#anti capitalist propaganda etc etc

[ahsteria]

office mug

[mariacallous]

The great fault of the global left is not that it supports Hamas. For how could Western left-wing movements or left-inclining charities or academic bodies truly support Hamas if they were serious about their politics?

No one outside the most reactionary quarters of Islam shares Hamas’s aim of forcing the peoples of the world to accept “the sovereignty of Islam” or face “carnage, displacement and terror” if they refuse.  You cannot be a progressive and campaign for a state that executes gay men. An American left, which includes in its ranks the Queers for Palestine campaign group, cannot seriously endorse lethal homophobia in its own country.  They will turn a blind eye in Palestine, as we shall see, but not in New York or Chicago.

Finally, no left organisation proudly honours the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the fascist tradition that Hamas embraces with such sinister gusto, although in a sign of a decay that has been building on the left for more than a generation, many will promulgate left-wing conspiracy theories which are as insane as their fascist counterparts.

No, the problem with the global left is that it is not serious about politics. It “fellow travels” with radical Islam rather than supports it. The concept of “fellow travelling,” with its suggestions of tourism, dilettantism, and privilege, is well worth reviving. The phrase comes from the Bolsheviks. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 they looked with appreciation on Westerners who supported them without ever endorsing communism. Artists, writers, and academics who were disgusted with the West, often for good reason, I should add, were quite happy to justify Soviet communism and cover up its crimes without ever becoming communists themselves.

Leon Trotsky put it best when he said of fellow travellers that the question was always “how far would they go”? As long as they did not have live under the control of communists in the 1920s or the control of Islamists in the 2020s, the answer appears to be: a very long way indeed

W.H. Auden said, as he looked back with some contempt on his fellow travelling past, if Britain or the United States or any country he and his friends knew were taken over by a “successful communist revolution with the same phenomena of terror, purges, censorship etc., we would have screamed our heads off”. But as communism happened in backward Russia “a semi-barbarous country which had experienced neither the Renaissance nor the Enlightenment”, they could ignore its crimes in the interests of seeing the capitalist enemy defeated.

You see the same pattern of lies and indulgence in the case of Hamas. Journalists  have produced a multitude of examples of fellow travelling since 7 October but let one meeting of the Oakland City Council in the Bay area of San Francisco speak for them all.

A council member wanted the council to pass a motion that condemned the killings and hostage-taking by Hamas, who, in case we forget, prompted the war that has devastated Gaza, by massacring Israeli civilians. The motion got nowhere

According to one speaker Hamas did not massacre anyone, a modern variant of Holocaust denial that is becoming endemic. “There have not been beheadings of babies and rapings,” a woman said at the meeting. “Israel murdered their own people on October 7.”  Another woman said that calling Hamas a terrorist organization is “ridiculous, racist and plays into the genocidal propaganda that is flooding our media.” Hamas was the “armed wing of the unified Palestinian resistance” , said a third who clearly had no knowledge of the civil war between Hamas and Fatah.

“To condemn Hamas was very anti-Arab racist” cried a fourth. The meeting returned to modern Holocaust denial as a new speaker said the Israeli Defence Forces had murdered their own people and it was “bald propaganda” to suggest otherwise. A man intervened to shout that “to hear them complain about Hamas violence is like listening to a wifebeater complain when his wife finally stands up and fights back”.  

Anyone who contradicted him was a “white supremacist.”

Of course they were.

Now if theocrats were to establish an Islamist tyranny in the Bay area, I am sure every single speaker would scream their heads off, as Auden predicted. They can turn into fellow travellers as there is no more of a prospect of theocracy threatening them than there was of communism threatening readers of the left-wing press in the UK and US in the 1930s.

A serious left would have plenty to complain about. Consider the Israeli position after the breakdown of the ceasefire. The Israeli state is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a catastrophe of a prime minister, who left his people exposed to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. His war aims are contradictory: you cannot both wipe out Hamas and free the hostages.

Worst of all, the Israeli defence forces are to move to the southern Gaza strip where two million Palestinians are crammed. Just war doctrine holds that a military action must have a reasonable chance of success if the suffering is to be permitted. How, reasonably, can the Israeli army expect to find guerilla fighters hiding in a terrified population?  According to leaks in the Israeli media, Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary of state, was warning the Israeli government that, “You can’t operate in southern Gaza in the way you did in the north. There are two million Palestinians there.” But he was ignored.  A radical movement worth having would surely be putting pressure on the Biden administration to force Israel to listen to its concerns.

The radical movement we have will not engage in practical politics because compromise is anathema to it. Any honest account of the war would have to admit that Israel has the right to defend itself against attack. It is just that the military position it finds itself in now may well make its war aims impossible and therefore immoral.

You can see why practical politics has no appeal. Where is the violent satisfaction in sober analysis,  the drama in compromise? Where is the Manichean distinction between the absolute good of the Palestinians and the pure evil of Israel?  

Meanwhile, ever since the Israeli victory in the Six Day War of 1967, you have been able to say that Jewish settler sites on the West Bank were placed there deliberately to make a peace settlement impossible, and ensure that Israel controlled all the territory from “the river to the sea” forever.

A serious left might try to revive a two-state solution by building an international consensus that the settlements must go. Once again, however, that is too tame an aim. For the fellow traveller watching Palestine from a safe distance, satisfaction comes only by embracing Hamas’s call for the destruction of Israel. Some progressives try to dress up the urge to destroy by pretending that Jews and Palestinians will go on to live together in some happy-clappy, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state. But most must know they are advocating a war to the death. What makes their position so disreputable is that, if they thought about it calmly, they would know it would be a war that only Israel could win. It is the Israelis who have the nuclear weapons, after all.

The worst of the global left is dilettantish. It advocates a maximalist position which has a minimal chance of success - just for the thrill of it. David Caute, a historian of fellow travelling with Stalin and communism said that the endorsement of communism by fellow travelling intellectuals in the West “deepened the despair” of Soviet intellectuals. “In their darkest hours they heard themselves condemned by their own kind”.

The 2020s are not the 1930s. I am sure that, if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, my sole concern would be the removal of Israeli forces that threatened me and my family. I would either not care about demonstrations in the West or I would receive some comfort from the knowledge that people all over the world were protesting on my behalf.

Nevertheless, a kind of betrayal is still at work. By inflaming and amplifying the worst elements in Palestine the global left is giving comfort to the worst elements in Israel, which are equally determined to make a compromise impossible.

The New Statesman made that point well when it ran a piece by Celeste Marcus.   She came from the Zionist far right, and was taught doctrines that dehumanised Palestinians. She grew up and grew away from the prejudices of her childhood and became a liberal. But after she moved into her new world, she “recognised immediately that progressive leftists feel about Israelis the way radical Zionists feel about Palestinians: these are not real people.”

The result is that for all its power on the streets and in academia the global left is almost an irrelevance.

“To influence Israel,” she writes, “one must be willing to recognise it. Since leftist leaders cannot bother to do this, they cannot be of real use to Palestinians. This is a betrayal of their own cause.”

The dilettantism of fellow travelling always ends in betrayal and denial for the reason Auden gave: terror is always more tolerable when it happens far, far away.

[catgirlforeskin]

Actually, I want to talk about this more.

I think that people really overpay how bad politically "online" and 4chan and such are. Not because 4chan is good (it is very bigoted), but in my experience while imageboards are very loosely moderated*, and it allows them to spread some graphic shit, they are not interdimensional aliens. Sure, I didn't see photos of bestiality anywhere else, but I saw and see all the same prejudices in "normie" groups, in comments under movie torrents, in news media, I hear them on the streets and from my relatives. And it doesn't just happen, it's like the norm (not so much in official news, thank fuck, but mainstream TV is still guilty).

After Trump all imageboards into more or less interconnected system of fascist propaganda, sure, but the foundation wasn't that different, in my opinion. Society just sucks because of capitalism and due to the fact that most of pre-capitalist heritage is even worse.

Something similar is true for Reddit. It does suck, but also everyone uses it, even worldwide. The fact that it is like that is not because of redditors, but because this is the face of (mostly white American) middle class society.

This may sound too anti-communist of me, but I feel so angry when people say "actually bigotry is just a thing that online loners do, most people are actually nice". No! People are not nice, people are the ones who do all of this bigotry! It is not 4chan that makes people use racial slurs, it is not twitter that brainwashes women into being housewives, it is not Reddit that covers up rapists, it is not TikTok that makes people crave fascist dict6. It is your neighbors, your friends, you! And me, and all of us here. It's not "human nature", but it's our reality. Society is very flawed, and since society is not a deity but only a network of people, all of us are flawed, all of us are monsters even. Attributing every societal ill to "terminally online neckbeards" is just placing all of your crimes on convenient scapegoats.

This is not defense of 4channers or redditors, they suck, but it's so stupid to pretend that they are just not children of your society, not even that different from you

100% agree, yeah, I hate the tendency for people to project societal ills onto an Other so they don’t have to think about their own complicity in it. We see it in Stranger Danger and the creation of The Predator as opposed to the reality of most abuse coming from people you know and have structural power over you (parents, bosses, etc).

We see it all the time in the transmisogynist harassment campaigns on here, where we’ll see trans women get called “literal rapists” for doing cnc play with their girlfriends when we (at least used to) understand that Rape Culture is a thing and it’s omnipresent in society, or trans women promote “literal incest” for calling their girlfriends big sis or whatever when the most popular porn category everywhere for the last decade has been incest crap.

There’s easily a hundred other things I could list but the point is obvious, I mean shit it applies with the law too, there’s so many things that are part of the dominant culture and everyone has a hand in, but punishment is only inflicted on the subaltern

[acti-veg]

Something I can’t wrap my head around is leftist who are against veganism. These are the same people who talk about how consent is the most important thing, about how capitalism exploits workers and the objection of woman. yet all that gets thrown out when we talk about animals? I am very left wing and before I became vegan I never disagreed with vegan ethics I just kinda expect I had a double standard.

(witch in hindsight isn’t much better, but hey I rather take someone being honest then being inconsistent just to save themselves)

but how can someone say I am against rape, exploitation and objectification and the next breath be all for it. I genuinely don’t understand and I feel I am going crazy?

Being against those things in principle doesn’t actually require anything from us beyond asserting that we’re against them, and perhaps signing a petition or two. Veganism however, requires personal sacrifice, it requires introspection, the admission of personal wrongdoing, and a radical shift in how you think think and live your life. You have to do veganism not just talk about it.

This obviously should also be the case for leftist politics in general, but veganism is an excellent example of how much of it is just talk. It’s all very well saying you support bodily autonomy and oppose exploitation when it’s being done by someone else, far away, then fail to do so when you’re the one benefiting from it. Blackfish was an excellent example of this, how suddenly people believed in animal rights and boycott when it was an activity they didn’t plan on engaging with anyway. See also Yulin, whale hunting, fur, foie gras etc.

There is also the propaganda and the social pressure to contend with. There is this enormous blind spot when it comes to animal rights, that otherwise progressive people find themselves parroting socially conservative (and sometimes even actual fascist) talking points to justify their own behaviour. Carnism is so difficult to contend with precisely because it is invisible, that’s why leftists in particular are irrationally offended by the fact that this word even exists.

Veganism aligns perfectly with leftist, anti-capitalist values, and is in fact a logical application of those values. This is why leftists are so aggravated by veganism; they know full well that this is in line with their own values. It is an affront to their identity as leftists, as animal lovers, as ‘good’ people in general. Coming to terms with the fact that you are complicit in exploitation and abuse, then changing your life accordingly is not an easy thing. It is all too tempting to treat those encouraging you to do so as an enemy so that you never have to really grapple with your own guilt.

[yourtongzhihazel]

Media as an arm of the state

All media outlets have a bias (we all know this) and a class nature. Why do news media outlets, nyt, economist, guardian, washington post, etc. etc. etc. all report the way they do? To begin, starting a newspaper, especially back in the day, was a task that required heavy capital investment. Thus, it was the burgeoning bourgeoisie, with their mounds of capital, who were most capable of founding newspapers. Of course, left-wing and marginalized people made their own newspapers too! Famously, Karl Marx founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and African-Americans founded the Philadelphia Tribune. However, these newspapers never reached wide circulation and constant scrutiny, and if they were unlucky, like Marx was, would be shut down by the state. So by "curtailed selection" only those most amiable to bourgeois interests or tailed the bourgeois ideological line would be allowed to stay!

Of course, the reason these states shuts down left-wing newspapers is the same reason why these states is lenient to bourgeois interests: They are run by the bourgeoisie. The media, owned by the bourgeoisie, feed the population "news" and "media" which is curtailed specifically in bourgeois interests. This affects the political-economy of a nation to "prefer" bourgeois interests as well, which allows the continued existence of the bourgeois state. Because most of us live under dictatorships of the bourgeoisie (DOTB), the vast vast VAST majority of our media will be, if not directly, then indirectly controlled by the bourgeoisie.

Sharp readers would have, perhaps, made the connection that a proletariat state must treat media differently than a DOTB. Indeed this is the case. "苹果日报" (apple daily) was a Hong Kong based media company that was shut down in 2021 following its support of the Hong Kong riots. "人民日报" (people's daily) reports on anti-corruption campaigns, poverty alleviation, and workers' rights stories among others. Of course, proletarian state media has a bias, but also a proletarian class nature. You will not find the kind of pampering to bourgeois interests and genocide abetting like you see in western media.

The key takeaway here is to not only know that news media has a bias, but that media itself has a class character. Media controlled by a class will be made with the ideology and interests of that class in mind. Media controlled by the bourgeois will champion bourgeois ideology, be it pro-israel propaganda, anti-union propaganda, pro-capitalism propaganda, etc.; media controlled by the proletariat will champion proletariat ideology, be it pro-union propaganda, pro-revolution propaganda, anti-capitalist pro-socialist propaganda, etc.

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing" - Malcolm X

[wallisninety-six]

People may claim that anti-capitalism and the push for a classless, non-divisive and non-exclusionary society and the like are unrealistic because they think we want to create a utopia that is free of all pain and suffering.

Such a painless utopia *is* impossible- But it’s also impossible to overstate how many things that are afflicting everyone in today’s society are completely created, fabricated, and controlled & dictated by humans in power (the 1% that controls it all) in a capitalist society

Debt, bills, exorbitant costs on literal-lifesaving health care (and prescriptions like insulin) credit scores, homelessness, joblessness, complete abuses of natural resources that we *need* to survive (abused for profit)- and even money itself are all just complete man-made concepts, controlled by a very minuscule yet overtly powerful rich and economic class. Are any of these “fair challenges” in life that are just here to stay forever and are ordained by nature itself? God no. It’s all something that can be ended and replaced with something better- even if the process and transition may be complicated & difficult, it’s worthwhile- no matter what capitalist propaganda the rich push out.

Pain and suffering will still exist even in a freer, post-capitalist, post-class, post-money world: Death will still loom over everyone, natural disasters and new diseases will test us in different ways, etc, challenges that are ACTUALLY ordained by nature. And *work* itself will still be needed to feed the population, build housing, and care for the sick- not in the capitalist way for profit with a boss spying you at all times, but for the betterment of community, no matter your background, race, gender, and the like.

But what’s important is that any challenges that are thrown our way are not the results of a power-hungry few that makes everyone else suffer because of their cancerous greed and have us all chained to a devil-economic system. We will still have the issues that face ALL life on earth, not just humans, but it is 100% possible to live a life of decency, amidst it all.

[vergess]

So there's this popular post circulating. It goes like this:

bulldyke-rider (Sep 11 2022):

"Do I deserve this?" "Am I worthy of this?"

So irrelevant. Do you want it?

OP has me blocked for saying this before and no doubt again in the future, but that vaguely phrased hopeful language is a recruitment tactic. See, OP used to be just a TERF, but has since decided being a "feminist" was too limiting, choosing to be an open and avowed eugenicist instead.

The unspecified "thing" OP wanted to do in spite of not "deserving" it was: A Lesbian Wife handed to her, since All These Fake Bisexuals Are Not Capable Of Truly Loving Another Woman. Incel behaviour is cool and normal and totally not flirting with fascism when lesbians do it, right? 🙄

Other gems of hers include:

Trans women also pretend to be lesbians for sexual predation

JKR and radical feminists in general are "too smart" for tumblr unlike the gormless ~moids and bihets~ that use this platform

Telling people that their poverty is a moral failing and that people in poverty should be denied the right to have children, but it's okay because it's "totally not eugenics"

Do you have a disability that makes using a computer or phone difficult or impossible? Good news! The eugenics parade continues, with "learn how to do it anyway, or die."

It's fine though, because see, some of her best friends are disabled, and that makes them better than most people and such an inspiration! So, her eugenics are TOTALLY cool and fine!

Oh, and if you disagree, be sure not to cite any of your studies in a "college degree" she thinks is "useless". If you study in a field capitalists don't want to fund, that makes you pro-capital by magic. Why, the very term "anti-intellectualism" only exists to justify extraction of wealth. It's not like anti intellectualism FAMOUSLY PRE-DATES THE ENGLISH FUCKING LANGUAGE ITSELF or anything. Aristotle? Never heard of her.

This is a great fucking example of what it looks like when a bigoted swamp of a person develops excellent fluency in the language of progressive, egalitarian, leftist, etc spaces. But uses that language to exclusively push the most heinous, undisguised hatred for any person she doesn't consider fuckable.

She makes these vague, optimistic sounding posts knowing they will get circulated by the people she hates, to literally trick them into directing their followers, especially their younger and more malleable followers, to her. She does this specifically to prey on people for indoctrination to her too-extreme-for-TERFs beliefs.

It is a predatory propaganda technique and I am desperately requesting that if you MUST reblog that post, at least make it clear to your followers NOT to click through to the OP.

Better yet, steal the post and make your own version that isn't a thinly veiled demand for sexual slavery!

[mahoushoujotechsupport]

hey its time for episode 4

starting off with one of the funniest fucking scenes in this whole show with suletta just fucking hauling ass right out of there after guel just surprise proposes to her

just want to juxtapose this with her wild feelings speech in 17 about buying rings and wearing the prettiest dresses

this shot just reminded me of a random detail from the manual for chuchu's demi trainer - it says earth house can't afford their own demi trainers so chuchu's is a modified older version because thats the best they could do.

suletta pilots a demi trainer during the whole field test thing so like... does she own or have a demi trainer loaned out for school use or something? i honestly forgot chuchu pilots her own suit in this scene cuz i had just accepted that the demi trainers for practical exams etc were like just there for the students to use whenever

i know this was like probably the easier way to write suletta becoming friends with earth house but lmao why didnt she just ask miorine from the start to help for the makeup exam. baka suletta.

suletta please.

till will forever go down as bestboy in the series tbh. like someone needs to write a fic where he wingmans for suletta while nika does it for miorine

suletta, you naive little baby

there really was absolutely no reason for miorine to get all handsy and possessive here lmao like she could just stood infront of suletta or even right next to her and still had the same confrontation and warning about the other houses being bad news

the 2nd light novel picking up from here and highlighting miorine's jealousy over el4n during this whole arc is perfect lmao

kinda fun to speculate on how suletta saw miorine during the beginning. like she was completely surprised miorine didnt belong to a house. suletta's so awkward and socially inept she couldnt tell she was dealing with the one other person at school who was equally socially inept

i feel like there's a lot of frames i never paused on to read like this one lol. i never realized suletta got so many questions wrong. well "wrong" cuz reading through her answers it almost sounds like she just didnt give the benerit group approved answers lmao kinda like when you get stupid training stuff at work and they're just chockful of anti-union propaganda

never forget the first time we saw miorine's room

i know so many people don't really care about the class conflict in ad stella, but god, i wish they really hadnt dropped the ball on this. like in the 1st cour they had something really good here

obligatory shot of chuchu's dads

miorine rembran will not let anyone insult her woman

does anyone know what this gold gate/door thing was supposed to be? after the second school shooting, there's a shot shown where it's the only thing left standing in that area and i dont think ive ever seen anyone talk about it before

see like even this is good re: class politics. like its not this cut and dry all spacians are evil capitalists thing. mercurian miners were pretty much lured out by the benerit group to be exploited for their labor and then left to dry once a cheaper source for permet was found. bless the fic writers who've turned that into appalachian town suletta because it's such a perfect analogy

suletta mercury literally got decked in the face and we all just focused on the chuchu punch

imagine miorine sitting with her in her room just helping her ice her face

by the way how excited do you think suletta was to call someone senpai just like in her fair use mangas lmao

ok all set with episode 4. ive gotta say, it is super jarring to go back to these slice of life school episodes after everything we've been through in the second cours. like yeah that was kind of the point in having the first half of the series have pretty much no stakes since these kids are about to be thrown into war

you know for all the complaining a lot of losers did when the show started about this not being a "real" gundam series, the only difference between watching suletta's journey versus say amuro's... is that we got to see suletta's life before everything got wrecked. with amuro we just immediately start off at the point where Everything Goes Bad

[bison-appreciation-club]

'conservapedia' warning post!

Ik I already made a post like this but I decided to make a coherent version. Please reblog this version instead of the previous one so that people are aware of this website. Thanks :)

Until today I didn't know that this thing existed, but I was researching a frontiersman called Frank Mayer, and there isn't a Wikipedia article about him but there IS a 'Conservapedia' article about him. The logos and website names look similar enough for me to mistake Conservapedia for Wikipedia, and that's probably intentional.

'Conservapedia' is basically set out just like Wikipedia, only their logo looks like this

Despite what it says, it is not a trustworthy source of information. In fact, it includes lots of harmful misinformation. I decided to have a gander at what this website actually has in it, and what I found is both hilarious and sickening. However there is a hell of a lot of racism, genocide/slavery denial and pro-cop shit going down so I'll put it under a readmore.

If you don't want to read on, please reblog now to warn people about this site. In short, it's wildly inaccurate, uses inflammatory language to provoke and spark anger in readers, it spreads blatant misinformation, some of which could be actively harmful to those reading it, and it is ridiculously pumped full of every kind of prejudice and hate.

This is going to be super long probably but here goes. I decided to have a look at whether their claims of being 'trustworthy' are really... well... trustworthy. So, as my mutuals are probably aware, I'm fascinated by American history, and especially the frontier period, so I decided to see whether there was an article on American history. There wasn't. That was... odd. Especially as it appears that Conservapedia is an American site, what with the logo and everything. This seems to suggest some advanced stage of denial going on here. Another thing to add is that there is no article on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I checked.

The article about slavery itself is... worrying. It blames 'Marxists' and 'Socialists' for slavery, and says that imperialism 'stopped slavery'. Yeah, after being the main perpetrators for three hundred years??

This is from their article about the Confederates. The underlined bit is the important bit. It says 'all the slaves were emancipated with no compensation to their owners'. The rest of the paragraph discussed how the Nasty North forced the poor uwu South to give up slavery, which led to the South losing a lot of their revenue. Racist, capitalist shit.

I then checked out their article on Colorado, because I know a lot about Colorado's history and wanted to see how much of it was, you know, actually discussed. This paragraph, about the BLM movement, leapt out at me particularly:

The anti-police punks, who outnumbered the pro-police side, attempted to overwhelm the rally and acted in their typically childish fashion to drown out and silence the pro-police message while also assaulting rallygoers and police officers [...]

This isn't just ignoring history, this is blatant propaganda and misinformation. Compare the use of inflammatory language and rhetoric like 'punks', 'childish', 'assaulting' etc against the more neutral tone of regular Wikipedia. If, like me, you thought that this was normal Wiki, you could easily believe this. I had to do a double take. This shit is bad. There's more, but if anything it's even worse.

And because the page on Colorado is the Hellhole o' Horrors that just keeps on giving, THIS pro life shit was right at the beginning of the page.

'The murder of infants'. Pls. Wtf. I have no words. Again, see the inflammatory language. This is not 'trustworthy' in the slightest. In fact, this is actively harmful.

As for actual history, there was zilch. Something about the colonial Spanish guy who named Colorado. That was it. Overall the section on Colorado's history comprised of a measly 167 words. On regular Wikipedia, the section about Colorado's history is 2,543 words. Notice the difference? The conservatives are obviously making omissions, and it's soon clear what they are. Where is Colorado's historic abortion laws? Where are the mass shootings? The Mexican-American war? The coal strikes? The Chicano Civil Rights movement? Where is Sand Creek? Nobody on Conservapedia is fessing up to Sand Creek.

So yeah, that made me angry. But wait, there's more. Following on from the lack of Sand Creek, I found myself thinking hm, maybe this genocide denial goes a bit deeper. So I tried to find an article on Native American history. Again I found nothing. The page on Native Americans was pitiful. Firstly, the writers seemed to have an aversion to the words 'Native American', instead using 'Indian', which I'm pretty sure is outdated/offensive (apologies for using any offensive terminology, I am quoting the article and this definitely does not reflect my views).

Ok, let's look at what the 'Native American' page has to say, shall we?

Ooh, boy, there's a lot to unpack here. Firstly, this is EVERYTHING I could find about Native American history. And it's about the Genesis story. Let me summarise for you. Basically, the screenshot is saying that 'creation scientists' find the Native Americans batshit crazy because they don't have any 'ties' to any other populations in terms of biblical proof. The Native population was 'established after the destruction of the Tower of Babel'. They're stating the Bible like it's a fact. I can confirm as someone who was once Christian that the Bible has to be taken with not a pinch but a bucketful of salt.

This is absolute shit. Firstly, it's saying that Native American myths and Bible stories bear some resemblance. This is possible. Different myths around the world have the same themes. However, just because Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha were all around at a similar time it doesn't mean that they were best pals and were on a WhatsApp groupchat together. It seems to me like Insecure White People (tm) are trying to forcibly fit other people into their worldview. Which is very narrow minded of them. And I'm white, but this feels pretty racist to me. Oh, and was there anything about the millions of native people killed since everyone's least favourite Chris rocked up? Nope. There wasn't.

So, to see whether they were denying EVERY genocide or just this one, I went to check the article on the Holocaust/Sho'ah. Bingo. Finally, a reasonable article. Great, they'd agreed that Nazis = bad, they were feeling sorry for the Jewish people and other victims of the Holocaust/Sho'ah.

And then they said it was all the fault of the socialists. Yeah. Blame everything on the socialists. At this point it's laughable - imagine saying that Hitler is a SOCIALIST?? Other than that, the page actually... wasn't bad?? Compared to other pages it was really long, it said that the Nazis were 'evil', and about how awful it was. Admittedly they did use what I believe is a slur to describe disabled people, but this is Conservapedia after all. Oh yes, and they blamed Hitlers 'animal rights' and 'environmentalism'. Right.

Other than the page about the Sho'ah, they don't mention any other genocide. ???? Why ?????? So yeah, in general they're all genocide deniers, which is fun.

So the point of this SUPER long post (sorry guys it got out of hand) is DON'T GO ON conservapedia. Avoid it like the plague; it spreads blatant misinformation, is wildly racist, ableist and homophobic, says that everyone is to blame for slavery OTHER than white people, it denies genocides, it uses extreme language to spark anger in readers and spouts pro-life shit. And that's just from the few pages I saw.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE reblog this so that people are aware of this. I was absolutely horrified when I found and read it. Stay safe, everyone.

[hello-nichya-here]

Genuine question: If the ppl of Brazil are anti-communism, why are they in BRICS with Russia and China, two communist countries?

1 - My God, this question single-handedly took back me back to my school years. Answering this lowkey makes me feel like I'm taking a test XD

2 - Russia has not been communist for over 30 years. Ya know. The USSR ended in 1991? It was kind of a big deal?

3 - China's government is a VERY weird combo of the worst of communism with the worst of capitalism. Obviously a lot about how the country works is a direct result of communism, but they have zero problem playing the capitalist game, and as a result EVERYONE has some kind of economical relation with China - they sell stuff the cheapest (thanks to slavery) and have literal billions of people foreigners can sell their stuff to. If selling/buying stuff with them made anyone communist, the whole world might as well be communist already.

4 - BRICS is not like the EU, or the USSR, or NATO. Brazil's opinions on anything that goes on with our "friends" doesn't matter because the point of it is not for us, Russia, India, China and South Africa to collectively decide anything about each other's politics (border control, currency, economic system, alliances in wartime, etc). It's literally just a group of nations that are struggling to remain/become relevant to the rest the world, while also trying not to go officially broke, that looked at each other and went "If you're about to crash and burn I'll try to help you out if I can, and then you do the same for me. Deal?" It's the possibility economic back up in case of crisis. The one thing we have to decide together is "Who gets to join this group of countries that are desperately trying to not implode?"

5 - Most brazilians are not really anti-communism because most brazilians don't fucking KNOW what communism is. A few might have heard names like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Vladmir Putin, Mao or Fidel Castro, but they don't know shit about them. Lots of us know BRICS exists, but a ton cannot explain what it is. If you ask most brazilians to point to either China or Russia on a map, I'd say over half wouldn't be able to do it. And if you ask us to point to our own country on a map, a shockingly large number of people here will STILL not be able to do it because our educational system is that fucking bad.

You'll find LOTS of people, especially older generations, that think they understand what communism is, but in reality they were just fed the pro-USA propaganda those motherfuckers were spreading through all of latin america during the cold war by literally backing up dictatorships. And me acknowledging that fact and not calling the coup of 1964 "the revolution that was totally necessary and wanted by everybody and totally didn't lead to all kinds of violations of people's basic human rights" would already make half of my relatives yell at me to go to Cuba or Venezuela so I'll "stop" being a communist - because yes, saying "Dictatorship bad" is enough for them to label people communists.

Our president through 2019-2022, Jair Bolsonaro (I still HATE that dude's gut in case anyone is wondering) literally brought all of that old propaganda back to make people scared of the "communist threat inside Brazil" so he would get elected, and then tried to use that again to stage a coup after he lost to Lula in 2022.

Brazil is not "anti-communist." Brazil is a country filled with people that were never taught some pretty basic stuff about the world, and are thus easily manipulated by any politician.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

nothing wrong about calling someone a tankie imo if it refers to soviet apologists who think that lenin, stalin or the red army in general were in any way good people and not literal imperialists. or acting like they were some kind of anti-nazis when shit like molotov-ribbentrop pact exist where they literally shook hands. ex eastern bloc people esp ukrainians who are already dealing with a whole ass war are kind of tired of westerners pulling the "they were good actually and saying otherwise is cold war propaganda and cia psyop" because surprise there is nuance to everything

Stalin was bad and the US government made soviet russia and communism out to be significantly worse than they were are both true. Two things can be true. It’s a very complex part of western history. Yes Stalin bad, he killed thousands of his own people, but oversimplified blanket statements about Russia in that era aren’t helpful. I’m not going to write you the paper necessary to pick all of this apart, but I will emphasize again that both statements are true. Stalin was a megalomaniac greedy bastard who caused mass deaths. The US government during the 19th century was very happy to spread absolutely insane propaganda about non-capitalist countries (and marginalized people) to demonize them and call frightened white Christian folk to action against a perceived threat to their ideology, especially during the 50s-70s.

I’m going to level with you there weren’t exactly a lot of good things done by any of the major world powers during the 19th century. Stalin was reprehensible, but the US wasn’t exactly doing much better (see: Hiroshima, the Vietnam war, the Korean War, etc.). I will consider you a weirdo for liking any politician, but I will especially call you a freak if you revere any of the ones from that era.

But really if you want to call the weirdos you’re referring to anything just call them Stalin bootlickers or something. Try being creative, because saying tankie absolutely makes you sound like a far right weirdo.

[biblicalhorror]

Zaylor Midnights, Part I

Okay time to actually start typing things out for my beloved Zaylor/Toë Nation

First things first, please complete your essential reading on the subject.

Second, some disclaimers:

-This is just for fun. Some of it is playfully reaching for sure. You don't have to buy into it, but please keep an open mind and come along for the ride! We'd love to have you!

-I refuse to assign a specific sexuality to any of these people due to the fact that I don't know any of them personally. All I know is I just get ✨️more than friends✨️ vibes from these two. You don't have to agree with me, but please don't waste my time by being rude about it.

-My personal fan relationship to celebrities includes freely criticizing them for things they do that I don't agree with. It's fine if that's not your style, but please don't be surprised when I call someone a spineless capitalist or nepotism baby. If the shoe fits...

-Somewhat related to the above point: I'm also an Astrology Gay. That means that I may occasionally mention astrological compatibility and things of that nature. Again, if that's not your cup of tea, that's fine! You don't have to believe in it. But my personal philosophy is to weigh all of the evidence available, and I happen to know a lot about astrology, which means some of my "evidence" may come from there. So I will likely be talking about their signs a bit. If not in this post, then in future ones.

-The main goal of this post (and other Zaylor posting I may do in the future) is to diversify the perspectives in the Gaylor community. I have nothing against Karlie Kloss or Dianna Agron, but I am bored of nearly every Gaylor analysis being linked back to one of those two. I think it's time for a Zaylor Era.

That being said, let's get into it song by song, shall we?

1. Lavender Haze

Not that this is definitely true, but there has been some speculation among Gaylors for some time that Zoë is the muse for many of the love songs on Reputation and onwards. There's not much hard evidence of this, but it's worth noting that Zoë and Taylor were first seen in public together in October of 2016 (6 years + 1 week before Midnights would be released)

Taylor says this song specifically is about ignoring all the "weird" (pregnancy/engagement) rumors and just focusing on her partner of 6 years. This "partner" could be Joe. I'm not saying it's definitely not. But what if it's been Zoë this whole time?

"Staring at the ceiling with you" Zoë Kravitz, known stoner, and her boyfriend/girlfriend, baby stoner Taylor Swift:

Lavender Haze is a popular Indica strain of weed known to be very relaxing/calming but also boost creativity in regular marijuana users. Zoë is one of the officially listed writers (and backup singers) on this song. The thought of them writing a song together about being in love and also high on their favorite weed strain makes me giggle.

"I've been under scrutiny... You handle it beautifully... all this shit is new to me" >>> Zoë is a nepotism baby, very much used to fame and growing up in the music industry specifically, very much Above It All (we'll come back to this later)

Taylor was just quoted in this article talking about Zoë's strong "sense of self" and "honest inner compass" idk about you, but that certainly lends itself to theories that this above-it-all muse who doesn't seem to care at all what people think could be someone who was right under our noses this whole time.

Also note: this is for GQ's "Men of the Year" series. That + this fruity ass outfit should be noted...

"No deal... the 1950s shit they want from me/ I just wanna stay in that lavender haze"

Could easily be interpreted in a queer context, since the 1950s are famous for anti-gay propaganda such as the Lavender Scare, the prevalence of the Hays Code, etc.

Essentially, this could recontextualize this song as an act of rebellion against social norms of gender and sexuality through private, personal expressions of queer love. Given that the song doesn't explicitly say any of those things out loud, it's kind of a toothless act of rebellion, but I digress. Both of these women are exorbitantly rich, extremely famous, bad at taking criticism/admitting fault, and prone to escapism. Classic Sagittarius behavior tbh (/j)

Oh, I'm sure.

Another note from the end of that GQ article: Zoë says this about her new relationship with Channing Tatum (rumored to be PR as they are costars in an upcoming movie):

Interesting wording here.

This song is about being a Sag 4 Sag lesbian stoner couple. Moving on.

2. Maroon

This song is likely about Lily or Karlie, could have some ties to Dianna, but probably not about Zoë so all I will say is:

She for sure burns incense/owns a vinyl shelf. Look at her.

3. Anti-Hero

Not a romantic song per se, but lends to the Lover coming out theory:

"Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism" w the visual of covering up a lavender glitter bleeding heart with a political pin... cmon

Also, Catwoman (recently played by Zoë) is an extremely famous example of an antihero. Taylor uses a lot of Batman/Catwoman callouts in this album, in the song titles specifically.

4. Snow on the Beach

"I saw flecks of what could've been but it might just have been you passing by unbeknownst to me"

Again, Toë hung out in public for the first time at the Bowery in 2016 in a big group of friends. This song describes the feeling of having a crush on someone you thought couldn't possibly be reciprocated but it turns out huh!! They like you too!! Beyond how gay that situation is already, Verified Cool Girl Zoë Kravitz absolutely could have come across particularly aloof in their first few meetings. Her name (and reputation/public image) is all about being a Cool Girl. This song could be about Taylor being shocked that someone as cool as Zoë could actually like her back.

"My flight was awful, thanks for asking, I'm unglued thanks to you" parallels with the Gold Rush line "Falling feels like flying till the bone crush". It's happened. Taylor fell for her, and feels like a mess because of the feelings this has brought up.

A note from the gospel power point:

"I searched aurora borealis green, I've never seen someone lit from within, blurring out my periphery" as in. She searched for the green light. The go-ahead. In the eyes of her crush, she's desperately searching for validation that what she feels is reciprocated. She seems to find what shes looking for, and describes her love interest as glowing from within. My girl loves a Great Gatsby reference. (As an aside: this is one of my favorite lines on the whole album. It's so vivid. Gives me chills every time.)

The six-year muse is often referred to with star/shooting star motifs ("Starry eyes sparkin' up my darkest night," "Eyes full of stars," "Stars in your eyes shined brighter in Tupelo," "Do I really have to chart the constellations in his eyes," etc.) Zoë has at least 6 star tattoos in various placements on her body (not to mention at least 3 different snakes, one of which is coiled around a heart)

"Stars by the pocketful" could be a reference to the star tattoos on Zoë's hands being in Taylor's pockets as they cuddle for warmth in the snow. (I'm aware the snow in this song is likely metaphorical, but how cute is that mental image?)

5. You're On Your Own, Kid

Again, not a romantic song. Also not (particularly) gay, so we'll skip this one for now.

6. Midnight Rain

A song that could very well be about comphet and mourning for the easy life that you could have as a heterosexual. But lots of people have talked about this already and it is not particularly relevant to Toë/Zaylor, so I won't waste too much time on it.

7. Question...?

Gay. Probably not about Zoë though. This song seems very retrospective, like she lost the person she's describing. These two seem like they're still very close, so it's unlikely this song has anything to do with Zoë.

-----

That's all Tumblr mobile will let me fit into one post, so we're gonna have to take an intermission there!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (Coming Soon)

[sylwanin-was-right]

I know people say the humans of the RDA seem too cartoonishly evil (Quaritch's "shoot that animal over there" line gives this some merit, for example 💀), but if you know like 4 things the American government and CIA has done and kept secret from the public (then fully admitted to later), and how ruthless and exploitive capitalist oligarchs can be against the environment and people, the RDA's evils arent really that far off from reality.

Billionaires and corperations hoard wealth from the masses and are proven to exploit class power dynamics to create monopolies, exploit the poor, kill and suppress worker resistance, and fund massive psy-ops in support of their companies. Capitalism and neo-liberalism erode the morals of those who hoard and perpetually seek out capital because it takes a lack of morality to protect the needs of capital, which is why a dollar is worth more than clean water, air, and even human beings.

Companies fund hits on activists and use police power to violently suppress protests and protect assets to increase profits. CEOs of massive companies and their shareholders openly admit to knowing the environmental destruction of things like plastic and oil, yet open, saturate, and dominate markets to churn out products made from such things (including combustion engine cars and everything plastic) and expand slavery dependent business models to cut costs on production and maximize profits. Monolpolies shape whole economies and structure them to perpetuate production of destuctive, non-renewable products globally.

These neoliberal and capitalist operations of the real world are represented by the RDA's monopoly on unobitanium, a resource Earth relies upon entirely for energy because of market monopolies against alternatives. Its also shown by Earth itself becoming uninhabitable and polluted by consumerism, war, and resource disallocation, and the RDA's exploitaton of benevolent sciences, like xenoanthropology and xenobiology, to open markets for lucrative resources and help preserve the human resources against the Na'vi in diplomatic relations (Grace Augustines school, RDA biologists and lìnguists, etc). Cameron included The Cove inspired scenes of whale hunting and black market trade in AWOW as a specific example of the venture capitalist cruelty and morbidity of whaling, dolphin hunting, and other ocean industries known to cause ecological decay and destruction, which went along his theme of climate change and protecting the oceans.

As for governments, I saw one comment in the Avatar Discord asking how masses of people can be mislead about the violence and failures of such a massively expensive, resource expending project like Pandoran colonization since the visual dictionary revealed that the RDA has been endorsed/funded by several national governments, and all I could think was the blood soaked foerign policy of the U$ federal government and its CIA adjacent NGOs for the past 100 years in the global south, and the CIA's/FBI's ubiquitous and violently successful counter-revolutionary campaigns, psy-ops, and class war operations on domestic soil (like COINTELPRO, "war on drugs", & white supremacist, anti-communist propaganda).

I think its a shame Cameron's "humans vs Na'vi" oversimplified writing overshadows the very accurate portrayal of how reprehensible and morally depraved capitalists/neoliberal governments, companies, and militaries are. Its understandable that a human audience would sympathize with human colonizers trying to seek out ways to keep human life on Earth on life support. And its also understandable for humans to put their species first, since I dont think its necessarily anthropocentric to do so. But Cameron is very explicit in the films about who and what is the enemy and I dont think he means to portray non-humans as "good" and humans as "bad" and indefinitely corrupted.

Although his knowledge and commentary on colonialism, capitalism and imperialosm are very rudimentary (what can you really expect from a rich old white amerikan man lmao), Avatar opens up important conversations about such themes and challenges the audience to ultimately source the root problems on exploitive and destructive systems and ideologies, while supporting actions that would hold those who perpetuate such systems accountabile for their roles in violence and greed. The story isnt about misanthropy but about human accountability, alternatives, and rehabilitation.

Avatar isnt the only story or franchise to expose and criticize the ideologies that led the humans to unsustainable economies, mass destruction, and suppression of alternatives on Earth, and intergalactic search to keep the broken same system going. There are fare earlier and better fictional and non-fictional works exploring these pressing issues told by colonized and Indigenous people that Avatar fans should definitely seek out. Avatar is a palatable yet accessible fictional introduction on conversations many are in the dark about concerning the evils of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism and the "cartoonishly evil" agents that perpetuate and protect it irl.

[iidsch]

Look I'm going to be a bit of a centrist here for the sake of the argument, but I think is your right to play games like Hogwarts Legacy if you want. Obviously I think the game is bad in many ways but if after knowing that you still decide to play it, then you do your do - freedom of choice etc etc.

However, this does not suddenly make it okay to play the game. You're still giving money to an antisemite and a transphobe, there's no way to get around that. And the fact that every person who plays the game refuses to admit they are doing something harmful is what pisses me off the most. Like man, at least don't be a coward. Be a bigot if you want but don't try to cover it by lying to yourself and thinking you are not a bad person.

Yes, the money you spent to buy the game is going to JK Rowling, and she's going to use that money to push anti-trans rhetoric and policies, by donating the money to anti-trans groups, supporting anti-trans politicians, etc. And even if you don't take into account the money, just getting the game and talking about it is contributing to her fame - and thus her power to influence British politics and the British public.

Also, before anyone brings this up, this is not analogous to buying from big companies because in a capitalist society where big corporations own literally everything and are heavily interconnected, you can't avoid buying stuff that has been produced unethically. If you want to boycott every evil company you might as well go live in a cave and eat grass for the rest of your life. But Rowling only owns the Harry Potter property, boycotting her is as easy as not buying anything related to HP (which is not an essential commodity so you can perfectly live without it).

Not to mention that by playing a game filled with antisemitic tropes you're unconsciously absorbing those ideas and normalizing Jewish suffering and the hatred towards Jewish people - something the nazis themselves did to get away with the Holocaust. And you can't pull the "im immune to propaganda" excuse because I bet you didn't even know half of the antisemitic tropes present in the game before someone had to explain them to you, so you will internalize the other half you cant identify.

There's no denying that playing the game has terrible consequences. This is a fact. If you want to deny it then you're either really stupid, a hypocrite, or okay with hurting trans and Jewish people. Choose whichever is true for you but don't lie to yourself: your actions have harmful consequences and you're a bad person because of it.

And hey, if it sucks to realize that you're a bad person, that people are going to be hurt because of your actions, then don't play the game! Don't do the thing that is hurting people!! We're not asking you to whip your back 100 times to ask for forgiveness or donate all your savings to trans/Jewish orgs. If you want to be a good person you really just need to not play the game or support any of JK Rowling's properties. It is that simple.

Plenty of people have recommended other franchises similar to Harry Potter so I'm pretty sure you can find a substitute to fill the void of not being a potterhead. And if the nostalgia is the problem then I ask you: would you be okay if someone defended a racist, sexist, homophobic, etc piece of media because it was part of their childhood? Nostalgia is a strong feeling, even I admit that, but sometimes feelings can lead you to follow the wrong path. Being aware of that and working to fix it it's the most mature and the most ethical choice you can make.

Change is hard, but not impossible, and ultimately I believe that everyone can become a better person if they try. But even if after all of this you still decide to play Hogwarts Legacy and support Harry Potter, because you don't care that you are contributing to the suffering of thousands if not millions of humans, then I hope you know there's a place in hell for horrible people like you.

[aronarchy]

no amount of logical reasoning towards nationalists, culture essentialists, child abusers & queerphobes in nonwhite/ethnic minority communities who believe “gentle parenting”/“wokeness” is “a white thing”/“a Western thing” is going to convince them. no amount of bashing white culture, pointing out the rampant, disproportionate child abuse & queerphobia in white communities, of detailing traumatic stories of how white adultists/queerphobes have done violence to you, of reassuring them that you’re (even more) Anti-White than they are is going to convince them that you’re not secretly out to get them / “betraying your community.” this makes a lot more sense once you realize that they are on the same side as the white supremacists--not truly against, whatever lies they may tell you/themselves. they’re not operating off consistent standards in the first place.

conservatives in the community pinpoint the liberal/academic/middle-class “activists” as The Problem & examples for Why Antiracism Is Racist Actually--but ignoring 1) wealthy educated conservatives, 2) poor progressives, 3) actual activists who critique liberalism/academia from the left, and 4) the material links btwn incentive to go left & lower socioeconomic standing/being more oppressed, & vice versa. in all their “defending our ppl” they don’t seem to be calling for less policing, less carceralism, more support for da against white supremacists & white supremacist violence. if you ask directly “are we oppressed” answer usually goes no we’re not actually oppressed, racism is a liberal myth. “look @ all that privileged bourgeois decadence” but still very capitalist & bash commies.

the idea that POC are non-rebellious, ok w/oppression, essentially incapable of resistance, & essentially culturally abusive aligns pretty well w/what white colonizers think, funnily enough. but u still get some clueless ppl in the communities unironically agreeing w/that myth, & employing relative privileges to silence ppl who prove that narrative wrong.

this is where u get ppl like tankies (“nonwestern countries can’t be wrong ever bc anti-US = good”), & abusers who tell u that non-abusiveness is “a woke thing”/“a modernist thing”/“a white thing” / that if u run the only place u get to go is white communities + also that if u run u r “asking for” whatever abuse u get from racists (but also if u stay yt ppl say ur “asking for” whatever queerphobic/adultist abuse ur getting), & other misogynists transphobes adultists etc whose entire politics seems to be “any solidarity with victims of oppression within our nation is just western imperialism/propaganda” and incredible violence goes into maintaining all of the above images, always at the expense of the most marginalized.

& it’s incredibly traumatizing to grow up like that, where you’re not allowed to complain about any harms within your own community bc if you do you’re “disrupting unity” / “betraying” / “working for oppressors’ interests”—that is a fucking lie. in reality patriarchs & other abusers always make the best informants. in reality ppl who cannot even let go of their own abusing of others are the least equipped to fight against abuse from the outside. in reality ppl who refuse to challenge some bigotry cannot effectively challenge other bigotries. in reality the ppl with the most power are the most abusive as a whole—abuse arises within material circumstances, not just from disconnected ideals—and it is in their interest to maintain abusive relations between the ppl they are oppressing. “all colonized are equally oppressed/viewed the same/treated the same” is not true to reality. & no progressive action is effective w/o first interrogating your smaller-scale relationships first. liberation starts in the home. so tired of child abusers acting like they have anything at all useful to say about racism & cultural oppression/erasure pls just shut the fuck up already and maybe also stop abusing people.

[eleemosynecdoche]

The greatest flaw with the discussion of "superheroes: reactionary or not" is that everything talks about "power" as a kind of monodimensional quality. Thus we end up with the straightforward argument that Peter Parker, Spider-Man (or Miles Morales, Spider-Man, or Peter Porker, Spider-Ham) is an aristocrat performing noblessse oblige when he fights Doctor Octopus or administers anti-lizard Narcan to the Lizard.

Which is of course idiotic- the whole Spider-Man concept is founded on it being a set of capacities which are not inborn, which do not confer any intrinsic status which elevates the person, and which are not rewarded by the universe on their own. But "power" can refer to the aristocrat's hold over land, ability to compel labor and rents via custom, etc. and also to the ability to spin a web, any size, etc.

It is also not hard to apply the common rejoinder that the radical position, or communist position, or socialist position, or substitute "critique" for "position" in any of these, that nobody should have "power", and see that while this applies to the aristocrat or the capitalist simply, because their power is built around monopolization and control of some outside thing, it does not apply credibly to the Spiders-Men and Spiders-Gwens.

After all, what would that even mean? That simply having "spider sense" means that someone must die, because they have the power to sense danger in reasonably abstract fashion? Or that every person must be made to become a spider-person? These are the stuff of crude propaganda against socialism. They are also, inevitably, the product of casually and carelessly using this word, "power".