#Disrupt Hegemony

[revoltinglesbians]

writing a short story that will be discussed in class about a character named caoimhe just to be a menace to society

[bkkblogs]

Tom A. I. Riddle: The Dark Side of the Digital Horcrux

Artificial Intelligence has taken us by storm. In my blog this week, I look at the dark side of AI. From the control by a select few to its potential social and global disruptions, this essay delves into the digital horcrux that is AI. #AI #DigitalHorcrux

Over the past weekend, I had the opportunity to dine with some very smart people: engineers and entreprenuers, all alumni of GIKI, Pakistan. They had insightful things to say about a range of issues, from the oil and gas sector to American geopolitical power, the economy, and all the way to AI and industrial automation. Continue reading Untitled

[palms-upturned]

Frustrates me to no end seeing people say “what’s your alternative to voting blue? Stage a revolution right now? This second? Get real, you’re posting on your computer instead of firebombing walmarts.” I don’t think that you understand what people are actually doing. I know for myself, I’ve been reading more history and theory than I ever have before. I’ve been marching. I’ve been getting involved with labor activism. I’ve been doing strategic research. I’ve tried to archive and share resources. I’ve watched other people do WAY more than I ever have or probably could. I’ve seen people occupy arms manufacturing sites and hold wildcat strikes and disrupt daily life as much as possible. We’ve all seen this happening at unprecedented levels for months now. And most of all, I’ve seen Palestinians telling us, rightfully full of anger, do not ever go back to how things were before. Do not turn away from what’s happening and your own complicity in it.

This is not something that we can vote our way out of. Our state is built on the same violence being inflicted on the people of Palestine. We helped to build Israel. We are still arming it and funding the “war” right now. Even the most half hearted measures from international bodies like the UN to take the bare minimum of a stance against genocide are quashed by the US. As they always have been, our power and resources are used to reinforce imperial and colonial hegemony. That remains the same no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office. And so does our own struggle for liberation. Meaningful change is never, ever going to come from within. We force the change to happen, as we always have.

If you can understand intersectionality, then surely you can understand this: we are not going to free ourselves by sacrificing colonized people. You may vote blue, and for you it could be a matter of life and death. Believe me, as a poor disabled person in a red state who almost killed myself over medical debt, I know the stakes. But I think you have to own the fact that you are empowering perpetrators of genocide and breaking solidarity with colonized people, not even to liberate yourself, but just to bargain with the oppressor for your life. That Palestinians and everyone else who we have harmed are going to be angry and they are more than within their rights. Instead of deflecting by just assuming that no one else is capable of putting their money where their mouth is and actually trying to lay groundwork for change, just do whatever you feel you have to do and sit with the reality of the situation.

Palestine will be free, we will be free, the whole world will someday be free. But for now, this is where we are, and we won’t free ourselves by operating like crabs in a bucket. Get organized, take care of each other, commit to solidarity. Empower yourself and each other rather than the state.

[ahaura]

i saw someone point out the frequency with which liberals back social justice movements... how, for instance, when ferguson happened under obama it was not popular and there were many, many liberals who found the blm movement, in a sense, "in violation of [liberal] sensibilities" (when liberalism as a rule does not challenge the status quo, only maintains it and sees any call for revolution or real change as disruptive or 'bad for optics' and therefore not acceptable) but then when trump became president and he opposed blm a lot more liberals decided that the blm movement had merit because they viewed it from a team-sports perspective rather than a worldview based on morals and an understanding of the systems in place in the U.S. - that it was more comfortable for them to operate from a "trump bad" basis rather than "the american justice system and the police are inherently white supremacist, which are inherently, automatically, and always violent"

+ that, if trump was president while israel is carrying out its genocide, liberals would have NO problem denouncing israel and demanding for a ceasefire because they're comfortable operating from the 2-party system basis, NOT from a framework based on material conditions or factors or any acknowledgement or analysis of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism. but because biden is a democrat, and democrats are supposed to be "the decent party" "the lesser evil" "more respectable" when, in functionality - in real practice, they don't want to disrupt the status quo. (internally, maintaining systems of white supremacy and capitalism; externally, furthering U.S. imperialism by maintaining hegemony and continuing the practice of exploitation and extraction of labor+capital+resources from the global south)

which is why we're here, a month into a genocide, and liberals are so cowardly and gutless that, in the face of our democrat president allowing and funding the genocide of palestinians in order for the U.S. to maintain its military base in the middle east, liberals IMMEDIATELY jump to "well, you HAVE to vote for him still, because trump will be worse!" and go "well im powerless there's nothing i can do", immediately folding like a wet paper bag in the face of the american empire rearing its ugly head in the most blatant, naked way in years, instead of thinking "this is unacceptable, i should pressure my elected officials and do everything i can - be it combating propaganda, contacting my congresspeople or senators, protesting, or engaging in direct action - to ensure this stops as quickly as possible".

there are liberals STILL IN MY NOTIFICATIONS who go "well you'll be electing a fascist if you vote for trump" not realizing that YOU CAN'T SIMPLY VOTE FASCISM AWAY. (which is not to say you should vote for republicans; that's not what i'm saying. none of us have said it.) we're pretty much already there. it's 2003 all over again, with the patriot act and all. the american war machine is pumping out racist, orientalist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide propaganda on behalf of the ethno-state america and its allies have backed since the so-called state's inception. people are being doxxed, fired, harassed, and attacked for visibly supporting palestine/opposing israel. islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise; a 6 year old boy was murdered not one month ago, an arab doctor in texas was stabbed to death. antisemitism is on the rise as well, thanks to the conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism (which nazis have and will attempt to co-op in order to 'justify' + then act on their antisemitism, racism, and genocidal worldviews). our government is silencing people, brutalizing protestors, and arming and funding an ethno-state committing genocide - everything that would have been called fascist if it was under trump. but because it's a *democrat* liberals place "vote blue no matter who" and "optics" over the extremely basic moral stance that "genocide is wrong and people have the right to self-determination, autonomy, and life". arabs and muslims are already so dehumanized in the west that liberals (whether they consider themselves liberals or not) consider it an inconvenience to talk about the ongoing genocide that is happening with the blessing of OUR government. in this they expose their selfishness, the shallowness of their morals, their chauvinism, and their racism/orientalism/islamophobia/et cetera.

for example, if you see israeli troops waving a gay pride flag and the israeli state touting its support of gay people while said iof soldiers are murdering men, women, and children en masse every single day and you somehow????? think that because gay people are the ones doing the killing or a state claims to support gay people is doing the killing is ok then 1) you have fallen for pinkwashing propaganda and 2) that you find the murder of palestinians, or any people, permissible by a colonial force that uses causes liberals may genuinely care about in order to disguise, whitewash, or "lessen" the severity of the injustices it does unto usually black and brown people outside of the U.S., then you are just as bloodthirsty and depraved as anyone you would personally assign those descriptors of.

once again, it goes back to resorting to a team-sport understanding of the world rather than approaching it from a material one.

[comradesaucegay]

From Des 2020,

Around 2013, U.S. intelligence began noticing an alarming pattern: Undercover CIA personnel, flying into countries in Africa and Europe for sensitive work, were being rapidly and successfully identified by Chinese intelligence, according to three former U.S. officials. The surveillance by Chinese operatives began in some cases as soon as the CIA officers had cleared passport control. Sometimes, the surveillance was so overt that U.S. intelligence officials speculated that the Chinese wanted the U.S. side to know they had identified the CIA operatives, disrupting their missions; other times, however, it was much more subtle and only detected through U.S. spy agencies’ own sophisticated technical countersurveillance capabilities.

i wonder how much these improved chinese intelligence operations are responsible for the waning of U.S. hegemony, especially if they're sharing their methods/data with other countries

[tikkunolamresistance]

On Houthi and Yemen, and Antisemitism in revolutionary spaces...

We've been observing the response to our statement showing support for Yemen's aid in Palestinian resistance- specifically where we said "Glory to Yemen", as there's certainly a lot more to it than that.

Houthi and Yemen are not mutually exclusive: the country of Yemen and its people, civilians, have been bombed and murdered by the western nations for decades- in which the last FOUR United States Presidents have sanctioned and bombed Yemen.

Houthi, more officially known as Ansar Allah ('supporters of G-d'), are a militant organisation that emerged in the 90s but rose to prominence in 2014 when the group rebelled against Yemen's government. The rebellion caused the official governing body to step down, in hand causing a demobilizing humanitarian crisis.

You can read more about Houthi here:

And more on why they are attacking ships entering the Red Sea here:

It's true, Houthi are Antisemitic and we do NOT support Houthi. Their slogan is quite literally "curse the Jews"; Houthi are not our revolutionary comrades for there is no revolution in hatred and division. Their direct action on Israeli ships subsequently disrupting trade is undeniably important to disrupting the flow of capital and aiding the Palestinian resistance movement- but Houthi deserve no special recognition. Yemen has seen expulsion of Jewish people from the land for centuries, and the Antisemitism that Houthi carries forth is the same hatred that displaced Jewish people within Yemen's history.

Web archive from the Yemen Times about the treatment of Jews in Yemen and Houthi's views.

Within revolutionary spaces you must approach everything with a critical lens, and it goes without saying, especially now more than ever. Whilst we can recognize Houthi's direct action in hindering trade, and the promise there, aids the Palestinian cause by putting pressure on the Capitalist hegemony- we must equally affirm that antisemitism is unacceptable. To punish every Jewish person for Zionist crimes is unacceptable and a hinderance itself in revolutionary spaces. We cannot and will not allow Houthi's Antisemitic ideology to be regurgitated.

Leftists, Communists- recognising Antisemitism within Leftist spaces does not automatically corelate to giving grace to Israel- you must recognise that Judaism, Zionism and Israel are not mutually exclusive. The use, and bastardization of, Jewish symbology by Zionism and it's propaganda machine has long since blurred those lines, and thus it's integral to remain critical and vigilant. Even when Zionists proudly conflate the two to endorse the State of Israel's brutality- you should not deem the acts in and of itself Jewish. There is absolutely nothing Jewish about apartheid, colonialism and hatred.

Antisemitism is an age-old hatred, with the oppressive colonial state of Israel depending on it for survival. When we uproot Antisemitism, when we uproot oppression, division, hatred- we uproot the State of Israel and the Capitalist hegemony itself.

Antisemitism has no place in revolutionary spaces, and as is the case for any other form of discrimination and hatred- it cannot be ran from, only faced head-on. The solution to uprooting Antisemitism from global social infrastructure is not to enforce a new hatred, it is not to oppress another- for the cycle will only continue. We believe that society must educate one another to thus educate our future generations; we must ensure we remove division and hatred from social order, and that includes all forms of hatred.

Division itself must be dissolved to truly revolutionize social order.

[beguines]

would you be able to recommend any books/resources that provide a good intro to anti-psychiatry? rlly fascinated by this subject

to be clear, i wouldn't describe myself as explicitly anti-psychiatry. people very close to me rely on psychiatric medication in order to relieve symptoms that aren't just disruptive to their role in capitalist society but cause them immense suffering in general. while i have had particularly negative experiences with psychiatric medication, i have also seen it save people's lives and pull them out of acute crisis. i've been seeing a therapist for four years who has had a very positive effect on my life and has always been respectful of my refusal to take psychiatric medication.

i also think it is necessary to acknowledge that while psychiatry and psychology are disciplines that enforce capitalist hegemony, the alternative to being capable of functioning within capitalist society isn't much of an alternative at all when capitalism's inescapability is part of its very nature. that being said, i think it's extremely important for anyone living with mental illness, being treated for it, or supporting someone who is to be aware of:

the insufficiency of the biomedical/disease model and the very slow speed at which the field is moving away from it

the inability of medical professionals to identify the etiology of any mental illness

the immense risk associated with virtually all psychiatric medications (particularly antipsychotics and mood stabilizers)

the very profitable marriage between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry

the influence of western (and particularly american) hegemony over how we treat what we call mental illness

the prevalence of coercive/forced treatment

i also think it's extremely important within that context to do your own research and ensure that you're engaging with material from a variety of different sources, maintaining an awareness of any biases they may have and how those affect their research and conclusions, whether they skew towards anti-psychiatry or not. the most important thing to do if you or your loved one has any kind of illness is to be well-informed and capable of advocacy, which is largely why i've been doing a bit of a deep dive on the subject lately.

what i'm reading now:

desperate remedies: psychiatry's turbulent quest to cure mental illness by andrew scull

psychiatric hegemony: a marxist theory of mental illness by bruce m.z. cohen

psychiatry in crisis: at the crossroads of social sciences, the humanities, and neuroscience by vincenzo di nicola and drozdstoj stoyanov

other recommendations:

i think your best bet for more introductory material would be robert whitaker's work, including anatomy of an epidemic: magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in america and mad in america: bad science, bad medicine, and the enduring mistreatment of the mentally ill. he started an organization called mad in america which has a lot of resources and information, including a podcast of the same name. there's also a network of associated groups that are based in different areas of the world if you're interested in non-american perspectives.

the medicalization of society: on the transformation of human conditions into treatable disorders by peter conrad

on the heels of ignorance: psychiatry and the politics of not knowing by owen whooley

here is a link to some of the old icarus project zines and pamphlets. i was briefly involved with a small icarus group when i was younger and there were some serious issues with the (dis)organization and some of the principles upon which the local groups operated. i'm sure these still have some useful and/or interesting information, and if nothing else they're interesting relics from the anti-psychiatry movement in the early 2000s. i'm less familiar with some of the newer work they put out before their dissolution in 2020. here is an article on the history of icarus from one of the co-founders, published in 2014.

i would recommend looking into bioethics and biopolitics in general, particularly focault. if you want to get into any of the seminal figures in anti-psychiatry (laing, szasz, etc), i would personally advise a very critical reading of their work. as always, this is not an explicit endorsement of any of these works, authors, or their respective viewpoints.

[prismatic-bell]

Anti-Racism in Glass Onion: It's A Whole Thing, Part Two

Picking up from here.

We’ll pick up this part with, finally: Helen herself. The heroine of the piece. When we first meet her she has natural hair, a sort of Southern/AAVE-mix accent, and she. Is. PISSED. I think this is the most important part, frankly--the heart of the glass onion of racism deconstruction in this movie, to just pile more burden on this poor overworked metaphor (it deserves a raise, frankly). I'm 34 years old and trying to remember a single other movie I've seen in my entire life where a Black woman is not just angry but enraged, furious, livid, seething, and isn't An Angry Black Woman. Helen is raging--and so are we. Helen is fuming--and so is Blanc. Helen is as angry as it's possible for one person to be--and the narrative says she should be, that we should be, that her anger is normal and natural and any person put in her situation would feel this way. Helen is destructive—and we relish and celebrate her acts of destruction. Black anger in movies usually comes in two forms: either it's carefully modulated so a white audience can take it seriously, or it's over the top and you're meant to either laugh at it or feel threatened by it. Helen is damned near homicidal--and the narrative is firmly in her corner. Helen is a Black woman and she is angry. She is not An Angry Black Woman. And that anger is shown through multiple lenses! We see her pour out her heart to Benoit, who she (correctly) trusts not to judge her; we see it cold, calculated, carefully modulated so as to not look like An Angry Black Woman to "the disrupters;" and we finally see it completely unleashed in a literal glass-smashing fire-setting explosive rage--that ends in her destroying an icon of Western white beauty standards. That picture didn't have to be the Mona Lisa. If the point was "Klear destroyed an extremely famous painting," it could as easily have been Starry Night. Or a Picasso. The choice of Mona Lisa was deliberate--not just the most famous painting of all time, but the most famous white woman. Also worth noting here is that there’s a theory that actually isn’t entirely crackpot (unlikely but possible, in other words) that the Mona Lisa is actually a self-portrait of da Vinci. (This theory posits that he painted himself as a woman as a way to express his sexual orientation, based upon the not-100%-but-pretty-solid theory that he was gay.) Add that in, and you’ve got Helen destroying the-man-Miles-wants-to-believe-he-is (artist, inventor, philosopher, legend). It’s white hegemony all the way down.

Now that we've looked at how Miles uses Black imagery, how the Black characters use Black imagery, and at Helen (who we'll come back to), I want to go back to "the disrupters" and not just who they are, but what they did to Andi.

Duke speaks for himself. He's racist, sexist, chauvinist, repeatedly attempts blackmail, and carries a gun like he thinks it's a way to advertise his dick size. We all know who Duke is. We've seen people just like him all over YouTube. We also see him get in "Andi's" face, basically telling her she's worthless--openly stating what I said above about the mammy, that she was worth something until she wouldn't feed them their pap anymore and then she was scum. He has no problem supporting the narrative that Andi was an ignorant hanger-on and (white, male) Miles the true genius.

Whiskey says she's on Andi's side, but we quickly see her fall into stereotype--she tells "Andi" she's going to leave Duke, she says "I just left him" while crying, "Andi" says "Duke got what he deserved!" (meaning: he deserved to get dumped), and Whiskey immediately goes full-blown "holy shit homicidal crazy Black lady, she's violent she's psycho she's dangerous." Yes, I realize Whiskey is deeply emotional at the moment and thinking more about what’s just happened than a conversation she had a few hours previously, but she instantly assumes "Andi" murdered Duke and is going to kill her. She's an ally until she's not, and it doesn't take long to scratch the surface.

And then we get to Claire. She casts herself as a progressive politician in the Independent party, but we see her first perjure herself on the stand against Andi, and then do it again after Miles burns the napkin (albeit not under oath at the time). She will not actually stand up to protect the name, life, livelihood of not just one but two Black women. Oh, sure, she looks ashamed. But what good is silent guilt to Andi’s work, Andi’s legacy, Andi’s life, Andi’s justice? No good. No fucking good at all. If she’d spoken truth to power, Andi might still be alive. If she’d done the job she swore an oath to do in upholding the law of the United States, Andi might still be alive. Her silence didn’t just let Miles get away with grand larceny and character assassination; her silence killed.

Aaaand Birdie. Birdie is white-weaponized-womanhood writ large. Birdie is the victim because her phone was taken after she said something godawful. Birdie is the victim because people don't understand her blackface was a tribute. Birdie is the victim because she compared herself to Harriet Tubman and nobody understood she meant "in spirit" (or, frankly, probably what the hell she meant by "in spirit," because I see about as much similarity between Birdie and Harriet Tubman as I do between an apple and a seahorse). Birdie is the victim because nobody explained to a grownass woman that "sweatshop" means "factory built out of spit and human rights violations" instead of "place you make sweatpants." Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but to an extent there absolutely is malice in Birdie's actions. She never bothers to stop and ask why people are so damned mad at her, or why her career has taken two separate nosedives over antiblack statements. She never bothers to learn what "antiblack" means. And when confronted with the evidence Miles murdered Andi, she quickly pretends she didn't see it.

Finally, for living members, we’ve got Lionel. And he’s interesting because we see so little of him, but what we do see is Miles threatening him. Almost every time he’s got a speaking line, he’s trying to be a voice of reason, and every time, Miles shuts him down. This is part of the meta-narrative—Lionel isn’t a real person, he’s a person Rian Johnson dreamed up. Lionel could be any color. Lionel could be white, he could be Native, he could be Indian or Chinese or Slav. But he’s Black, and that’s on purpose, because he’s the only person in the movie Miles threatens onscreen. Duke gets killed, but Lionel is kept around even over strenuous objection—why? Because when Klear fails—and I think Miles knew it would fail—Miles will sail off into the sunset with the bankruptcy money and leave a Black man to take the fall.

And finally: Andi. We know, from seeing Helen at Benoit and Phillip’s, what Andi-not-glammed-up looks like. But now think of how she presents herself: straightened, dyed-blonde hair in the most I’m-not-just-a-white-woman-I’m-a-WHITE-woman haircut there is; Helen notes that Andi has schooled herself into a white-socialite “rich bitch” accent, even saying “who you fooling, girl? Not me”. Andi has lightened herself, whitened herself. And is it a surprise? She’s entered two fields that are notoriously white: STEM and business. She can’t have natural hair. It’s “unprofessional”. She can’t have a Black accent. It’s “ignorant” and “unschooled”. She can’t shed her skin to fit into a world that wants to put her “in her place,” but she certainly tried.

As an addendum to Andi—since it’s her wardrobe Helen is wearing—there’s some amazing color symbolism going on there, and I don’t mean the children’s hospital kind. When we meet “Andi,” she’s wearing a dress that’s mostly red and reminiscent of a blood splatter, with a tiny amount of brown near the hem. The rest of it is black and white, and the design of the bodice makes it such that the black and white are laying right against each other in opposition. Later that night, she’s in all white—and this is what she’s wearing when she’s shot and then comes back “bloodstained” with a red sauce Miles gave to Benoit. White hands put that “blood” on her, white hands created the opportunity for it to happen, and now there’s metaphorical blood on white—Andi’s blood, on Miles’ white hands. (There’s an additional bit of this in alive!Andi’s clothing, by the way, if you’re not convinced. When we see her in the Glass Onion bar she has straightened black hair and is wearing mostly black with just white cuffs and collar. When we see her in her office at Alpha she’s in dark gray, and in court, she’s in light gray. She dies in a pink sweater—the color of a scratch, before it turns into a bloody cut. Her wardrobe lightens as she tries to make herself better fit into the white ideal of what a businesswoman should look like...but it still ends in blood.)

Now let’s talk about Benoit Blanc.

What little we know of Benoit is that his family was probably either French or Cajun, based on how he pronounces his own name; that he’s a gay man with a husband; that he’s “the last gentleman detective” (if you watched Knives Out); that he’s apparently a bit of a comics fan; and, famously or infamously, that he’s Southern. So white Southern man in his mid-fifties—what do you assume you know of Benoit Blanc, if you don’t actually know him? I think it’s safe to say there’d be an assumption of antiblack racism. And yet—remember that pin I told you to stick in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? We’re back there now—the first thing we see of him in Glass Onion involves him getting told off by a Black man and not only taking it with grace, but accepting that he needs to open up about his problems because of said Black man. He’s not threatened, nor does he feel the need to assert some kind of superiority or dominance—he just goes “okay, you’re right” and spills. And from there we jump immediately (timeline-wise, not movie-wise) to him listening to Helen’s story and agreeing to help her. Now this does not mean he’s some kind of perfect beneficent dude with no problems; he did something pretty shitty with the way he handled the whole “you have to go with me or it can’t be done” thing, and the narrative wants us to forgive him for it because he’s the protagonist. It serves the story, I realize that’s the point, but I do think it’s worth noting simply because if he falls victim to prejudice or stereotype at any point in the movie, it’s right here, with the idea that Helen is A Strong Black Woman—he absolutely could have used more delicacy handling this, given this woman’s twin sister was just killed. A positive stereotype is still a stereotype. 

With that said, I feel like his own momentary dip into bias is actually what gives him the idea that really helps him spring the case open—as he realizes what he assumed, he also realizes he’s walking in as a white Southern man in his fifties. He, too, can be the victim of stereotype, but in this case he decides to weaponize those biases and prejudices among Miles and “the disrupters,” explicitly telling Helen he’ll “turn up the Southern hokum.” They want to be biased rich people relying on stereotypes? Oh, he’ll show them stereotypes. They’ll think he’s an idiot because of how he talks; they’ll assume he’ll take their side over Andi’s because of his origin. And they do! They confide in him openly about what Miles did to Andi, because he’s a white Southern yokel, right? He’ll assume Andi deserved it.

Except he doesn’t, because he’s bettered himself from that. Is he perfect? No. We see he’s not perfect. But he’s putting in the effort “the disrupters” don’t or won’t. And being willing to face that legacy and reputation is how he solves the case. It’s the tool in his arsenal that makes Miles underestimate him.

And finally, let’s go back to Banksy, who you may remember I initially ignored. There are two reasons for this, and both tie into the “is the Mona Lisa real?” thing.

First, Banksy is pretty famously anonymous. A single interviewer has met him and given us a gender (male), rough age (late 20s at time of interview), and race (white), but that’s all we’ve got. Miles didn’t commission Banksy because Banksy can’t be commissioned, and the kind of work he does suggests he’d tell Miles to shove his money up his ass. On top of which, Banksy is a graffiti artist, not a glassworker.

But more importantly, we’re never told it’s actually Banksy.

Someone on the boat says “Is that a Banksy?”, but this is never confirmed. And here’s where it gets interesting and is about to tie into the Mona Lisa: it can’t be a Banksy. Because, and this is a thing you probably wouldn’t know if you never got bored enough to do a Wikipedia deep dive (thanks, ADHD!), the reason Banksy works with stencils and flat colors is that by his own admission, he’s not actually a very good artist. He’s too slow to do the kind of work he wants to do without the aid of stencils. I’m not slagging off on Banksy, here, good on him for finding a way to do what he wanted to do anyway, but the point is you have to be fast to work in glass. He gets name-dropped specifically so someone can look bougie. That’s it.

But even without knowing that extra detail about why Banksy can’t do glass sculpture, we know he doesn’t. And this makes all of Miles’ art immediately suspect, and it’s supposed to be. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to teeter back and forth for most of the movie on whether the Mona Lisa is real. But it’s important to note the callousness Miles treats it with, because it’s an early clue as to him being the murderer. To wit, the Mona Lisa is deeply fragile. We literally can’t clean it to see what it’s supposed to look like because the way da Vinci painted it made it inherently unstable (if you want to see what a truer-to-color version would have looked like, one of da Vinci’s students painted alongside him a piece now known as the Prado Mona Lisa that we’ve been able to clean because it doesn’t have that same instability). When it travels—which is basically “when the Louvre has to put it in storage for awhile” and that’s it—there’s an insurance policy on it bigger than the GDP of some countries. It literally makes the news when it’s moved. And it doesn’t actually go anywhere! It doesn’t join traveling exhibits, it doesn’t get shuttled around for tests, if you want to do work on the Mona Lisa you go to the Mona Lisa. It does not come to you.

Knowing all of this, if for some reason the curators at the Louvre came to you and said “hey, you’re in charge of the Mona Lisa for awhile,” what would you do? Put it in a case you perpetually keep open to humidity and corrosive salt air (remember, they’re on an island), with a hidden switch inside a badly-painted figurine? Like regardless of whether you think the safety measures around the painting in real life are excessive, you’d probably show it at least a bare minimum of respect and not needlessly expose it to potential severe damage. And if you loved it the way Miles claims to love it, would you even accept charge of the painting? Or would you be like “dude no, you have the experts and the resources, leave it there, you can take way better care of it than me”? (It’s not even in my top ten favorite paintings, possibly not even in my top fifty, but I sure as hell wouldn’t take it. I can’t even imagine what I’d do if the MoMA handed me The Persistence of Memory and said “take care of this for awhile.” I sure as hell would not have it in an open case in my dining room.)

And this is why 1) the Mona Lisa is real and 2) you’re supposed to go back and forth on whether it is or not. Because…surely he’s not that callous? Surely he understands the concept of respecting other people’s things, especially other people’s priceless property? Yes, he can certainly afford to damage the Mona Lisa, but—he wouldn’t, would he? Ah—but here’s the genius, the vacillation on whether it’s real tells us he’s the murderer, because one of two things is true. If it’s a copy, then he’s a compulsive liar. Plenty of people, including very wealthy people, the world over own high-quality replicas of extremely famous works, and it’s not seen as shameful or embarrassing—being able to say “this is as close as anyone will ever get to owning the original” is a kind of clout all its own. Miles would have no reason to lie about owning a spectacular replica except extreme self-aggrandizement. And if it’s real, then we know that no, actually, he doesn’t love it as much as he says—it’s a trinket to make him look good, and if the Mona fucking Lisa is nothing but a trinket, then what are the people around him? The ones he claims to love so much? It must be real for the ending to make sense—losing his own copy wouldn’t be “the end of Miles Bron”—but long before we come to that conclusion, there is literally no way for his treatment of the painting to come off as anything but borderline deranged.

And here’s where we get back to “this whole thing is literally just a takedown of racism”: the last time the Mona Lisa was appraised, estimates put it at several hundred million dollars—but adjusted for inflation, the estimated value in 2020 would be about one billion, and appraisers agreed when they valuated it that any price they put on it would almost certainly be surpassed at auction.

And the movie ends with a final explosive “and it’s not worth shit compared to a Black woman’s life.”

It’s not just about “a life is worth more than even the most precious piece of art.” It’s a takedown of racism all the way through.

[familyabolisher]

hello ave ! i was wondering if you’ve watched the 2022 interview with the vampire series and if so what you thought of it

i really enjoyed iwtv! i haven’t read rice’s novel but as far as i understand it, the show was a pretty significant departure from the original text, at least where rice’s engagement with race is concerned—i think the show seems pretty determined to strike out on its own, and thus far seems to be doing a pretty good job of that. i think what i found most interesting was the show’s honing in on a relationship between the coercive enforcement of normative kinship structures and the social abjection of the slave relative to the white master (i’ve been reading vincent woodard’s the delectable negro which expounds on this idea of like, rape + abuse + consumption extant within models of kinship relations, ‘the ideological infrastructure of childhood in slavery’ as he puts it, which i think has a lot of explanatory power around lestat/louis/claudia…); there’s lestat’s ‘teaching’ vampirism to louis which of course then morphs into physical abuse & that the text makes clear can be read parallel to a relationship between a slavemaster and a slave, and there’s the way lestat functions as a patriarch relative to whom we can read louis as the ‘wife’ and claudia as the ‘child,’ and the networks of [physical, economic, emotional] dependency, violence holding them all together.

i’m also quite interested in this idea of a ‘disciplined’ vampirism, or indeed vampirism as ‘disciplining’ (which is of course to say class-enforcing), because of course the dominant cultural narrative of the vampire (& the one with which i have the most familiarity) is that of a kind of nondifferentiated alterity which can be moulded into any number of metaphors. lestat to louis, of course, but also eg. lestat killing the opera singer who performed badly, the opulence of the mardi gras ball at the end (and something about consumption as disciplining—again tapping the vincent woodard sign but the mardi gras attendees coveting a kind of consumption of louis as a Black man only to then themselves be consumed), louis in 2021 comparing vampires who eat humans rather than animals to slaves (‘slaves to their appetites’ or similar, i forget the exact wording used, but it’s the language of body fascism plus the obvious pertinence with which slavery in the show as a whole is imbued—which ofc then invokes ideas around [un]disciplined bodies and racialisation) … it’s interesting how the show kind of plays both positions at once. the alterity metaphor is there, but so is the hegemony of sorts—vampirism disrupts louis’ position within a traditional family structure where vampirism stands for queerness, obviously, but also the intrusion of lestat (which is to say both queerness and slavery!) as a force that destabilises a Black family. it’s an interesting little balancing act and i’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

anyway i also just think it’s a well-written show lol! visually gorgeous, erotic, indulgent, well-paced. i had a good time. no idea what happens next (again, haven’t read the book) but my ears pricked up at the idea of travelling from louisiana to europe … a transatlantic crossing, a reverse colonisation of sorts … there’s a lot you can do with that!

[dateamonster]

the good weed will have u waking up the next morning like theres a connecting thread of monster hunting shows where the main characters are simultaneously symbols of the status quo charged with identifying and often eliminating the Others of the world while being othered themselves in such a way that upholding the institutions they do can be read as acting directly against their own best interest. this is especially obvious in something like x-files where the characters are literally agents of the fbi and the show is structured more or less in the format of a police procedural, while half of the main duo is defined primarily by his love and fascination with the paranormal, a curiosity about the greater world which the very powers he serves we know would seek to contain, to secret away, or to destroy. or even like supernatural where monster hunting has this inextricable tie to a sort of stereotypical rugged masculinity and stoicism that is supposed to appeal to the audience even while we see it emotionally and physically destroying the characters who most strive to embody it. within both of these shows, and im sure others within the genre (looking at you buffy, tho i dont have time to unpack all that rn), there is this vein of suppressed queerness that runs through the narrative, as if in embodying this role as the defender of hegemony and eliminator of that which disrupts the perceived natural order, the archtypal monster hunter is made to recognize and subsequently repress the aspects of that cultural deviance that manifest within themself. going back to supernatural, this i think is especially evident in the conflict between the text of show and its large queer fanbase, who seemed to recognize within its otherwise pretty cut and dry story of a manly man who likes cars and guns and follows almost blindly the demands of his patrilinial inheritance a sort of self-parody, the conformity to the role of this cishetpatriarchal protector ideal so complete and almost excessive that it doubles back and becomes a kind of drag, yet so fragile that continuing to uphold it appears to be a constant source of pain and conflict for its characters.

im not saying such and such monster hunter show is inherently a secret queer narrative, but i AM saying every monster hunter is a huge fucking closet case.

[ptseti]

U.S. POLICY: DESTROY HUMANE SOCIETIES

Close to 30 years ago, former CIA officer Philip Agee was interviewed about the United States’ role in destabilising countries, such as Cuba and Nicaragua.

Fascinatingly enough, he explained how, when governments prioritise social justice and equality by providing education and healthcare, as Cuba does, the United States moves to disrupt their processes.

Countries like Nicaragua, Cuba, Grenada and others that have challenged US hegemony, so they can provide a good quality of life to their people, were or are being destroyed militarily or economically. This comes as the US government oppresses its population.

CIA #USA #Cuba #Nicaragua #SocialJustice #Grenada #Hegemony #Economy #Destruction

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Am I right to judge a Biblical professor for using BC and not BCE in an academic paper? For context, said paper was published in 2013.

Okay, here's my take on the issue:

My general rule is that time should be marked with the metric being used by the group being talked about.

The issue with BC/AD is that it's often used outside of its proper context, which is Christian societies and cultures. The birth of Christ has nothing to do with Medieval Islamic kingdoms, Chinese emperors, Indigenous peoples, etc.

If this is a Biblical scholar talking about Biblical contexts, I'm fine with BC/AD being used. Unless it's talking about Jewish people, in which case I would suggest that the Hebrew calendar would be more appropriate.

But at the end of the day, the BC/BCE debate isn't the hill I'm going to die on. BCE is fundamentally just BC in a different outfit. The dates are the same. Using BCE doesn't really do anything to de-center Christianity or disrupt Christian hegemony.

-Reid

[stellanix]

thinking about how space exploration has always been my greatest passion, but i'm increasingly realizing that the people in charge of it aren't doing it for me, people like me, or literally any marginalized people, and they never have been

thinking about how nasa's flagship space telescope is named after someone who, if i worked for nasa, would've had me interrogated and fired for being queer, how the queer scientists who asked nasa to change the name were hounded by harrassment, how nasa's response was essentially "everyone was homophobic back then, not our fault, who cares," how every amazing discovery made using this telescope is credited using the name of that homophobe, and how they'd probably go right back to firing queer people if a republican government told them to

thinking about how nasa gives billions of dollars to a company run by a transphobic fascist billionaire, how someone who hates people like me for who we are is the one given the power to write the future

thinking about how most of those rockets and spacecraft helping us learn more about our universe are built by the same companies who built the bombs currently raining down on palestine and yemen

thinking about how, back in the 60s and 70s, white american men walked on the moon and said "we come in peace for all mankind" as their country was bombing southeast asia and systemically oppressing people of color

thinking about how astronomers build telescopes on mauna kea despite it being sacred to the indigenous people whose land was stolen in a coup, how the european space agency displaced people when building the kourou launch site, and how spacex damages wetlands, disrupts communities, and denies indigenous people access to sacred ground with their site in southern texas - how a lack of care or consideration for land and people is seen as justified in the name of "progress"

thinking about how ever-brightening city lights and satellite megaconstellations clogging low earth orbit steal more and more of the night sky from us every day, robbing countless people of the chance to see the wider universe with their own eyes

thinking about how the hopeful cooperation symbolized by the international space station is falling apart thanks to the nationalistic and imperialistic ambitions of states only interested in maintaining and expanding their hegemony, and how nasa's only plan to replace that beautiful symbol of cooperation is to have private companies build space hotels for the rich (the international space station is already starting to be used in this way)

thinking about how the US invites other countries to join in its return to the moon, but only if they sign the artemis accords, an agreement that circumvents the kind of international treaty processes that made the 1967 outer space treaty, in order to privilege american interests and allow for the commercialization of the moon

thinking about how white, cishet, abled american children can dream of becoming astronauts, while black children are treated as criminals from birth, trans children are denied life-saving care and forced into conversion therapy, disabled children are neglected, bullied, and denied the chance to pursue their dreams by a system that refuses to accommodate them, and palestinian children can't dream because the sound of bombs keeps them awake at night

thinking about how the privilged few with the power to decide what our future in space will be look up at the infinite wonders of the cosmos, and see only resources to exploit and profits to be made - the same thing they see when they look at earth. they don't see beautiful places to be learned about, respected, and appreciated, but things to be used. they don't see spaceflight as a way to explore these wonders or discover new ways to be human, but as a way to amass more power

i wonder if these people listened to carl sagan's pale blue dot speech, and took it not as a lesson about the absurdity and pettiness of power and greed, but as a challenge to conquer more than just one pale blue dot?

[tomorrowusa]

Russian state media loves "Moscow Marjorie" Taylor Traitor Greene. They undoubtedly hope that her attempt to oust Speaker Johnson creates chaos and prevents the already overdo aid package to Ukraine from passing.

The Russian government is engaged in an effort to destabilize and weaken liberal democracies. Greene fits in nicely with their plans.

Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States. “We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.” The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.

Just a quick word to point out that Putin is under the delusion that his Axis of Authoritarians would have Russia as its head. China is stronger than Russia and will not kowtow to a country which has a GDP not much bigger than Italy's and is suffering enormous losses in a war with a country which has only a quarter of Russia's population.

Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.

In addition to old school revanchism, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is a test to see how far the liberal democracies will let Putin go.

For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia’s richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison — it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.” The long congressional standoff on providing more weapons to Ukraine was only making it easier for Russia to challenge Washington’s global power, he said. “The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss,” Khodorkovsky said. “This is an absolute misunderstanding.”

Putin was taken aback by both Ukraine's fierce defense and by Western resolve to protect the independence of a European democratic state. He refuses to admit that he made an enormous blunder so he continues to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russians while hoping that his US servants like Greene, Gaetz, and Trump will rescue him.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Khomeini’s Conquest

The months following the fall of the Shah was a springtime of revolution, a period of conflict and social struggle that provided a challenge to the new authorities. When workers returned to work, in many industries they did so under the control of the shoras (workers councils). Political organizations, suddenly free to operate after years of repression, began to flourish. Neighborhoods self-organized under the control of local committees. Universities became bases of left-wing opposition. The provinces were in rebellion.

How could such a broad based popular movement, with the oldest and largest left in the Middle East, result in the establishment of a clerical theocracy? While repression played a large role, the full story is far more complicated.

While the proletariat was strong and militant enough to overthrow the regime, they were not in a position to assert their hegemony over the movement. Moreover, almost immediately after the fall of the Shah, conflicts began to manifest within the coalition of revolutionary forces. While the movement was broad and popular, its leadership was drawn from the petit-bourgeoisie of the bazaari-clerical alliance. The problem for the new regime would therefore be to somehow establish undisputed political hegemony over this diverse patchwork of revolutionized groups, as well as the masses more broadly.

It was not merely through extreme violence in the streets that Khomeini and his supporters were able to solidify their leadership over the popular movement. Certainly, they did employ lumpen-thugs (calling themselves the Hezbollah) to attack opposition rallies and break strikes. But their success was equally due to ideological manipulation. If there was one overarching ideological trait of the 1979 revolution it was anti-imperialism. Far more than an outcome of some religious revival or resistance to modernity, the Islamic ideology of the day assumed the form of a Third Worldist populism, one which would become so hegemonic over the revolution that all questions relating to it would eventually be seen through its prism. This was especially the case for the left, who contributed to this ideological confusion. It was through the manipulation of anti-imperialist ideology that the Khomeinist clergy was able to secure and maintain its hegemony over the revolution.

A key factor in Khomeini’s ability to rapidly gain control over the movement lay in the near-total political vacuum that existed under the Shah’s dictatorship. The entire weight of the regime’s repression had been turned against the communist movement and the secular nationalists. For the masses of rural people who flooded into cities during the decade preceding the revolution, their traditional community having been disrupted by the land reform, the mosque was often the only place where they could find remnants of that community. However, mosques were not neutral, but under the control of the cleric, who found in this newly dispossessed population a ready audience. These cultural affinities were fused with a utopian-populist ideology that promised to end corruption and inaugurate a period of justice, uniting the various classes into an abstract people.

It is often suggested that the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah was hostile to Islam, or was pursuing a program of radical secularization. This is inaccurate: like his father, he was more interested in bringing religion under the control or service of the state. Although he sought modernization and national development, his approach to religion depended on how it served the state. For the Shah, the main enemy was the communist and left-wing opposition. Although the Pahlavi regime certainly promoted a nationalist ideology that emphasized the pre-Islamic past, the regime was not averse to using Islam when it served its purposes. It pursued a strategy that would be replicated throughout the region, encouraging religious ideology to counter the popularity of the Left. While the full repressive and propagandistic force of the state was wielded against the left, the Islamic forces enjoyed an incredible freedom, and even encouragement. Far from closing down mosques, the last Shah funded more mosques, prayer halls, and religious services. So long as they did not directly challenge the state or the monarchy, they were free to operate. This was especially the case if they directed their ire against godless communism. Many of those clergy who would be important figures in the Khomenist movement during the 1979 revolution featured prominently in magazines and newspapers, and regularly appeared on radio and television. Of course, there was repression against the religious political opposition, but only of groups that directly opposed the regime. Those figures who stayed away from direct discussion of politics were given room to maneuver, which was unthinkable for the left.

Khomeini’s intransigence and relative freedom of expression while in France soon made him the symbolic leader of the revolution — proof that symbols, when invested with enough power, become powers of their own. Khomeini enjoyed a network the communist movement could only dream of, with a strong following among middle and lower ranking clergy. As tapes of Khomieini’s speeches were widely shared and distributed, mosques everywhere soon became a platform for voicing dissent. During the revolutionary insurrection of 1978–79, the neighborhood committees that would later serve as an important base of the revolution were organized out of mosques in which the cleric was in control. These were increasingly controlled by a centralized revolutionary committee composed of Khomieni’s supporters. Those that had remained independent were soon brought under control. These committees soon began to organize militias.[19] Over time, these committees were all brought to heel, usually through violent repression. What they couldn’t dominate by means of loyalists, they broke through frontal repression. But it was in Kurdistan where the autonomy from the central government was maintained the longest. This partially explains the repression that the state has always levied against the people there, who never fully accepted the Islamic Republic.

On November 7th, 1979 Khomeinist students took over the American Embassy. The crisis came at a perfect moment, when economic problems and frustration with the revolution was beginning to grow. One cannot understand the hostage crisis unless one recognizes that it was less about conflict with the US than about defeating the domestic opposition, particularly the Marxist guerrilla groups. It had the dual outcome of both forcing the resignation of the liberal nationalist provisional government and defeating the radical left, who still battled for hegemony over the anti-imperialist revolution. Prior to the hostage crisis, the new regime had no intention of opposing the United States. In this sense, the embassy takeover was the anti-imperialist spectacle perfected: by drawing attention away from the struggles taking place in the rest of the country, students who only recently would have been seen by their Marxist counterparts as religious fanatics and rectionaries could now present themselves as the vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle. In this way, the crisis helped the religious factions defeat the left and secure their hegemony over the revolution.

From 1980 to 1983 the state launched a “cultural revolution” with the intention of purging the universities and educational institutions of radical left influence. Schools were shut down, faculty purged. Resistance was met with severe repression, leading to fierce battles between leftist students and Islamist thugs. The same was the case with the worker’s councils in the factories, although in this case the initiative lay with the left-wing parties. Although the councils developed spontaneously out of the strike committees organized during the mass strike of 1978–79, they enjoyed the participation of the Left, who were invited to play a role in their direction. Whereas those workers councils that were dominated by the Khomeinists often tended to be corporatist in ideology, the more radical worker’s councils were democratic in nature.

This difference points to the decisive question — by no means unique to Iran — of the internal diversity of the working class. The rapid and uneven character of capitalist development over the previous decade had created a significant though not unsurpassable chasm, a phenomenon common to many nations in the global south, particularly where development is marked by advanced technology, as opposed to more primitive forms of accumulation. This chasm meant that there was an important cultural difference between “new” and “old” workers, one that the Islamists played upon and used against the left and working class movement. There was a marked difference between the newly-proletarianized manual laborers or unemployed workers and second generation urbanites, who enjoyed different sources of entertainment and tended to support the secular parties of the left. This included white collar workers, but also “skilled” workers in modern industries including oil, gas, and petrochemicals, which were central to the state and economy. Similar differences existed at the level of education, as well as in lifestyles. The clergy played upon this difference with their ideas of cultural imperialism. Imperialism was affiliated not merely with the rule of capital, but with all facets of Western culture, Marxism included. The upper sectors of the working class were characterized as Westernized, a trend consistent with Third World populism elsewhere, particularly in nations that are not among the farthest flung regions of the periphery and underdeveloped, but which are developing more rapidly in the direction of the global system.

Like fascist regimes before them, the Khomeini regime used disorder to establish order. They did not merely conquer the state but also seized power in the street, through the action of their revolutionary committees. By 1983 they had defeated all their political opponents. From the beginning, the Islamic Republic always incorporated a segment of the population into its police apparatus to surveil and repress the rest of the population. This policy allowed it to channel the cultural resentment of the lumpenproletariat into the regime’s repression, and marked an important departure from the preceding regime.

[turtletoria]

I was debating just ignoring this message because it's stupid and inconsiderate as hell but im just going to use this as an opportunity to talk to you all about this, especially if you also think this way since i dont think this is even an uncommon line of thought (as ghoulish as it sounds 5 months into this genocide. where have these people been???).

I believe that if you see injustice you should try to do something, anything, about it, especially something so harrowing and horrific as a genocide that is currently decimating said country a "world away." it is our responsibility as humans to care about other humans. and apparently millions and millions of other people agree, just from opening tumblr or instagram or twitter and seeing supportive posts and calls to action, or looking at the brave people going to rallies and protests and disrupting life as usual, seeing people come together to mass email and call representatives so that these government workers can get off their asses and do something. recently chicago has become the biggest city to call for a ceasefire. This is a really big deal.

and also if "your country" means the US, then I feel like this "territorial dispute" (what a crass and disgusting way to refer to an ethnic cleansing that goes way beyond just fighting over territory) is definitely relevant to USians, especially taxpayers. the US, the UK, Canada, the imperial powers of the West are aiding and abetting this genocide through their citizens' tax dollars. despite their frustrating and infuriating inaction, even an important institution as the ICJ has acknowledged that genocide committed by israel is plausible - its on the record now. how horrible then, that MY and millions of others' tax dollars are being taken and used against our will for something so depraved and evil as this - it's all the more reason that all these problems are connected and those in the West have a responsibility to redirect where their money goes - i and everyone else that lives and works and pays taxes in the West have a stake in this and an even bigger moral imperative to do something, anything. moreover these imperial powers, most notably the US, have a history of colonization and subjugation of the global south, often using military power not for the benefit of their citizens but more so for consolidating and maintaining global hegemony - just look at the korean war, the vietnam war, CIA involvement in cuba, etc. etc. etc.

and in this way the US' problems, like anon's mention of enslaved labor, are interconnected with Palestinian liberation -> Palestine is a country struggling for statehood against a colonial power. Land back for Palestinians translates to Land Back for Native Americans and indigenous peoples. A common slogan that I saw in posters was "Nobody is free until we are all free." And this is true! Also it's possible to care about multiple things at once, by the way! just a thought! you don't have to give up everything just because you can't solve or do everything! i get it, it can be overwhelming since it seems the world is ending everyday everywhere. but you have to take a breath and do what you think is right. and sometimes that means focusing your energy on things that are pressing and important, and would make the biggest impact (that one is able to make) for helping people in the here and now. its not "handwringing," it's a reminder of our responsibility to humanity.