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I can vouch personally for the validity of this campaign, as well as GazaVetters (#6 on the list). They urgently, URGENTLY need your donation. 

A reblog -- that's all it really takes. There are campaigns on here with tens of thousands of notes—how do you think they got there? By everyone scrolling past? Complain about morality OCD and compassion burnout all you want. My friend’s family might die tomorrow. Might die right now. In any moment I am not speaking to Ghada, it is possible that she is dead.

So when I ask you to reblog this post, think about the lack of effort it would take to flick your thumb—and realize it could be saving the lives of 14 people, affected by the horrors of war more than you could possibly imagine on your own.

Think about the sound of artillery firing. Even simply guns nearby. There's no "getting used to" that as your constant reality.

Thank you.

@rickybabyboy @valtsv @komsomolka @prisonhannibal @hotvampireadjacent @r0zeclawz @marxism-transgenderism @teaboot  @boobieteriat @chokulit @3000s @ot3 @90-ghost @apas-95 @pitbolshevik  @punkitt-is-here @b0tster @vampiricvenus @ankle-beez @remindertoclick @dyrdeer @tamamita @omegaversereloaded @sawasawako  @feluka  @postanagramgenerator @memingursa  @certifiedsexed @afro-elf @11thsense  @spacebeyonce  @dailyquests  @neechees @beserkerjewel @beetledrink @spaghettioverdose @specialmouse @tlirsgender @grox @minmos @paparoach  @slimetony @liberalsarecool @charlott2n @juney-blues @hollowtones @aflo @skunkes @wolfertinger666

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I think there's valuable rhetorical weight to articulating the Zionist Entity as a Nazi entity -- I do, genuinely -- but I also think it's potentially dangerous to conflate "genocidal, race-exterminationist, military government" with "Nazi" specifically inasmuch as it construes the Nazis as some kind of archetypal Original, which all other genocidaires are attempting to Emulate or Approach. I know that the mainstream rhetorical understanding is that the Nazis were a unique evil who represent the height of inhuman violence, but I think that's troublesome, since 1) they were not unique in their evil and 2) they were not unmatched in the consequences of their violence and 3) their genocidal fervor is not inhuman but indeed a horrific but profoundly human activity, which served a political and material goal.

All of this is to say that I think that there's value in articulating "No, the Zionists are not Nazis, they are an entirely different and unique form of genocidaire; likewise, they will be remembered by history, hopefully, not as 'like the Nazis'; rather, people will begin to speak the word 'Zionist' with a unique level of disgust and horror; as people who saw the scientific and technological innovations in racial violence and genocidal bloodlust of the Nazis firsthand, by being subject to them, and who instead did not say 'Never again,' but rather said 'I can do that, but worse.' They who left the flames of the Holocaust and decided to be the ones to set the next ones, rather than find a way to put them out."

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there is a task in not creating a transfeminist politics of disgust. an ability to look at pathways of transfeminisation that are not your own without passing judgement. its harder than that though, to look at pathways that form part of the transmisogynistic image of the transmisogynised you shored yourself up against - the kind of (usually, but not always) male outsider that you built your identity around not being.

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you are 16. you are talking with a gay man in his 50s or 60s, a friend, huge and gentle with a scarf and short fluffy curls of gray hair, who has directed you in two plays staged in your mid-size artsy town. (he has not yet asked you to be in his production of The Laramie Project which will change your life. this conversation will also change your life.)

he is talking about theatre. he is talking about theatre when he was younger. he says, "of course, it was AIDS then." in the pause, you ask him. clumsy and quiet and 16 and "straight," you ask him. what was it like.

he takes a moment in which his face is not like a person's face. "there was a time," he says, "i'm not sure how long, years. when i went to a funeral every weekend." he tells you about two funerals in a day, and choosing between friends when you couldn't make it to both. he does not look at you, he looks at them. his wet grey gaze is so clear that you start to see ghosts. it will be years before you understand why it feels like your grief too. why the ghosts call you family.

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instant, simultaneous turn resolution really is one of the most beautifully simple features of roguelikes when it comes to the ways they try to emulate full tabletop style combat

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*vigor, warmth, and light returning to my eyes suddenly* That’s right, I’m an irredeemable pervert…!

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Never let it be said that I am a master of one skill. I am absolutely a person who is like passably mid at like 40,000 things.

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For the last time dude, my leitmotif sounds exactly like it always has. There is no symbolism for creeping corruption in there

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By Nora Hikari, from Still My Father's Son

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wait, doesn't personality predate ideology? ideology doesn't create personality, right? (genuine question, i want to learn more)

"personality predates ideology" is a quirky little rhetorical sleight of hand that implies that: 1. people have an innate inclination toward certain or other aspects of personality, 2. ideologies form out of the emotional impulse of (a certain group of) people. what this boils down to then, if we sit down and analyze it, is that it implies certain people are naturally and innately predisposed to agree with particular ideologies, beliefs, etc. this is, to put it mildly, incredibly idealistic and very very dangerous.

this is a belief that's taken a lot of forms and different ways of being expressed, so specifically what i'm honing in on is the time famous gringo comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan said the quiet part out loud in an interview. quote: "people are not motivated by ideological codes, people are motivated by impulse and construct ideological codes to justify and rationalize what they were already going to do. [...] on the level of individuals and civilization, personality predates ideology, meaning that before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole." again, i think this is symptomatic of a larger, yes, ideological trend, and i don't take like, personal issue with the fact this one guy belives that. if anything i'm thankful, because him saying it this way makes the surrounding concept much more easy to analyze!

so let's move around the center thesis point and analyze the surrounding context. many ideologues have spoken at length about the fact that understanding fascism as some kind of catch-all badpersonist ideology is (to not use the also correct term "unserious") not just untrue, but detrimental to how we can study the material weight and implications of fascist ideologies, as opposed to other ideologies that are, frankly, equally as violent and reactionary. "bully" and "asshole" are terms that mean nothing other than like, a vague social idea of "person who other people find abrasive toward those disenfranchised in a setting of comradery" or really just "person who others don't like very much"! to claim that there are people who are fundamentally predisposed (from birth in some models, but really even without that) to being "bad people" as individuals, that then go and adopt the "ideology by and for bad people" is, well. calling it reactionary is genuinely lowballing it. and that kind of sets the tone for the idea, right?

to get really dialectical with it and get into the negative flipside of the idea, think of the common non-denominational leftist slogan of "i wasn't radicalized to the left, i just have empathy and care about people". it's kind of the flip-side to this belief, right? "i don't need a strong framework to inform my political conceptualization, all i need is hope and to #lovethyneighbor! that's true leftism!" but that's not really effective, is it? i don't make the allusion to christianity for no reason, many christians who live good, sinless, charitable lives, are also like, insanely reactionary in a lot of very particular topics! feelings are fickle, and often do not reflect material reality. and so is "personality", so is "belief", these are frameworks that reduce the human experience into the very point at the start, that flatten discursive knowledge, scientific analysis, etc., into being secondary (if even relevant!) against "impulse" and "instinct". personally, i think it's a bleak view!

the first line about "ideological codes" and "impulse" seems to think it's putting the cart squarely after the horse, but looking closer at it, it's doing the exact opposite. sure, a child is not birthed with a fully fledged ideological framework, but a child is not birthed with a fully charted path of "impulses", either. and this is because a child (and therefore all people!) does not exist in an empty vaccuum, their mind does not develop away from a historical context.

people are shaped by context, people interface with other people, and the people of the present grapple constantly with the weight of history. the weight of a history that, in fact, crystalizes ideology within those who live in it! people do not develop ideological frameworks by themselves, their ideological frameworks are shaped by their context. and the same goes for their personality, for their "impulses", for their "instinct". all of these things are built and trained, not innate. people are not, in fact, motivated squarely by an ideological dogma, but they aren't motivated by base impulse either! people are motivated by context, a context that includes both the interpersonal and the broader ideological machinations that have existed ever since society has.

now we circle back to the core phrase. "personality predates ideology", and to your question, which i'll translate for ease of answering into: "does ideology create personality?" both the ideas of "ideology" and "personality" are... very broad concepts, to say the least. at a glance, it definitely seems like a chicken and egg situation. but just like with the chicken and the egg, it's a solvable issue! it's just an answer that may seem unsatisfying without its context.

in short, neither is really true! personality, being the vague thing it is, can't be much argued to have a "starting point", if we define it by a particular set of social traits that form an "identity". what we can say is that the personality of one or multiple individuals did not give rise to the fact that ideological frameworks began to be created as society began to set. ideological frameworks are also messy to define, even if we limit ourselves to the idea of "political ideologies". but what's certain is that, in the thousands of years of human history, frameworks to define society were needed for the sake of, well, defining said society! and that had less to do with personality than it did with the material conditions that shaped societies, and therefore, the people in said societies.

think of the context of the world (geography, biology, every influencial factor on the first societies) as a line, from which the individual personalities of the people in that context split off. eventually the ideology that forms society splits off the same line of context too, and they almost immediately begin to weave together, like a single thread turning into a woven rope. the ideology of the society in which the individual is raised is influential in their personality, and as society develops, ideology too becomes part of the context that informs that individual development, that shapes the individual's personality. but ideology is now so natural in society, it's not able to be influenced by the individual, but rather, by history as a whole.

so, the answer is twofold. the personalities of each and every human individually in all of history were not informed by ideology, because ideology developed with society, and they're both vague terms to define when looking at such a long timeframe. but both those ancient personalities and ideologies were built by their context. and as generations grew within society, ideology became part of that very same context. and now, in the modern day, the ideologies of the world are so inextricably woven into the context of each individual's life, that claiming that ideology is not a major factor in the development of the individual's personality can only really be said if your idea of "personality" is an intrinsic characteristic of a person, and not something shaped by their context. for what i'd argue is basically all of human history, i'd say yes, personality is (mostly if not entirely) created by the ideological context of the individual.

(as an aside: it's also important to understand that even with this model, personality is not actually relevant to ideology! ideology stands without the necessity for an individual's personality, because it needs to be analyzed through the context of history, not the other way around!)

or in less complicated terms: read Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Iosef Stalin.

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different

remember. you can put salt in instant coffee to make it taste different

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remember. you can put salt in instant coffee to make it taste different

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chef's kiss

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a lot of supposedly progressive conceptualizations of trauma wind up boiling down to "you're doomed/ruined forever"