#btw the only reason I haven't explicitly compared Eren to Trump is because we don't know how different Eren is post-time skip

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 109 Review

A Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Edition

-From ch. 109

-From my review of ch. 102

YES! I WAS RIGHT! KISS MY ASS YOU FOOLS1

So just as I predicted, we are seeing the start of a schism on Paradis.

On one side of the divide you’ve got a right-wing extremist faction composed of Floch, Louise, Zeke, his cult, and Eren (the Eldian Freedom Caucus, if you will) and on the other, a moderate faction composed of the other members of the 104th, Hange, Levi, along with other high ranking members of the government. (The establishment, again, if you will)

The conflict between these two factions is an incredibly political one (squeee!) with both sides trying to out-flank each other and gain the upper hand.

Of the two, the establishment faction is the one currently on the defensive. Most of the maneuvering by it’s members involves containing the EFC and just trying to figure out who’s side Eren is on. In other words, they’re being reactive, playing defense. As a result, the EFC has the freedom to seize the initiative and go on the offensive, as they have in this chapter.

It makes sense that the establishment would be on the defensive right now. Eren is such an important figure that any plan against the EFC will involve him as a key player.

Thus, before they can formulate a strategy, they must know who’s side Eren is on. The 104th has openly debated this amongst themselves, but Hange has also gotten involved as well. Their scene with Eren at the start of chapter 108, in hindsight, can easily be read as them trying to get a read on Eren. As them trying to get a feel for his allegiances.

Levi and Zeke’s bromantic comedy in the woods is also a part of this maneuvering, but it doesn’t need much expounding upon because how this figures into things is obvious. Zeke is dangerous so they’ve secluded him in the woods with their top soldier to keep watch on him.

The maneuvering by the EFC, aka Zeke’s faction, is shrouded in mystery. Because of course it is.

Has anyone here been following the news? If you have you’ve probably heard of Robert Meuller’s investigation into L’Affaire Russe, Russia’s (failed) attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Part of this investigation involves determining whether President Trump was complicit in this attempted influencing.

In his writings on L’Affaire Russe, Josh Marshall, editor-in-chief of the left-leaning Talking Points Memo news site, made an analogy about conspiracies that can be applied to Zeke. Conspiracies are like black holes.

Black holes cannot be seen. All light that approaches them is sucked in so you end up with a black object against a black backdrop. But they can be observed indirectly. Scientists observe black holes indirectly by measuring the influence they exert on objects that can be observed directly. For example, the gravity from black holes distorts the light traveling around them resulting in a “lensing” effect. By measuring the degree of visual distortion, scientists can determine the black hole’s size, among other things.

Conspiracies are similar. Many aspects of a conspiracy may not be directly knowable. It’s size, scope, etc. But you can get a good feel for it’s size and scope by observing it’s apparent effect on things that are directly observable.

Take L’Affaire Russe for example. There’s the Veselnitskaya meeting, Trump’s inexplicable fealty to Putin, the fact that Paul Manafort, massively in debt to a Russian oligarch, chose to work for Trump’s extremely pro-Russia campaign for free, etc, etc. Conspiracies can’t be seen directly, but they can be indirectly seen.

And so it is with L’Affaire Zeke, which is the name I’ll be using to refer to the apparent conspiracy Zeke has masterminded against the establishment. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s a fuck-ton of smoke here. Seriously, I didn’t subtitle this post “a vast right-wing conspiracy edition” for nothing. Words cannot describe how fucked Paradis is if things are as bad as they seem to be. We’re talking “Donald Trump was a spy for the Russian government the whole time” levels of bad. 

The establishment was planning on feeding Zeke to Historia immediately, but then Historia conveniently got pregnant, thwarting their plans. This implies that Zeke somehow roped the queen in.

According to Pixis, there is reason to suspect Floch facilitated a covert meeting between Yelena and Eren, and during this meeting Eren was apparently turned to Zeke’s side. In other words, L’Affaire Zeke may have successfully infiltrated the military.

It doesn’t end there though. In this chapter the EFC leaked to the public news that Eren has been imprisoned, clearly in an attempt to undermine public support for the establishment. These people may be shithead nationalists, but they’re smart too.

Floch knew he couldn’t convince the establishment to free Eren, but you know what he also knows? That if enough public pressure were to be applied, they’d have no choice but to release Eren. Eren is seen by the public as a hero. As far as the public is concerned, Eren’s reckless action in Marley resulted in a resounding victory; the revelation that he’s been imprisoned for this will naturally stir outrage. Floch knows this so he leaked news of Eren’s imprisonment to the press knowing the people would support his call for Eren’s release.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Floch Forster is leading a fucking psy ops campaign to get what he wants.

We don’t know what Zeke is planning, but it’s clear his reach, even in the midst of enemy territory, is seemingly boundless. The sooner he’s dead, the better.

The story has low-key been building up to this for a while now. I’ve mentioned the contrast the story has drawn between Jean and Floch in an earlier post. And in hindsight, the scenes in chapter 108 strongly play into this as well. The scenes of Hange and the 104th trying to deal with their Eren problem, along with the implied existence of L’Affaire Zeke. Things will only continue to escalate from here. The heart and soul of Paradis is at stake.

This fight is exemplified in the conflict between Eren Yeager and Armin Arlert. And it is a conflict that mirrors not only the real world fight for the heart and soul of the United States but also the one for the heart and soul of Western civilization itself.

The ideology of the EFC, of Zeke, Floch, Louise, and possibly Eren, is an inherently backwards looking right-wing nationalism. They long for days of past glory, of days when Eldians ruled the world. It’s the politics of nostalgia at its most toxic. Eldians are oppressed and they don’t just want restitution, they want revenge. They feel a deep grievance over the indignity their race has been dealt.

(Note that “indignity” is an understatement here. I use it because that is exactly how they would describe what Eldians are dealing with.)

But the connection goes deeper than that. Right-wing nationalism, as a way of thinking, is strongly informed by a dominance centric worldview. The right-wing worldview is defined by an unshakable belief that there is a social Darwinian war of the races where defeat means death. They see the world in purely dichotomous terms. Strong vs weak. Dominators vs the dominated. Eldians vs the world.

And yes, there is a racial conflict brewing here, but the important difference is that the nationalists believe this conflict exists as a matter of course rather than as the result of circumstance.

This dominance centric worldview naturally leads to an obsession with strength, with being strong so you can win and achieve security.

“A human who used her strength to throw a titan to the ground. The day I saw you do that, I knew. You can’t defend anything without strength.” 

-Louise.

That is the ideology of the EFC, including Eren. Eren rejects the notion of interracial coexistence completely. We all saw what he said at the gun range in chapter 106. (It was 106, right?) But what’s notable about that scene is that it saw Eren’s nationalist worldview pitted against Armin’s worldview.

If the ideology of Eren Yeager is nationalism, then the ideology of Armin Arlert is cosmopolitanism. Armin thinks the races can live together peacefully. He believes in a world where people of different creeds and ethnicities, through compassion and understanding, can overcome their differences and find happiness together. Like a true cosmopolitan, Armin sees himself as a human first and as an Eldian second.

It’s funny. This series started with wannabe spider-men killing silly looking giants. Now look at where we are. The final conflict of the series will be just as much a battle of ideas as it will be a physical one. And it couldn’t be more politically relevant to our world. Nationalism vs cosmopolitanism. That is one of the central conflicts of the series.

Decades from now, when our children are in high school, they will most likely be taught that the defining social conflict of 2018, indeed, of the entire decade of the 2010s, was nationalism vs cosmopolitanism. Not just in the United States but throughout the western world.

In the United States, this cleavage is embodied by the conflict between the Republican Party of Donald Trump (the nationalists) and the Democratic Party of Barack Obama (the cosmopolitans).

In Europe the nationalists are the various nationalist political parties that have grown in popularity in most countries. Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, the AfD in Germany, the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, etc. The cosmopolitans are the supporters of the European Union, a pan-national organization created to emphasize unity among nations so as to avoid another continent destroying war.

This is what we’re dealing with here. Nationalist vs cosmopolitan. Republican vs Democrat. Trump vs Obama. Eren vs Armin.

(Why yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, I did just lump Eren in with the Trumpmeister.)

(*dodges thrown chair*)

Who wins here, Eren or Armin, depends on what kind of story Isayama wants to tell. Are human beings more like Donald Trump, insular and petty. Or are we more like Barack Obama, flawed but ultimately judicious with a seemingly endless well of compassion.

So who will win?

In our world the winner will almost certainly be the cosmopolitans. People of different backgrounds can and do live peaceably together and what’s more, there are measurable benefits to this. There’s a reason why cities are the drivers of economic growth and not comparatively less diverse rural areas. Bringing people of different backgrounds physically together, like in a city, allows for an easier exchange of opinions and ideas, and that leads to more creativity and innovation. That means greater prosperity for everyone. Cosmopolitanism will win because the benefits are obvious and human tribalism always yields in the face of practical benefit.

This is in stark contrast to the world of Attack on Titan. In that world, the narrative is seemingly on Eren’s side. The nationalist one. The immoral light the EFC has been presented in notwithstanding, the narrative seems to nevertheless be saying that humans are nationalists by default and that this cannot be overcome. The story apparently presents it as a tragedy, but it is ultimately inevitable.

That’s wrong. It doesn’t have to be this way.

It was almost painful to read that scene at the gun range in chapter 106 because Isayama is so obviously siding with the nationalist camp. Eren the nationalist gets to make his points clearly, meanwhile Armin and Mikasa struggle to even articulate their views. Armin’s beliefs are framed by the narrative as being idealistic and naïve even though the facts are on his side.

In ways both subtle and obvious, the nationalist bug is spreading. The people of Paradis cheered at the victory in Marley just like how Floch and his ilk cheered on the airship. They cheered in a fit of nationalistic fervor. That is probably the clearest indication of where the series stands: people writ large are nationalists.

Okay, what else.

You know, one thing I find annoying is when writers try to give their stories an air of “seriousness” by using technical terms. Like how during Kiyomi’s conversation with Zackley she refers to him as the “head of state.”

The head of state for Paradis, the one tasked with performing the ceremonial functions of the executive,  is Historia Reiss, the reigning monarch. If I’m not mistaken the arrangement is that Zackley actually governs Paradis because the military are the ones in charge and Zackley is commander-in-chief. That makes him the head of government, not head of state.

This is me being petty, but as a politics nerd it comes off as try-hard and it rubs me the wrong way.

…

Alright, time to address the elephant in the room.

Gabi and Kaya.

Their scenes were one of the hardest in the entire series for me to read. I almost decided not to.

It has been speculated that Isayama believes in a right-wing nationalist politics. I have never had as much of a sinking feeling about that notion as I have after reading this chapter. At the very least, I think the message Isayama is trying to convey, if not pro-nationalist, is definitely misguided.

In the real world there are people who believe we should be more mindful of the crimes our ancestors committed. The imperialism of Europe, of the United States, and yes, of Japan as well.

Those people are opposed by the right-wing nationalists. “Social justice worker” is the term they often use.

If you ask one of these nationalists to describe a sjw, they’ll paint a picture of someone obsessed with “the unforgivable sins of our ancestors” to the point of raving lunacy. In the minds of nationalists, social justice workers think that crimes committed centuries ago taint the descendants of the perpetrators alive today and that those descendants cannot be forgiven for their ancestor’s actions. The clearest example of this is the case for reparations: some sjws believe that the United States government owes currently living black people reparations because of slavery, even though slavery was abolished over 150 years ago and no one currently alive lived through it. Right-wing nationalists think this is madness.

Sound familiar?

“Have you already forgotten the utter atrocities the people of this island committed against the world? Each and every Eldian can only begin their path to eternal atonement when they come to have a correct understanding of their sins. No matter how good you try to act, your crimes are too heavy to ever escape.”

 -Gabi

Right-wing nationalists often caricature leftists as being people who’ll list off every single immoral act committed by their own country (or people) at the drop of a hat. Is Gabi, at least as far as chapter 109 is concerned, one of those caricatures?

Let’s back up a bit. I’ve told you about the caricature, now let me tell you about the truth.

There is indeed a strain of thought that overemphasizes historical sins. The most famous example of this is Howard Zinn and his book A People’s History of the United States. The series pushing against this way of thinking is not wrong.

What is wrong is the conceit this series has that the descendants of the perpetrators owe nothing to the descendants of the victims.

This is false for two reasons.

Firstly there’s the governmental perspective. At the end of the day the inescapable fact is this: Paradis is the legal successor state to the Eldian Empire and so the legal and moral obligations of the empire devolves to them. The Eldian Empire ceased to exist when, after Erwin’s coup, sovereignty was transferred from the Fritz family to the military. But the legal and moral obligations of the Eldian state also transferred.

That does not justify what the Marleyans are doing. And in light of the circumstances, I don’t even think reparations are called for. But Paradis owes something to the world; it doesn’t have to be much. A formal rebuking of the Empire’s actions would be enough.

Secondly: the impact of past actions resonate throughout history. No white person alive today partook in, for example, the partition of Africa. But that doesn’t mean white Europeans alive today don’t owe black Africans anything. The wealth white Europeans alive today enjoy is founded on a system of racist, imperialistic exploitation that had the effect of impoverishing the African continent. People in Africa continue to deal with that impoverishment.

This system, more or less, no longer exists, but regardless, ALL white Europeans benefit from it to this day which is why white Europeans are collectively indebted. Europeans, collectively, are wealthy because part of that wealth was stolen. Thus, there is a debt to be paid.

Note, though, that I’m using the concept of collectivity to argue for the existence of some intergenerational obligation. This is a facet of the debate the series completely ignores which is why its treatment of this issue is shallow at best and a kind of excuse making at worst.

The government of Paradis owes the world something but Kaya is right that Eldians as individuals don’t owe the world anything. This is not, however, because of the general principle that “the sins of the father should not be visited upon the son,” as the series would have you believe. It’s because the institutional system of oppression the Eldians used to dominate the world has been dismantled. Whatever benefits the Eldians accrued has since been taken away.

The end result, on a meta level, is a message that amounts to a tautology: that people who owe nothing to you don’t owe you anything. Not the most insightful of messages to be sure.

The series seems to have this conceit that denies the intergenerational nature of the oppression our racist society enables. That’s bad. In the context of a world still dealing with the consequences of racially motivated imperialism, it’s worse.

The subtext here is that the victims of imperialism aren’t owed anything by the descendants of the perpetrators because they (the descendants) weren’t personally involved. That is a common right-wing talking point. 

If I didn’t know this story was being written by an ethnic Japanese man, I would have said it was racist.