region”. In 2020, the UN had called the Yemeni Civil War, with 150,000 deaths, “the most destructive conflict since the end of the Cold War”.

And then there’s the current phase of the war in Sudan (which the media is currently uninterested in) in which 15,000 people have been killed over the course of last year, as part of a larger conflict that may have claimed as many as 2 million lives.

The Tigray War in Ethiopia over the last three years (which you may have missed because the media chose not to hysterically cover every single bomb dropped and protesters stayed home knitting instead of blocking traffic) may have cost the lives of between 80,000 to 600,000 people.

(El Pais, Spain’s newspaper, which did report on Ethiopia’s civil war, described it as “the deadliest of the 21st century” and then had to pivot to argue later that Israel was worse in, “25,000 deaths in Gaza: Why the destruction of this war exceeds that of other major conflicts”.)

In reality, every significant war and civil war in the region had a much higher death toll than the Hamas war: including the Iraq-Iran War with an estimated 500,000 to 2 million deaths. And in nearby Africa, the Congo War has been blamed for 6 million deaths since 1996.

How does the media justify arguing that 25,000 is more than 2 million?

There are plenty of statistical gimmicks available to anyone who wants to argue that 2 + 2 is really 5. Media “analyses” that claim that Israel’s campaign against Hamas is the deadliest and most destructive, and might even be worse than WWII, adjust their claims accordingly.

As the author of every dubious research study knows, to get the results you want, you manipulate your parameters. Media analyses selectively compare Israel’s campaign to battles, rather than wars, they narrowly focus on very specific timetables, they try to estimate per capita rather than gross figures. But drawing a circle around a particular area and going per capita works both ways. The Hamas attack of Oct 7 killed 10% of the population of Kibbutz Be’eri making it far worse per capita than anything in Israel’s response to those atrocities.

But statistical fudging is all in where the line is drawn to achieve a particular agenda.

For example, the New York Times declares that, “Gaza Deaths Surpass Any Arab Loss in Wars With Israel in Past 40 Years”. Of course the last major Arab-Israeli war took place 50 years ago.

The 40 year figure is based on the Lebanon War, but the actual numbers for that war vary wildly from the thousands according to Israel, 10,000 according to the CIA, 18,000 according to Lebanon and 30,000 according to Arafat and the PLO.

While the media at the time emphasized the highest estimates, in order to criticize the Israeli campaign against the PLO, they now use lower estimates to attack the Gaza campaign.

#war #gaza #hamas #lebanon #new york times #the media #statistics #ethiopia #sudan #syria #dubious research

[loving-n0t-heyting]

the idea that the Germans overwhelmingly supported the nazis is a perversely fascinating tool of propaganda tbh bc it was and is used by so many people with different goals and in different ways. The nazis obv just tried to legitimize themselves by faking the results of eg the 1934 referendum; the various German governments of the post-war period in turn use this referendum to show that referendums are bad and everything should be left up to qualified politicians bc the people would just elect another Hitler (who was, in fact, empowered primarily by so-called qualified politicians). Various far-right groups uphold it to claim that modern democracy is a sham. The allies used it to tell theri soldiers "see? They chose this! You can kill them without second thought, men, women, and children, and it's totally justified bc they unanimously stand behind their dictator", and lastly (afaik, at least) there's the cult of guilt in Germany as well as internationally condemning every German who was born after the whole thing as guilty by association. Like practically zero people of influence have any interest at all in being honest about this, and if you do, somehow, it's nazi apologia to say that the NSDAP were oppressors who did not care about what the population actually wanted.

If you for some reason are in need of upping yr blood pressure you can try reading this obscene Jason stanley article in which inherent german blood guilt for Hitler is used to justify treating all future generations of Russians as analogously guilty of the invasion of ukraine by way of their national identity

Even so, my first thought when meeting another German is that their grandparents most likely would have enthusiastically supported murdering me and my family. […] [T]here is still fear and shame in their eyes whenever they attempt to steer the conversation away from their country’s dark legacy. There always will be, because genocide will not and cannot be forgotten – ever.

Imagine just saying this, in print, on purpose! I cannot, as the saying goes, fucking even

#ask #anon #as a friend pointed out: #does he think this is also true of jewish Germans? Or does he not think they *are* germans? #same for gay/communist/Romani/etc Germans

[dorka]

Most mar a garbage day is megirta (egybol ossze is omlott a site)

Over the weekend, the always-excellent John Burn-Murdoch, over at The Financial Times, posted an alarming bit of demographic analysis that has now gone very viral. It’s from a column Burn-Murdoch wrote titled, “A New Global Gender Divide Is Emerging,” which shows a tremendous political gap forming between young men and women around the world.

Burn-Murdoch followed up the column with a lengthy thread on X hypothesizing as to what may be causing this gap and thousands of other users have offered up their own diagnoses, as well: Smartphones, video games, economic inequality, lack of education, an over-correction post-#MeToo.

Interestingly enough, though, the bulk of Burn-Murdoch’s reporting focuses on South Korea, the US, Germany, the UK, Spain, Poland, China, and Tunisia. Which, aside from China and Tunisia, were all countries I worked in, covering elections and far-right radicalization, in and around the time period those countries’ respective political gender gaps began widening. I’m not saying I have a tremendously in-depth understanding of, say, Polish toxic masculinity, but I did spend several days there following around white nationalist rappers and Catholic fundamentalist football fans. And, in South Korea, I worked on a project about radical feminists and their activism against the country’s equivalent of 4chan, Ilbe Storehouse.

In fact, between 2015-2019, I visited over 20 countries, essentially asking the same question: Where do bad men here hangout online? Which has given me a near-encyclopedic directory in my head, unfortunately, of international 4chan knock-offs. In Spain, it’s a car forum that doxxes rape victims called ForoCoches. In France, it’s a gaming forum that organized rallies for Marine Le Pen called Jeux Video. In Japan, it’s 2channel. In Brazil, it’s Dogolachan. And most, if not all, of these spaces pre-date any sort of modern social movement like #MeToo — or even the invention of the smartphone.

But the mainstream acceptance of the culture from these sites is new. Though I don’t actually think the mystery of “why now?” is that much of a mystery. While working in Europe, I came to understand that these sites and their culture war campaigns like Gamergate were a sort of emerging form of digital hooliganism. Nothing they were doing was new, but their understanding how to network online was novel. And in places like the UK, it actually became more and more common in the late-2010s to see Pepe the Frog cosplayers marching alongside far-right football clubs. In the US, we don’t have the same sports culture, but the end result has been the same. The nerds and the jocks eventually aligned in the streets. The anime nazis were simply early adopters and the tough guys with guns and zip ties just needed time to adapt to new technology. And, unlike the pre-internet age, unmoderated large social platforms give them an infinitely-scalable recruitment radius. They don’t have to hide in backrooms anymore.

Much of the digital playbook fueling this recruitment for our new(ish) international masculinist movement was created by ISIS, the true early adopters for this sort of thing. Though it took about a decade for the West to really embrace it. But nowadays, it is not uncommon to see trad accounts sharing memes about “motherhood,” that are pretty much identical to the Disney Princess photoshops ISIS brides would post on Tumblr to advertise their new life in Syria. And, even more darkly, just this week, a Trump supporter in Pennsylvania beheaded his father and uploaded it to YouTube, in a video where he ranted about the woke left and President Biden. Online extremism is a flat circle.

The biggest similarity, though, is in what I can cultural encoding. For ISIS, this was about constantly labeling everything that threatened their influence as a symptom of the decadent, secular West.

(X.com/jeremykauffman)

Taylor Swift, an extremely affluent blonde, blue-eyed white woman who writes country-inflected pop music and is dating a football player headed for the Super Bowl. She should be a resounding victory for these guys. Doesn’t get more American than that. But due to an actually very funny glitch in how they see the world, she’s actually a huge threat.

Pop culture, according to the right wing, should be frivolous. Because before the internet, it was something sold to girls by corporations run by powerful men. Famous pop stars through the ages, like Frank Sinatra, America’s first Justin Bieber, or The Beatles, the One Direction of their time, would be canonized as Great by Serious Men after history had forgotten they rocketed to success as their generation’s Tumblr Sexymen. But from the 2000s onward, thanks to an increasingly powerful digital public square, young women and people of color were able to have more influence in mainstream culture and also accumulate more financial power from it. And after Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was able to connect this new form of pop influence to both liberal progressive politics and, also, social media, well, conservatives realized they had to catch up and fast. And the fastest way to do that is to try and smash the whole thing by dismissing it as feminine.

Pop music? It’s for girls. Social media? It’s for girls. Democrats? Girls. Taylor Swift? Girls and also a government psyop. But this line of thinking has no limit. It poisons everything. If Swift manages to make it to the Super Bowl, well, that has to become feminine too. And at a certain point, the whole thing falls apart because, honestly, you just sound like an insane loser.

[fitzrove]

Rambling about Hass in Elisabeth for a REALLY long time. TL;DR - yeah, it is necessary as a song...

Because of the costumes and staging people often just see it as "the antisemitism song", which it is, strongly, but I think sometimes the wider context presented therein is ignored. Really, the song shows how antisemitism and hatred are fuelling and entangled with other movements!!

The nationalists in that song come from various groups and social classes, and identify as their enemies:

Socialists

Pacifists

Jewish writers

Jewish women

"Those who are not like us"

Crown prince Rudolf (because of his - historically strong - friendships and other positive associations with Jews)

The Habsburgs as a whole

Elisabeth and her Heinrich Heine (= a Jewish poet) monument project (which also attracted such strong criticism from German nationalists [Austrian Germans who were nationalists, not "Germans" in the modern sense] historically)

Hungary

The "barons" - so the nobility

The "slavic state"

The ongoing "betrayal of the people"

And to contrast, they identify as good:

Strength ("the strong wins, the weak fails", and also "strong leaders") and "purity"

"Unity"

Glory/splendour ("pracht")

Christian values

"Unified Germany", an alliance with Prussia and even an Anschluss (the joining of Austria and other "ethnically German" [so-called] lands to the German Reich. Hmm does anyone remember who also strove for and eventually implemented this... /s)

The conservative Wilhelm II as emperor (again, they want to join Austria into the German Reich)

So like. There is a glorification of all things "German" and of conservative values (religion) and reactionary power politics ("weakness" was and is by similar groups now considered to be a major flaw of liberalism and a liberal world order - in the song, pacifism and socialism are also connected to it), as exemplified by Wilhelm II's Germany specifically. To contrast, racial enemies ("non-Germans") threatening "racial purity" must be eliminated, with violence if necessary. And the Habsburg monarchy, being a multinational empire, is described as immoral and weak because of it being multinational (and the position of Slavs and Hungarians in politics and imperial administration).

The themes of "betraying the people" (Volksverrat) are especially interesting because the enemies of the nationalists as listed in the song, Jewish women, pacifists and socialists, were also the people blamed for German defeat in WW1 (the "stab in the back" at the home front myth). It's overall 19th and 20th century anti-establishment fascist imagery.

Ajdkkf I don't think I'm clearly making my argument but the song's key functions are:

To dispel the myth of the late 19th century being "the good old days", the glory days of Austria before the world wars somehow magically came to happen and ruined it. In fact, the songs shows that the developments leading to the world wars stem from politics and mass movements of hatred that developed alongside and gave power to & drew power from nationalism in the 19th century

To show the audience exactly what Rudolf is talking about in "Die Schatten werden Länger (reprise)". What is the "evil that is developing"? It's not Rudolf's personal petty wish for more power, or his angst about not being emperor yet, or some generic amorphous disdain for how FJ is reigning; it's not the lack of Hungarian independence either, for god's sake. I will die on this hill, if you cut Hass or replace it with conspiracy or whatever you can cut Rudolf as well, Elisabeth as a show is (in my opinion) a good portrayal of him precisely because it depicts him as a political thinker (in contrast to many depictions and post-Mayerling accounts which diminish that and just talk about Mayerling and his "immorality" - a talking point devised by the nationalists and antisemitists who hated him lol, liberal politics were connected to lack of morality) and someone who, unlike most of his contemporaries, saw that antisemitism, emphasis on "power" and realist power politics, exclusionary/hateful rhetoric and excess nationalism would lead to ruin. AND Hass also shows that he was hated by the German nationalists for this! As was his mother, for her sympathy to Heine...

To connect genuine popular dissatisfaction (from Milch - Hass is a reprise of Milch in terms of rhythm and the call-and-response structure where Lucheni talks to the crowd) with inequality, the lack of democracy and the excesses of royalty... to the rise and presentation of fascism as a "solution"

To show that 19th century nationalism was, in many ways, exclusionary, antisemitic, racist and "war-mongering", and that this rhetoric is old - not somehow magically appearing for WW2 and then disappearing again - and will time and again rise... and that it's everyone's responsibility to recognise it for what it is when it happens, if we are to have a reasonable, decent world to live in.

The framing of Hass sometimes confuses people I will never recover from that one post cancelling Elisabeth das musical for being antisemitic because Hass exists ajiddfkdllfgl what's next, it's pro-suicide and homophobic because a character technically dies from being gay? but to me it's rather clear that it's unsympathetic lol, with the whole doomsday atmosphere (no music, just footsteps/marching and drums and screaming, it's meant to be threatening), the way the ensemble harshly criticises the most sympathetically portrayed characters we have seen so far (Elisabeth and Rudolf) for things that seem petty and harmless (having Jewish friends), and the extremely direct comparison drawn to N*zism (to indicate what such a movement would develop to) in many stagings. I don't know how to say this but somehow I've always assumed that "H*tler and n*zism = evil" is EXTREMELY common knowledge and it mystifies me when people like. Think it should have been stated more clearly in the show. Like, the show is working off the assumption that you know what it is and that it's bad because of the millions and millions of people they killed............. this is EXTREMELY common knowledge in Europe, not least in Germany and Austria lol.

So um yeah akwkldlf, sorry for the ramble, I just feel like the song can be poorly understood and criticised on shaky ground sometimes. I mean, I am not Jewish and not equipped to talk about whether it's triggering or traumatising to watch especially with lived or family experience of antisemitic violence... But I think for non-Jewish people there is a huge responsibility to be aware and vigilant of antisemitism, historically and in the present, and sometimes it needs to be hammered home for people to understand...

By that last point I also somewhat mean... I think you don't "get" to be triggered by it if you're not Jewish but perhaps otherwise affected by politics of hatred. Of course I'm not emotions police lol, but many Jewish people have intergenerational trauma AND have to live with extremely similar antisemitic rhetoric and culture to this day, so there I understand criticisms - and there is also a discussion to be had about how and to what extent it is ok to use and display Jewish suffering as a device to educate non-Jewish people.

But anyway, to my original point. This is something I've seen people say and I just... if you're queer and it makes you uncomfortable to see Hass because modern n*zis hate you and it's traumatic, I mean, it's valid to feel uncomfortable and you can choose not to watch it personally to avoid being triggered, but you don't get to call for it to be erased from the show for "problematic content" or for "escapism" or to make you feel better. It is there because the destruction of the 19th century world, and Rudolf's and Elisabeth's suffering, is intrinsically tied to the rise of such hateful politics and without that being shown there is no show. You don't get to make it something it's not, this show is not ONLY an epic gothic romance with imaginary boyfriend, it's a commentary on past, present and future politics in that it shows the dangers of conservatism, antisemitism, racism and illiberalism. Calling for or supporting censorship, or state emphasis on militarism/"destroying the enemy", or advocating hatred, violence or oppression against any group based on ethnicity, religion, race, political views, etc. are all political stances held by and propagated by various people today in various political contexts. And you are not immune to antisemitism or reactionary nationalism if you're queer or whatever, so you have the constant responsibility to think critically about your worldview and your politics!!

#politics #musicals #theatre

[randomficrecss]

Eruri fic rec <3

Part 1

ugh they are so perfect, this is one of my most fav ships ever!!

these are gonna be all longer fics like 90K+ words but i’ll definitely post another part with shorter ones!

The Blue by bowowline

E | 176.1K | 14/14 | Hitman Levi, AU modern setting, Slowburn, Smut

“Look, kid. Don’t listen to what Uri says, you hear?” Kenny combs his hair with his hand, although there’s not a single strand out of place. “Don’t ever listen to him. You only have one kinda people you have to listen to. You know that, yes? Who do you listen to? Tell me,” he orders, kind of frantic.

“I only listen to the Family,” Levi says absently.

As a child, Levi refused to finish a job. He has not made one blunder after that. Twenty years later, fate catches up to him again.

Birds of Paradise by obiwhat12

No rating (check tags) | 94.9K | 14/14 | Hurt/Comfort, Sick Levi, Domestic Fluff, PTSD

On an expedition gone awry, Erwin and Levi find themselves stranded in the forest, fighting for their lives. They are graced with no other option except to put their faith in one another, despite their vast differences.

Under the same bright stars, they discover a new kind of consolation in each other that neither has known before.

In These Fallen Leaves by masksarehot

E | 210.2K | 32/32 | Temporary Character Death, Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Smut

[Post-Basement canon-divergent AU] Ten years after the end of the war, Levi, still heartbroken over Erwin's death, is living out a quiet existence with a few Survey Corps survivors. But signs are beginning to surface that Erwin is not truly dead, and they're getting too vivid to ignore...

This fic explores (canon-divergent) choices that the survivors made after Erwin's death and their consequences for the world. It's also about healing, and Erwin and Levi learning to put words to things that have always been unspoken between them. And beneath it all are the paths, whispering to them that the fate of Paradis still rests upon their shoulders...

Corps-à-Corps by onthearrow (loved this one)

E | 223.6K | 25/25 | AU fencing, Slowburn, Smut

Meeting people in New York City is hard. When Erwin’s last good friend moves away for greener pastures, he joins the local fencing club in his Upper East Side neighborhood in hopes of rekindling both an old hobby, and his wilting social life.

-OR-

The newest member of Levi's fencing club has it all it all-- money, a highly successful career, overbearingly good looks. Levi doesn't have any of that. But he sure as hell wants Erwin Smith anyway.

The Means by calacreda

E | 130.2K | 16/16 | Post-ACWNR, Pre-AOT, Prostitution, Slowburn

'He hears him say “Do not tell a soul, Levi” and wants to laugh. Tell anyone? To what end? So that others have the images that Levi now has running through his head; of grabbing hands and harness marks, hard words and soft lips, of lies upon lies upon lies in a desperate attempt to get to the truth?'

Levi begins to notice Erwin leaving HQ alone and not returning until the dead of night.

Slow-burn, pre-show Eruri.

He Chose Titans by masksarehot

E | 486.1K | 43/43 | Semi-Canon Prequel, Truama, Fluff, Smut

Erwin swore he would never again be distracted from his fight against the titans, but when an unexpected bond begins to form with Levi, he must decide whether he will follow his heart or his head.

Mail Order Spy by 35g (Jaackdaw)

M | 230K | 24/24 | Slowburn, Espionage, PTSD, Fake/Pretend Relationship

2091. Titans are no longer the frail oddities they once were. They're changing, growing. Governments aren’t changing with them. The International Military Police is tightening their leash. Erwin Smith orders a spy.

Dresden by hedera_helix (one of my all time favs)

M | 334.4K | 26/26 | AU, Historial, WWII

When Levi acquired his false identification he knew that the key to survival would be to stay unnoticed and to contain the bitterness and anger he feels inside himself. As the tides of war start to turn against Germany, however, Levi finds himself in a position to make a choice.

CODA by crownlessk_ing

M | 222.2K | 27/27 | AU 80’s, Musicians, Canon Disabled Character, Period-Typical Homophobia, War Flashbacks

France, 1986 - The last time Erwin was in Paris, he had it all. Youth, love, success, and his place in some of the most prestigious orchestras of the world. His cello had been his faithful companion through it all, and many said Erwin was the most talented cellist of his time. With such a bright future, it was easy to pretend everything was perfect.

But a lot had changed in ten years.

Now, all he had left were ghosts in his shadows, blurred memories of what used to be, and a body broken beyond repair.

He hoped going back to where it all started would be enough to recover what he’d lost: his ability to hold a cello, to feel, to love. He’d been wrong so far. But there may be another soul just as broken as his, someone who was also wandering in search of their own missing pieces.

Final Tour by gouguruheddo

M | 131.9K | 22/22 | Friends to lovers, PTSD, Modern America, Mid-Life Crisis, grief/Mourning, Trust Issues, Hurt/Comfort

It's been twenty years in the army, and Levi is finally home--retired, bored, directionless. The world has moved on without him, including his friend Erwin. He struggles to learn to adjust, to deal with his nightmares, to flourish in a world he's never understood, only to find that Erwin is dealing with the same thing.

Pledge by EllaBesmirched (El_Bell)

E | 123.9K | 15/15 | AU college, Frat Boy Erwin, ex-thug Levi, Slowburn, Light Hazing,

Levi is not in a fucking frat.

The Laws of Survival by pasiphile

E | 120.8K | 7/7 | Slowburn, Dom/Sub Undertones, PTSD, Non-binary Hange

His friends are dead, and now he’s trapped in a world where he has no voice, no control, and no one on his side except for the bastard who forced him to join in the first place.

Trust doesn’t just grow in one day.

Vespers by Valisi (series)

E | 109.5K | 12 Works | read tags

A series of stories detailing Erwin Smith and Levi Ackerman's private life together. Pieces can be read individually or as a whole.

Some pieces will reference things that have happened in past parts of the story, but it's nothing so major that you'll feel left out.

#erwin smith #levi ackerman #eruri #eruri fanfic #eruri supremacy #eruri fic #eruri fic rec #attack on titan #attack on titan fic #attack on titan fic rec #attack on titan fanfiction #they are gay

[dashalbrundezimmer]

city hall stolberg // stolberg (rhineland)

completion: 1977

stolberg town hall is a prime example of brutalism in the rhineland. a solitary building in the old town whose special feature is the stilts on which the front of the main building rests. unfortunately, the building was damaged during the flood of 2021 and is to be demolished. An unparalleled disappointment.

#architecture #photography #architecture photography #moderne #rhineland #nrw #germany #stolberg #post war modern #post war architecture #nachkriegsmoderne #nachkriegsarchitektur #nachkriegsmoderne rheinland #nachkriegsarchitektur rheinland #nachkriegsmoderne deutschland #nachkriegsarchitektur deutschland #german post war modern #german post war architecture #design #brutalism #brutal architecture

[olderthannetfic]

I know this is only marginally related, but the anon post about dating your boss in the military raising eyebrows and people's prioritization in shipping wars made me immediately think of "In The Navy" by Village People and of "YMCA" (because my brain thinks since YMCA has cheeky subtext and is considered a gay anthem if I'm not misremembering, In The Navy might have some cheeky subtext, too), and it reminded me of the musical Hair and within it of the song "Hair" in which Berger is asked if he's gay (supposedly because of his long hair and homophobic stereotypes IIRC?), which I thought was a reference to fraternization regulations (due to working with a lot of other guys I guess?) and to homophobic regulations (if I haven't misunderstood it, specifically the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy?), and it reminded me of the songs "Black Boys/White Boys" which always seemed a little tongue-in-cheek about attraction between military personnel to me (and only partially subtext, some of it seems to downright be text with no subtlety found, now that I'm rewatching the scene from the film lol). It's been years since I've been to the musical though, so my memory probably forgot 99% of the musical. Gotta watch the film some time.

(BTW I'm not from the USA or an English-speaking country, so I'm not very familiar with US American laws and military culture stuff or with US American LGBT+ history and culture, though I am even more unfamiliar with it in my country apart from a few things because I'm from germany and I know for example that gay people were also targeted and murdered by the nazis - one thing that comes to mind immediately is "Aimée & Jaguar", which is a film based on a book that's about the actual lives of two real people and which I recommend watching very much, though you might want to prepare yourself for seeing horrifying violence and for crying a lot - but I don't know much more about other things in german LGBT+ history, which now makes me pretty sad... Then again, I only realized I was bi less than 10 years ago when I learned about the existence of the term bisexuality, so it's possible that I've just somehow managed to overlook tons of things I've heard and read and that they never registered in my brain, which is very likely TBH.)

Sorry for babbling in your inbox, I shall be off to research more queer history.^^

--

I guess YMCA doesn't literally say "Stay there to suck cock", but it's still sung by a bunch of dudes in intentional camp stereotype outfits. There's subtext and then there's those pieces of art that are like 99% subtext with one tiny fig leaf of text as cover.

Germany had such an interesting history immediately prior to all that death, Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft being particularly obvious examples. Most of the research materials and art from that era were destroyed, but a few things escaped, including a copy of Anders als die Andern. Good luck researching, nonnie. Germany actually has a lot that was once recorded compared to many countries/societies even if it was systematically purged. It was the birthplace of modern sexology, after all.

[eretzyisrael]

Young American demonstrators want Israelis to go back to Yemen and Libya

Remember Helen Thomas? She was the ‘grande dame’ of the Washington DC press corps who gained notoriety by calling for Israeli Jews to ‘go back to Poland or Germany’. Nowadays we have her modern-day counterparts, in their 20s, who go one step further: they call Israeli Jews who are not from Europe  to go back to such ‘hospitable’ countries as Yemen, Libya and Syria. Rapper Rami Matan Even-Esh, known by his stage name Kosha Dillz, found a frightening degree of ignorance among young people at pro-Palestinian marches, exposed by the anti-Jewish backlash to the Israel-Hamas war. See this report in Israel21c –  and ChatGPT’s response. (With thanks: Michelle)

Rapper KoshaDilz conducting a VoxPop at a pro-Palestine march

“What’s your favorite Palestinian saying?” Even-Esh asks the women, who of course reply: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

He then asks them if Palestine is free from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, then where will all the Israelis go?

One of the women — wearing a traditional keffiyeh headdress associated in recent years with Palestinian nationalism — says the Israelis “would use their second citizenship” to go back to their respective “country of origin.”

“But not everyone in Israel has second citizenship,” Even-Esh retorts.

The blonde woman of visible European appearance, however, insists that Israelis “all come from heritage that’s outside of the Middle East.”

Even-Esh then asks her what will happen to Israelis of Ethiopian descent.

“They will go back to Ethiopia,” she replies undeterred.

“What about Libyan Jews?” he asks.

“They will go back to Libya,” replies the protester. “From wherever country they came from,” she adds.

“Like Yemen?” he asks her.

Now visibly annoyed, the woman then decides to offer a compromise. “They can stay and be part of the Palestinian territory.”

The two then begin shouting in unison that people must “educate themselves.”

“Do we [Americans] live on stolen land?” he asks the two women. While both reply yes, they stop short of offering to go back to their “country of origin.”

Read article in full

We asked ChatGPT for its reaction, and got this very sensible answer:

“The notion of Israeli Jews returning to Arab countries ignores historical and present realities. Jews from Arab lands were expelled without compensation, and Israel lawfully absorbed them despite severe strain. Israel, embodying an indigenous Jewish presence, extended peace and equal citizenship to Arabs. Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah aim not for coexistence but Israel’s destruction. The focus should be on mutual recognition and peace, not on uprooting peoples with ancient ties to their homeland.”

The post Young American demonstrators want Israelis to go back to Yemen and Libya appeared first on Point of No Return.

#Leftist bias against Jewish rights #Youtube

[distinguisheddwarffriend]

My brain is FULL of TH fic ideas but I've already got 3 WIP and most of them are just "what if"s with no plot so I'll just post them here I guess and maybe some writing god hears me/ reads them and someone else actually uses them.

Here's Nr. 1:

Frerin did in fact NOT die at Azanulbizar but was transported into our modern world, sometime in the second half of the 19th century.

After some adjusting (industrialization is in full force but it's still not as 'bad' as it would be rn) he builds a life, him being a dwarf meaning that he ages extremely slowly compared to us lowly humans so he has to move after a while and again and again.

He lives in the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy, Finland.....

He fights in both world wars depending on where he lives during that time (WW1 on the German side, WW2 on the UK's), other than that he goes to university and works all kinds of jobs like policeman, fireman, soldier, teacher, carpenter,smith, weaver, factory worker, violinist etc etc etc

Around 1900 he meets this fella J R R Tolkien and befriends him, and after a time finds out that his friend is writing books about middle Earth, not only that, but one about his very own brother. Tolkien apparently is a seer of some kind because it's still almost a century until "The Hobbit" would happen (he does the math).

Frerin helps Tolkien with authenticity for his books, because the dude is smart and found out about Frerin after he corrected his Khuzdul one time too many.

Anyhow, after reading what will happen to his family, he becomes a mite bit obsessed with returning to Middle Earth and having ammased quite some wealth and with the help of some friends in high places starts founding various research projects into things like teleportation, multiverse, magic, alchemy, you name it. He also becomes a member of the Freemasons due to his occult knowledge.

In around 80 years there's almost no progress towards Frerin's goal of returning home, he does still have a research company but only a small group of mostly students works on the multiverse hypothesis, the rest does all kinds of stuff, technology, energy, whatever.

He has for the time being settled somewhere in Scandinavia, is a College Professor for Sociology and Political Science and volunteers as a social worker for troubled children.

He is fostering 2 or 3 children himself (ages 6 - 16) and has two grown up adopted children that still live & work with him (they found out about him), a guy & a lass ( both early twenties).

Somehow (don't ask I don't know) the whole household (meaning Frerin, his two young adult children, the foster children, his south American householder, her tiny dog and their personal Butler (more of a live-in family friend by now, think Niles from "The Nanny")) all get sucked into a portal or whatever end get spit out into Middle Earth.

Not at Ered Luin of course, that would be easy, no, but somewhere extremely inconvenient. The Lone lands, the Brown lands, Moria, something along the lines of "we are so fucked".

So now it is a few years (1-3, or the characters have too much time to become Mary-Sues), before the quest to Erebor, and they have to reach Thorin before then and somehow survive a world filled with orcs (and elves!) while juggling a 6 year old, a tiny & barky dog, a cliché Mamacita, a British butler, and Frerin's realisation that he has gotten much too used to modern convenience.

(my weak ass would probably include some romance between one/more than one of the original characters and the canon characters, I'm a sucker for Fili or Kili x OFC and rare pairings like KilixBifur or ThorinxNori and I want Frerin to date an elf or Bard I think.)

.... Does this sound like something you would read/write? I'd maybe try to write this with someone else, alone I don't dare to. What do y'all think?

#the hobbit #tolkien #middle earth #fili and kili #fili durin #thorin oakenshield #fíli #the hobbit fanfiction #kili durin #kíli #frerin #hobbit au #fanfic #fanfic ideas #the hobbit imagine #MGiME #modern character in middle earth

[bluef00t]

Finally collecting these in a post—Atomic Robo robotswap ideas. This was more of a character design challenge than a real AU, but the concept kind of got away from me.

Rambling design notes + a couple panel redraws + some ideas I had for Helsingard and ALAN 1.0 under the cut:

This idea spiraled out of an old sketch by Wegner of real-boy Robo as a genetics experiment. I'm interpreting that as basically Wolverine minus the animal motifs (and generally much more well-adjusted).

I tried to mimic more elements of his bot design; for example the hair silhouette and the thick blue-tinted glasses, swapped for goggles as his lifestyle got more active. I guess sensitive eyes are a side effect of his mutations. (The classic superhero forehead curl on babyrobo has no design justification, I just couldn't resist.) His appearance would make the public of the '20s a little uncomfortable with seeing him as Tesla's son. Which feels very thematically appropriate.

I'm still calling him "Robo" because it feels weird not to, though it would be a nickname. Appropriate for a guy who never sleeps; plausibly derived from Robert/Ratko. (The American name would be how he's introduced to the public; the Serbian one used casually by Tesla.*) Honestly, it seems in-character for him to put down Robo as his actual legal name when he finally got that chance.

*Things I found out after picking these names for their superficial resemblance to "Robo": Robert means "famous, shining" and Ratomir means "defender of peace"; literally "war for peace". Definitely an affectionately ironic moniker for a son so determined to be an action hero. Though dear monolingual Robo probably wouldn't catch on until decades after Tesla's death... Well, now I've gone and made myself sad.

The action scientists are mostly an excuse to still draw robots. Let's say they're Robo's big midlife crisis project after realizing he was going to outlive his entire first team and not think about it too hard.

Vik (inspired by Robby the Robot) is the oldest of the models. He's optimized for processing power, which is how you get a robot that will try to suggest purely hypothetical (but mathematically sound!) solutions to urgent real-world problems. And enjoys TTRPGs of Turing-complete levels of complexity.

Lang (inspired by Robo) came shortly after, more optimized for the "action" part of action science. Being made of metal does wonders for your recoil management. (I know she hasn't had the hair buns in 10+ years, but that's what I was trying to do with the "antennae".)

Foley (inspired by Alan) is the newest model, optimized for human-robot interaction. Getting wifi installed in her head early on had the unexpected side effect of making her really good at understanding networks of all kinds.

BRN-3 wasn't built to be sentient. He's just a lab geological survey bot that began showing signs of sapience one day and attributes his own "enlightenment" to the "crystals" he'd been studying. This is obviously bullshit but nobody can give a better explanation, so...

Jenkins is literally just the Terminator, except his evil future is vampires instead of AI. He was sent back to kill Robo, which clearly didn't work, so they talked it out and now he just hangs around Tesladyne on high alert for anything that might kick off the apocalypse.

(I have no idea where Ada, Ben, and Koa fit in here, but I might come back to them later. Using their Agents of CHANGE power suits as android designs felt like cheating.)

Not included in these drawings are Helsingard and ALAN, but I'm considering switching around parts of their premises, too.

Helsingard was a Nazi supercomputer meant to calculate the perfect world-conquering strategy. Instead, it realized that Germany's loss was imminent and hid copies of itself around the planet. Every once in a while, someone accidentally boots up a copy and it tries to take over. In the modern age it's a total dice roll as to whether this will be horrifying (what major infrastructure isn't computerized these days?) or just kind of pathetic (it's too old to understand the internet and can easily get itself trapped in an office printer spitting toner and stacks of paper that read BEHOLD HELSINGARD).

ALAN (potential rename pending; the Turing connection is rather lost in the version I'm going with for now) is the world's second successful "unkillable" genetic experiment, a govt project during the Cold War to ensure that the last man alive in a nuclear winter scenario would be British. But it turns out telling a guy he's the next stage in human evolution and sealing him in a bunker for decades to await a chance to inherit the earth which doesn't come isn't great for his sense of compassion or morality. Eventually, ALAN decides to hurry things along before we inferior humans end the world in a less convenient way, and Robo has to... well, you know this part.

It turns out there was a secret phase 2 to this plan, which would have been to populate the solar system with perfect immortal mind-networked clones of himself. The single under-baked clone that it does manage to spit out before being shut down is our Alan :] He needs someone to look after him while his crazy healing powers fill in the missing chunks of his body and brain, and he didn't get a full memory upload from ALAN, so it's free son boy!

No changes were made to Dr. Dinosaur. He's already perfect.

#atomic robo #robotswap #bluef00t art #the part under the cut is pretty long I've been turning this over in my head for a while #there's definitely bits of continuity that don't quite work (even Wolverine would have trouble with the head-in-a-box-for-130-years thing) #but this isn't really about rewriting something coherent. this is about how fun it is to do panel redraws as warm-ups #000

[best-hohenzollern-ruler]

Bonus Round: Best General

Prince Heinrich of Prussia (1726–1802)

Prinz Heinrich prominently served as a general during the Seven Year's War. What contemporaries and historians alike have found so impressive about his leadership was that he made so few, if any, blunders in carrying out the war. This was a sentiment echoed by his brother, Frederick the Great, who absorbs much of the credit by osmosis. His victories and maneuvers allowed his brother to carry on a war that the prince would have preferred to be ended sooner than 1756. Outside of war, he is his own colorful character, in line with that generation of Hohenzollern men and women.

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819)

What hot blooded Prussian does not know the name Blücher? It is he we have to thank for the defeat of the villain Napoleon - not once, but twice! The first great defeat at Leipzig restored Prussia to her place of due prominence among the nations of Europe. At Waterloo, he and his troops arrived as Wellington's guardian angels to defeat the Corsican devil. The main army battered, the reserves shunted away, Blücher became an immortal hero to all who opposed shrimpy French tyranny.

Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

Clausewitz's greatest achievement is his book Vom Krieg (On War), a tome that rewrote the rules of conflict for a post Napoleonic age. Among many of the revolutionary ideas contained with in it, a few to highlight are the "fog of war", the concept of friction and the idea of a military genius.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800-1891)

As Chief of the Prussian General Staff, Moltke worked hand in hand with War Minister von Roon to deliver three swift victories for the Prussian state. It was his genius on display during Königgratz, during Sedan and Metz and Gravelotte. Without him, Prussia's ascendancy and Germany's unification would not have been possible.

Moltke understood that with the growing size of modern armies, generalship such as that underneath Napoleon or Blücher was unfeasible. Instead of a general leading his army as a whole, Motlke devised a corp system wherein smaller clusters of troops would move independently of each other — Theodor, get your hands off of me!

#hohenzollern bracket #bonus round #prince henry of prussia #prinz heinrich von preussen #gebhard von blücher #carl von clausewitz #moltke the elder #staffer theodor #staffer leopold