#defining itself as a country and nation. literally the nation state and identity of the republic were built during colonization.

[stackslip]

lmao this clownish, hypocritical, farcical, vindicative mess of a country. this loony nation that will literally throw a whole tantrum, from government to media stations to randoes on the street, because it deeply believes that it is entitled to the spoils and fruits and suffering of the people it oppressed for centuries, as *thanks* for "civilizing" them. any backlash to that notion creates unprecedented fury and petty vindictiveness towards the nationals of said country. on one hand the new governments of niger and mali are "human rights abusing juntas", on the other any national from this country must be severely punished for their governments' refusal to bow down and lick the sole of france's boot like they're supposed to.

[florasearle]

Art On Defectors and North Korea

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/north-korean-defectors-explore-the-soul-of-a-divided-peninsula-through-art/2020/04/04/8dd1ba1a-7367-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html

This article gave insight into the exepreince fo defectors and their artistic responses

Artist Kang Chun-hyuk expresses his distorted sense of identity in his first painting. This issue is common amongst people who have defected from their countries and resettling is challenge when considering cultural differences. The barbed wire painting reflects the border between the north and south and how accessible it is, but only to nature (as reflected the symbolism of the dragonfly). False Peace was a piece in response to the first inter-korean summit. Kang criticizes this meeting for the deception of peace it had bought, as under the surface of North Korea's image, is a land of suffering people.

“Below in the shadows, you can see the real North Korean people".

My aim for this project is to not necessarily directly critique the NK government but to bring awareness to the charity cause itself and this is by sharing the stories of defectors who have found a better life outside.

Kang also depicts the inherent violence and militia of NK. He explains how he saw his first public execution at the age of 9. This piece is a satirical play on the traditional paintings seen in NK propaganda.

Artist Jeon Ju-yeong shows a defector looking back from South Korea toward his hometown in the North. The painting demonstrates how the two sides are close, but worlds apart.

Ahn Chung-guk's works are abstract pieces and often feature abandoned objects. His fascination for the abandoned is a reflection of his upbringing. This piece is conveying the attempt to tear and break something down, a feeling he has experienced not only in the North, but the South also. This tearing can perhaps be related to the stereotypes associated with his name-Ahn’s full name literally means 'dedication to the nation', and he doesn't want this to define him.

Sun Mu trained as an artist in North Korea, where he painted propaganda posters that glorified the country’s ruling dynasty. He fled in 1998 to escape famine and since then has used the same artistic style he learned in his homeland to lampoon those leaders. He has drawn many caricatures of the North’s ruling dynasty. Instead of looking stately, they appear smug and overweight, often juxtaposed with symbols of Western decadence. Sun Mu’s works often feature images of children; one depicts a pudgy-cheeked young girl scowling as she sips Coca-Cola through a straw.

UK artist Gareth Fuller created a map of Pyongyang after a tourist visitation. He explains how his maps for other countries were free for him to roam, but NK had strict routes to follow. This reflects NK's attempts to formulate a perfect image to the rest of the world.

Choi Sung-Gook

Choi sought a better life in South Korea after working as a propaganda animator n North Korea, earning little compared to animators across the border. He also wanted the freedom to make hs own works, away from the risk of exposure and punishment. In South Korea, Choi worked for a radio station that broadcasted information to North Korea for those wishing to defect. He initially struggled to produce work in South Korea as he was so used to porogpand messages in NK. However, in 2016, he started a webcomic which depicted the lives of North Korean defectors in the South. His webtoon “Rodong Shimmun” – a play on words meaning ’labour interrogation', is viewed by tens of thousands of visitors. Its goal is to conjure more empathy between North and South Koreans. The comics Choi creates reflect the cultural differences that North Koreans face as they begin to live new lives in South Korea, using South Korean humour to relay the struggles faced by defectors.

Among the 300 North Koreans who testified about regime abuses to  International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council was Kim Kwang-Il, a 48-year-old defector who spent almost three years in a North Korean gulag for smuggling pine nuts across the border. After escaping to South Korea, Kim published a book about his experiences that included professional illustrations of the crimes he witnessed. They are graphic images but they reveal the truth of the country.

The People’s Museum of North Korea is an art exhibit that appeared in Canada. The aim was to start a conversation about the North Korean people and not a story where they’re passively suffering under this horrible regime. The interactive space contains elements and objects that help tell a story of resilience and resourcefulness by showing how North Koreans invent creative solutions to access information and other essentials from outside the country.

The exhibition aimed to cultivate donations, which was a similar idea I had for my project. An immersive experience is effective in getting viewers to sympathise with what they are being shown.

[peekbackstage]

Would you be willing to talk about how standards of masculinity and femininity in Asia differ from those in Europe/North America? I know, it's a ridiculously broad question but I think you mentioned it in passing previously and I would be really interested in your answer especially in the context of the music industry and idols. I (European) sometimes see male Asian idols as quite feminine (in appearance, maybe?) even if they publicly talk about typically masculine hobbies of theirs.

Hi Anon,

Sorry that it took me over a month to get to this question, but the sheer volume of research that is necessary to actually answer this is significant, as there is an enormous body of work in gender studies. There are academics who have staked their entire careers in this field of research, much of which isn’t actually transnational, being that regional gender studies alone is already an incredibly enormous field.

As such, in no way can I say that I’ve been able to delve into even 1% of all the research that is out there to properly address this question. While I can talk about gender issues in the United States, and gender issues that deal with Asian American identity, I am not an expert in transnational gender studies between Asia and Europe. That being said, I’ll do my best to answer what I can. 

When we consider the concept of “masculinity” and “femininity,” we must first begin with the fundamental understanding that gender is both a construct and a performance. The myth of gender essentialism and of gender as a binary is a product of patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in each culture where it emerges.

What you must remember when you talk about gendered concepts such as “masculinity” and “femininity” is that there is no universal idea of “masculinity” or “femininity” that speaks across time and nation and culture. Even within specific regions, such as Asia, not only does each country have its own understanding of gender and national signifiers and norms that defines “femininity” or “masculinity,” but even within the borders of the nation-state itself, we can find significantly different discourses on femininity and masculinity that sometimes are in direct opposition with one another. 

If we talk about the United States, for example, can we really say that there is a universal American idea of “masculinity” or “femininity”? How do we define a man, if what we understand to be a man is just a body that performs gender? What kind of signifiers are needed for such a performance? Is it Chris Evan’s Captain America? Or is it Chris Hemsworth’s Thor? What about Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark? Do these characters form a single, cohesive idea of masculinity? 

What about Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen? Miller is nonbinary - does their superhero status make them more masculine? Or are they less “masculine” because they are nonbinary? 

Judith Butler tells us in Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993) that what we call gender is inherently a discursive performance of specific signifiers and behaviors that were assigned to the gender binary and enforced by compulsory heterosexuality. She writes:

Insofar as heterosexual gender norms produce inapproximate ideals, heterosexuality can be said to operate through the regulated production of hyperbolic versions of “man” and “woman.” These are for the most part compulsory performances, ones which none of us choose, but which each of us is forced to negotiate. (1993: 237)

Because gender norms vary regionally, there are no stable norms that coalesce into the idea of a single, universal American “masculinity.” What I mean by this is that your idea of what reads as “masculine” might not be what I personally consider to be “masculine,” as someone who grew up in a very left-leaning liberal cosmopolitan area of the United States. 

What I am saying is this: Anon, I think you should consider challenging your idea of gender, because it sounds to me like you have a very regionally locked conception of the gender binary that informs your understanding of “masculinity” and femininity” - an understanding that simply does not exist in Asia, where there is not one,  but many different forms of masculinity. 

China, Japan, and South Korea all have significant cultural differences and understandings of gender, which has a direct relationship with one’s national and cultural identity. 

Japan, for example, might consider an idol who has long, layered hair and a thin body to be the ideal for idol masculinity, but would not consider an idol to be representative of “real” Japanese masculinity, which is epitomized by the Japanese salaryman. 

South Korea, however, has a very specific idea of what idol masculinity must look like -  simultaneously hypermasculine (i.e. extremely muscular, chiseled body) and “feminine” (i.e. makeup and dyed hair, extravagant clothing with a soft, beautiful face.) But South Korea also presents us with a more “standardized” idea of masculinity that offers an alternative to the “flowerboy” masculinity performed by idols, when we consider actors such as Hyun Bin and Lee Min-ho. 

China is a little more complex. In order to understand Chinese masculinity, we must first understand that prior to the Hallyu wave, the idea of the perfect Chinese man was defined by three qualities: 高富帅 (gaofushuai) tall, moneyed, and handsome - largely due to the emergence of the Chinese metrosexual. 

According to Kam Louie:

[The] Chinese metrosexual, though urbanized, is quite different from his Western counterpart. There are several translations of the term in Chinese, two of the most common and standard being “bailing li'nan” 白领丽男 and “dushili'nan” 都市丽男，literally “white-collar beautiful man” and “city beautiful man.” The notion of “beautiful man” (li-nan) refers to one who looks after his appearance and has healthy habits and all of the qualities usually attributed to the metrosexual; these are also the attributes of the reconstituted “cool” salaryman in Japan, men who have abandoned the “salaryman warrior” image and imbibed recent transnational corporate ideologies and practices. 

[...]

In fact, the concept of the metrosexual by its very nature defines a masculinity ideal that can only be attained by the moneyed classes. While it can be said to be a “softer” image than the macho male, it nevertheless encompasses a very “hard” and competitive core, one that is more aligned with the traditional “wen” part of the wen-wu dyad that I put forward as a conventional Chinese ideal and the “salaryman warrior” icon in Japan. Unsurprisingly, both metrosexuality and wen-wu masculinity are created and embraced by men who are “winners” in the patriarchal framework. 

The wen-wu 文武 (cultural attainment – martial valor) dyad that Louie refers to is the idea that Chinese masculinity was traditionally shaped by “a dichotomy between cultural and martial accomplishments” and is not only an ideal that has defined Chinese masculinity throughout history, but is also a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.

When the Hallyu wave swept through China, in an effort to capture and maximize success in the Chinese market, South Korean idol companies recruited Chinese idols and mixed them into their groups. Idols such as Kris Wu, Han Geng, Jackson Wang, and Wang Yibo are just a few such idols whose masculinities were redefined by the Kpop idol ideal. 

Once that crossover occurred, China’s idol image shifted towards the example South Korea set, with one caveat: such an example can only exist on stage, in music videos, and other “idol” products. Indeed, if we look at any brand campaigns featuring Wang Yibo, his image is decisively more metrosexual than idol; he is usually shot bare-faced and clean-cut, without the “idol” aesthetics that dominate his identity as Idol Wang Yibo. But, this meterosexual image, despite being the epitome of Chinese idealized masculinity, would still be viewed as more “feminine” when viewed by a North American gaze. (It is important to note that this gaze is uniquely North American, because meterosexual masculinity is actually also a European ideal!)

The North American gaze has been trained to view alternate forms of masculinity as non-masculine. We are inundated by countless images of hypermasculinity and hypersexual femininity in the media, which shapes our cultural consciousness and understanding of gender and sexuality and unattainable ideals. 

It is important to be aware that these ideals are culturally and regionally codified and are not universal. It is also important to challenge these ideals, as you must ask yourself: why is it an ideal? Why must masculinity be defined in such a way in North America? Why does the North American gaze view an Asian male idol and immediately read femininity in his bodily performance? What does that say about your North American cultural consciousness and understanding of gender? 

I encourage you to challenge these ideas, Anon.  

“Always already a cultural sign, the body sets limits to the imaginary meanings that it occasions, but is never free of imaginary construction.” - Judith Butler 

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York, NY, Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York, NY, Routledge, 1993. Flowerboys and the appeal of 'soft masculinity' in South Korea. BBC, 2018,  Louie, Kam. “Popular Culture and Masculinity Ideals in East Asia, with Special Reference to China.” The Journal of Asian Studies, Volume 71, Issue 4, November 2012 , pp. 929 - 943 Louie, Kam. Chinese, Japanese, and Global Masculine Identities. New York, NY, Routledge, 2003. 

[smokeybrandreviews]

Fly By Night

Black people don't care about Superman but making him Black in the next series of films, isn't going to solve that the problem. It's his upbringing, the cultural touchstones which define him. Clark Kent is intrinsically White. He looks White, definitely, but he was raised in Kansas, too. That's a Heartland State, places notorious for their aggressive intolerance and laughably disproportionate ethnic breakdown. Eighty-four percent of the people who live there are White and, while that's a stark cry from, say, Idaho's Ninety percent, only five percent of the populace is Black. How the f*ck can Clark BE full-on Black; ethnically, mentally, and culturally, when he's surrounded by so much White?

The short answer is that he can't. He doesn't have those values or experiences. How can he? He'd be part of five percent in two million. What is that? One hundred thousand, spread out across an entire state? I mean, at that point, he's more Kansas than he is Black so what does "fighting for truth, justice, in the American way" mean to someone from Kansas? A State as Red as a baboon's ass? A State where Trump won fifty-seven percent of the vote in both 2016 and 2020? A State that seems to support the same people that refuse to accept Joe Biden won that race, even after several recounts on their terms, several court cases lost to their judges, and a whole ass attempt to overthrow the government because they didn't like all those L's piling up? Never mind the question of raising a demigod with those incredibly problematic "values", how can a Black person come up in that level of racial animosity, cultural alienation, and abject disdain based solely on how he looks, possibly be all of America's Superman?

At the end of the day, JJabarams wanting to make Clark a Black man in this next run of films, is just a tone deaf, performative, dog whistle for all the little Blue Checkmark, fake woke, twatter asshole to fellate themselves over. I don't know a single Black person who is gassed that Clark will look like us. Dude basically represents everything wrong with America, to us. Clark is an out-of-touch White guy, born with unheard of power he didn't earn, imbued with a f*cked up savior complex, raised on a steady supply of zealous Patriotic ideals which borders on straight up Nationalism, in the cultural vacuum of Smallville, Kansas. Turning him Black without fixing that origin is tantamount to throwing Blackface on some White actor to play T'Challa instead of casting Chadwick Boseman. Imagine how THAT should would have gone over with the Blacks. Exactly.

You can't separate Clark from his cultural identity as the Whitest motherf*cker not from this Earth. You can't. It literally defines his entire worldview. Clark's Whiteness is intrinsic to who he is as a person. However, there are alternatives to that which ring truer to a Black Superman, to the Black experience, one of which has a dope ass backstory. Val-Zod, son of THAT Zod, took up the mantle of Superman in nu52 Earth-2. That version of the character could work because his race is intrinsic to his character on both sides; The Kryptonian and the Earthling. He is vague enough of a character to play around with content wise but recognizable enough for literally everyone to not lose their sh*t over Blackfacing Clark. Another lesser known option, the one i would personally pass on, is Kalel of Earth-23. He's a blank slate because no one remembers anything about the dude. Calvin Ellis' last appearance was in 2009 so, you know, have at it, i guess? Both of these options are much better than forcing a White Kent into a Black Peg.

I'm not usually one to be so uppity about bent characters, be they gender or race. They're just another take on an established fandom and i think that's great, as long as that alteration is respected and adapted into the character properly. Superficial sh*t like turning all of the ginger characters into Black people, just because they're going to be onscreen in some form or another, is f*cking ridiculous to me. Sometimes it doesn't work out all that well, like Iris West in the DCEU. Kiersey Clemons had, like, a minute of screentime in The Snyder Cut so why the f*ck was she even in there? I get you need to establish her as part of The Flash's lore but wait for his actual film if that's all we're going to see of her. Other times, it works very well, like with Mary-Jane and Zendaya. That case was a little more tricky as, at the time Homecoming was in development, Marvel didn't have the rights to the Mary-Jane character so they had no choice but to create Michelle. She's a brand new character who fills the role of MJ but in a completely unique, standalone, fashion. I adore that chick. She and Pete have this adorkable energy together, chemistry attributed to Zendaya and Holland. Ms. Coleman really sells MJ as a proper “MJ” and that's because her MJ is her own “MJ”. And, while we're on the topic of Spider-Man, Miles Morales is exactly how you racebend an established character with any hope of success.

Mile Morales is the blue print you need to follow in order to make your ridiculous reach at altering such an established persona, in such a drastic way. Miles is, from top to bottom, Black as f*ck. Every ounce of that character resonates with the culture. Early on in hi genesis, it was a little iffy but, as the character has grown, his swagger and identity has become much clearer. It's more defined and rings truer to what we, as Black people, see in the world. Hell, his movie, Into the Spider-Verse, is arguably the best Spider-Flick ever made and it is properly Black as f*ck. From the swagger, the cultural language, the music, the animation style, the tagging; All of it is too Black for words and the country ate that sh*t up. I saw SO much of US in that film and it really lent itself to giving comic Miles the boost necessary to really come into his own. Not to slight his Puerto Rican heritage at all, you get a bit of that, too, but, for all intents and purposes, society at large sees Miles as Black and Spider-Verse leans into that, heavy. Because Miles has no choice but to so as well. Pete had a lot more going for him growing up in Queens thank Clark's halcyon experience in f*cking Kansas, so he was already accepted in the community. You don't do the numbers Spider-Flicks consistently do at the box office without them Black dollars, but Miles was whole ass embraced by the culture. No one is mad at kid now that he is finally himself in the suit. He's not a legacy, he is a Spider-Man. That's how you do it. That's how you make racebending such an intrinsic character to the American zeitgeist, work. You don't dress Michael B. Jordan up as Clark and tell me he's my Superman. That's a lie and everyone is going to see through it. Everyone already has. You don't need x-ray vision for that.

[urmomsstuntdouble]

ok not sure how comprehensible this post is gonna be but! regarding the languages discussion, here are my thoughts about the anglo americans. be warned this post is long as fuck, but thank you so much if you do read all of it, and i’d love to hear your thoughts about it as well! 

so i just wanna start with alfred’s name- alfred. i think he may be named after alfred the great of wessex, who may or may not have been the first king of england. he wasn’t technically the king of a unified england that we’d think of it as today- he was the king of wessex, as his title implies, but there was a point at which he was “in charge” or however you want to put it of most of present day southern england. anyway this presents the first of his issues with his identity. he’s permanently tied to britain beyond just his culture and most common language- his name is a reminder of who he “belongs to.” of course most people don’t know that and they just think it’s a little odd that this 19yo miles morales type is called alfred but eh, what are you gonna do. 

then you have the fact that there’s no official language in the US, which makes things a little harder for him. he’s never sure what language he’s supposed to be speaking in, as the human representative of america. he thinks it should be english, seeing as that is the lingua franca, but there’s times when he just doesn’t vibe with english as a language. i mentioned before that he struggles with keeping his (spanish) dialects straight (which @cupofkey summed up as immigrant-kid-syndrome and that’s exactly it), although its not limited to just spanish. he also has a hard time keeping other shit in line, to the extent where his thoughts are a messy jumble of languages, concepts, images, and feelings. this is most evident when he’s nervous, because his accent will get super thick and he’ll start just saying the words that pop into his mind, even if they’re in another language or straight up not words at all. the only peson who can understand him when he’s doing this is canada. both of them are countries of immigrants, although they are different in who immigrated and when, so they dont have the exact same nervous tick language, but it’s close enough that they can communicate well. it’s sort of like a more global version of europanto? might sound something like this to an outside observer, but again, more global (also for the video they dont start talking until 1:17). 

america and canada also have a sort of inextricable bond because of the first nations people. the first tribe that comes to mind are the members of the okanagan national alliance, which straddles the present day border of british columbia and washington state (this is also something america shares with mexico). it’s caused a lot of pain between them personally, and with the okanagan nation. just as the border itself is vague- though the us-canada border is more respected than the okanagan borders- the parts of their identities are also vague. they feel bits and pieces of themselves ebbing and flowing, and matt and fred have gotten into arguments about it because they struggle to define their identities and they just want to be able to explain themselves to themselves. but you know that often winds up causing friction with the okanagan nations, because whatever issues with identity regarding their indigenous people fred and matt are having. they’ve got it worse, only in a sort of..negative image. like whereas fred and matt feel it on the fringes of themselves, making it so they cant tell where they end and other nations begin, the okanagan nations feel themselves being slowly eroded. none of them want each other to suffer, though, because the okanagan people can be americans and canadians and okanagans all at the same time. 

this also applies with the american border with mexico, seeing as there’s some areas in the southwestern us where spanish is spoken more than english. when he’s down there, freddie finds it easier to communicate than when he’s speaking english. chicano is his language just as much as english is- he just sort of became able to speak it when the west was colonized, and he already knew spanish for business purposes, so there ya go. there are some issues with that though because the spanish in the west is primarily from mexico and central america, whereas the east is more from the caribbean- like how miami has a large cuban minority. so he’s got a weird sort of chicano english too, because it’s no longer “pure” chicano. pure is a very loose term there because there is of course variation within southwestern chicano speakers. angelinos don’t have the same chicano as nuevomexicanos. anyway i think he’d get it mixed up with spanish proper or spanglish a lot because of the similar phonetic rules. i’m not sure about any indigenous tribes who have land that straddles the us-mexico border, but that’s probably not alfred’s biggest worry with That Border. actually no i think he might purposefully talk in an aggressively chicano dialect whenever someone in the government wants to talk to him about the ice concentration camps. like he usually doesn’t try that hard to keep the wrong language out of his mouth but he will go Full Chicano, just to make them uncomfortable and to try to get the point across that he can literally feel the physical pain of the people trapped at the border in those camps. but this also causes some tension with the countries of origins of those people, seeing as they can also feel that pain. there’s quite a lot of discourse between america, mexico, guatemala, honduras, and el salvador about that, because none of them quite know what to do. they argue again about whose pain it is and how they should, as nation personifications, deal with it.

another thing that he struggles with where matt is concerned is with his indigenous languages. the languages of his northernmost people are the most at risk and endangered, and some are actually in the process of dying. he hates that, because as much as he wants to act like he speaks just SCE and quebecois, he doesn’t. he knows all of his people’s languages, and it makes him feel like he’s losing his identity a little bit when his indigenous languages start fading away. the worst part about this is that he doesn’t even always know it’s happening until the fading feeling kicks in, so sometimes he’ll just make a point of going up to the northwestern territories and try to hang out with the oldest inuit people he can find to try and have a chat. and it’s ROUGH communicating at first but when he can get back into it he feels more solid and defined. i think this isn’t unique to him, and that the other countries in the americas do this too, but bc of the way civil rights work in canada, it’s a little different for him. because indigenous canadians are recognized as a certain class of citizen, indigenous canadian governments have a collective legal bargaining power and could theoretically ask for legal protections from the ottowa government for their languages. however, this doesn’t apply to the northwest territories, so that’s why matt goes there specifically to talk to old ass indigenous people. their languages aren’t protected legally in the same way that french and quebecois are, so he sort of takes it upon himself as mr canada to do preserve the languages and history. it’s especially sad when a language dies out forever, because then he’s one of very few people who still speak it and if he wants anyone else to know about it he’d have to teach them. but since the language is dead, there’s no one for him to get help from. the people who once spoke it are gone or use other languages now, and it’s all very weight of the world on his shoulders. i think this makes him very sad, because of the weirdly smug left wing anti-american nature of canadian nationalism. like he understands exactly the sort of pressure freddie is under but also has a cultural pressure to not say anything about it or even offer to help. 

this is also why he has the most boring and basic idiolect out of perhaps the entire anglosphere- even arthur has a distinct posh dialect that he uses most of the time. matthew talks like a textbook. a very polite and anxious textbook, but a textbook all the same. and matthew williams actually kind of likes what alfred jones has going on, but canada doesn’t. canada fell into british hands after the end of the 7yr war, which happened to be the war that sparked the american revolution (speaking of which the ages for america and canada make no goddamn sense, ask me about it if you want more detailed thoughts). loyalists fled to canada, and developed a superiority complex around the idea that they weren’t ungrateful. then it was about how they weren’t slave owners- which isn’t entirely true- and in the present day, even in hetalia canon, canadians often define themselves in relation to america. that is, they are better than americans because of xyz political thing. right now, to quote the anime, it’s “our free healthcare and lack of gun crime, eh.” this also poses some difficulties for canada in terms of culture, though, because if that much of their national pride comes from being better than america, what do they have to make a name for themselves? for anglo canadians, that’s a more complicated question. for quebeckers, it’s that the’re not anglo canadians. but quebec is also annoying as fuck and canada actually has nightmares about there being a successful secession movement there, so. i don’t know what the average anglo canadian thinks of quebec seeing as im not an average anglo canadian, but i do know that i hate their accents so now matt does too, although he will respect their right to have their language protected by the ottowa government (because quebec, that’s why). 

anyway i do have one last thought and that’s that nobody will ever really know america or canada like they know each other. they struggle with a lot of the same issues regarding language, but america has just sort of given up. in some ways, matt’s jealous of him, and in others he’s so glad he’s not the united states. but they do understand each other a lot as the anglo americans, and as some of the number one destinations for immigration out of the entire world. so yeah, i dont have any specific strong conclusion ot this post, but would absolutely love to hear your thoughts about languages in the americas! shit’s wack in this neck of the woods my dudes. 

oh actually one last thing. i think america and canada struggle a bit with their identities because they dont fit into any one specific group, linguistically or otherwise. they feel a bit isolated from the rest of the world specifically due to the intensity of the melting pot effect, and even within their own countries sometimes. people will be like oh you’re too white or you’re too black or you’re too dine or too much whatever other culture, so they often feel isolated from that stuff because they are all of those things, and have a deep connection with all of it. anyway they’ll always be there for each other

[zanth-i]

Bonjour-Hi! I was born and raised in Montreal. But I don’t quite belong.

Because speaking a language is not the same as having a voice.

Here’s a story that may resonate with many first-generation immigrants. We may be born in Canada, but because our parents weren’t, we’re not considered bona fide Canadians, and our ethnic upbringing does little to wean us as such. We’re raised with pride for our heritage and develop everlasting patriotism — for our parents’ country of origin. We’re the quasi Canadians, well aware that with every passing generation, we become, well, more Canadian. But even so, one’s roots are not easily forgotten, if ever. Cultural indoctrination has proven its permanency.

So why is it that in a seemingly open-minded city where I’m free to live true to my heritage, I often feel like I don’t belong?

I was born in the late ’70s to Greek parents in Montreal, Quebec. My parents settled here in the mid-’60s. They’d planned on staying for 5 years but stayed for more than 50 (and it’s surely not because they couldn’t resist the good weather). They spent most of their life in this city because it became their home. My late mother always said that she had two motherlands: the one where she was born and lived as a young girl, and the other where she grew and lived as a grown woman. My father still stands by their decision to move here, though wishes they’d retired there (something to do with the weather, again).

While my parents faced many challenges and weren’t always greeted with a welcoming smile, I’d like to center this piece on some of my reflections on being raised Greek in a French Canadian province.

Like most immigrants, my parents held on tight to their traditions. As they began to settle into the city, ex-pats came together and gave rise to Greek media, educational, social, and religious institutions. And of course, they introduced Montrealers to Greek food.

Us kids, we inevitably made friends with our kind and upheld such a strong sense of community so immersive that our “Xeni” (foreign) friends would eventually “turn Greek” and become all too familiarized with our way of life. We’d speak English amongst ourselves (sometimes Greek), but Greek with our parents (sometimes English). And if not every year, every other year, as kids, many of us spent our summers off at our respective parents’ birthplace, “back home” in Greece, visiting our grandparents. As adults, many of us still make it a point to return and often. And we still unreservedly boast about our beautiful motherland.

While my parents made sure I spoke Greek fluently and knew my roots well, they were adamant about me learning to speak French, as “this was the language of the future in Quebec” my mother would counsel. So when I was 7, she pulled me out of the Greek educational system asserting that their French curriculum wasn’t sufficiently robust, and instead put me in an all-french school, where I experienced major culture shock. And to accelerate my learning (along with my shock), she also signed me up for French swimming lessons, French scouts, and French camp. Oh, and I was only allowed French tv and was to speak to my big sister exclusively in French, for a whole year. As you gather, she lent high importance to the French language, and I in turn learned to speak it fluently, and also to eventually forgive my mother for her militant (but in the end effective) ways.

Now — while I love speaking in French — I find myself consciously choosing to say hello rather than bonjour. Largely because I feel we’ve taken the language policing too far. For this, I direct my disappointment to the Office Québécois de la langue Française (OQLF) whose efforts may be well-intentioned but I feel are misplaced. And the Coalition Avenir Québec’s recent decision to inject funds into the OQLF especially during a pandemic while we’re literally fighting for our lives is a bitter reminder of the powerful provincialism we’re regularly faced with. It’s no longer about speaking French, it’s become about not speaking English. And to then have the minister responsible for the French language in Quebec say that this “is not against English institutions,” and “we can do both — respect English institutions but also respect French in our society” is playing offense.

Without making this article about the laws of the OQLF, it will suffice to say that the laws along with the board were created out of fear that the French language would go extinct in Quebec. That said, it’s important to note that the French hold a majority in Quebec. But their concern with having their heritage eclipsed, nods to the anglophone/allophone influential minority. Also to consider is that Quebec (begrudgingly to some) is in Canada, where anglophones are of majority. Naturally, in came the language laws with the mission to protect the French language in a primarily English-speaking nation. It’s only natural to want to secure your kind and colony.

For those of you that don’t live here, I want to clarify: No one will arrest or fine you for speaking in whatever language you wish amongst your friends and family. It’s when you seek to operate professionally — as an employee or business owner — , and seek service of any kind that things get sticky. Businesses are subjected to fines if they don’t abide by the language rules. And people are subjected to discrimination, plain and simple. French fanatics will not literally convict you, cuff you, and lock you up for not speaking French, it just feels that way.

I believe it is moot point to argue historical events and statistics in an attempt to prove or disprove the language laws, because in the end what matters most is people’s current state of mind and wellbeing. And if Black Lives Matter has taught us anything, it’s that history often needs a rethink, and room for redemption. With that in mind, our elected leaders and citizens of this province should be asking themselves “how do yesteryear laws continue to serve us?”

I understand that the French want to maintain their heritage in Quebec — it’s really the same for everyone settling onto any land. But I feel our Provincial government is stirring up a storm only to later justify its self-serving plebiscite.

If their true intent is to segregate the citizens of this province, I suspect that things will worsen with time and anglophones/allophones will eventually protest and march with #OurVoiceMatters banners in hand.

Some of my Francophone friends that are here fresh from France complain of being picked on for their accent. Some anglo/allophone friends often cope with disapproving glares for speaking in their mother tongue. And some of my pure laine friends think anglos are arrogant and dismissive of Quebec language and culture. If none of this resonates with you and you feel that there’s no race problem in Quebec, you’re likely part of the problem.

I remember wishing a francophone a happy Canada day (in French) and being met with a dry “I don’t celebrate that” as she handed me the flowers I’d just purchased from her shop at the Atwater market. And such racist and discriminatory occurrences are constant in everyday life here. Especially online where you’ll find no shortage of Anglophones complaining about some language-related fines, and Francophones coming to the OQLF’s defense, leaving low-brow remarks ordering anglos to pack up and leave if they don’t like it.

Here’s the thing, as a first-generation immigrant, I can assure you that just because I speak the French language doesn’t mean that I’ve given French-Quebec culture a voice.

If I was born to Greek parents in Montreal, QC, Canada, what is my country of origin?

My name is a dead giveaway of my ethnic background. When I’m asked where I’m from, I’m reminded of the struggle between being born somewhere but *really* originally being from somewhere else.

Being born in Quebec doesn’t make me a Québecoise any more than being born at the Jewish general hospital doesn’t make me Jewish.

Ironically, in Greece, I’m called a foreigner. Growing up Greek in Montreal, is not the same as growing up Greek in Greece. Goes to show how culture unavoidably breeds bias and immigration ushers it along.

Consider the saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do”

So when in Quebec, do as…whom?

Think of the last time you traveled and how you were absorbed by the culture and became enchanted with their way of life. Now consider someone traveling here. What are they absorbing and experiencing?

Most say they love our multicultural vibe. And this perhaps defines Quebec culture — our hodgepodge of many cultures. And so making sure everyone speaks French or else, does very little to raise and cultivate the French-Quebec culture. Hence SNL’s latest ‘bonjour-hi’ skit, a spoof that caused upset amongst Quebecers especially francophones, that Bowen Yang issued an “apology” for missing the mark.

Many are unacquainted with Quebec heritage and culture because its people are preocupied with language correction, instead of cultural connection.

I humbly suggest they stop staring at the tree and instead take notice of the forest. Culture is more than language. It takes a lot more to maintain heritage and identity. This language battle only speaks to cultural impotence. Ask any immigrant who has no language charters and laws in place to secure their language and identity, but still has managed to preserve them. A powerful culture speaks for itself, in whatever language it chooses and its pull is so great, that you don’t resist. So instead of focusing on condemning each other for our differences, let’s start exploring how those differences make us fundamentally the same. What binds us will bond us.

I propose we start with the following statement.

#JeSuisQuebecois(e)Parceque…?

[gayiconwaluigi]

I wanted to put together some common race-centric “myths” that people bring up in conversation that you might want to dispel but don’t know how. I’ve learned all of this from Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr in his book Stony the Road; Gates writes some of the most accessible history books I’ve ever read.

The Lost Cause -- This is the myth that people use to back up their claim that the Confederate flag is about heritage and that the civil war was fought about states rights and big government. These myths were started immediately by white Southerners after the Civil War to defend their cause as honorable and to denigrate free black people. This was started by the book The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War with the Confederates by Edward Pollard.

Media has no affect on reality. -- People claim that things in TV and movies do not affect reality--that blackface doesn’t affect anything or that stereotypical portrayals of people of color don’t contribute to racism. The 1915 film Birth of a Nation singlehandedly gave rebirth to the Klan in the US. 

The use of blackface from the end of the Civil War throughout Jim Crow on things like soap, pancakes, rice, Valentine’s Day cards, postcards with pictures of lynchings, children’s books, minstrel shows, etc inundated the cultural consciousness with the idea that black people were either dangerous or stupid. These representations normalized racism. The portrayal of black people like this was strategic in justifying Jim Crow laws.

The New Negro/Talented Tenth mentality -- These ideologies were pushed at the turn of the 19th century when a wave of helplessness washed over the country about how to live under Jim Crow oppression. Black intellectuals defined themselves as a “New Negro” separate from the “Old Negro” of slavery. The “New Negro” identity was educated, eloquent, clean, and put together. The “Old Negro” identity was dirty, lazy, slovenly, uneducated, and ignorant. The “New Negro” identity was used to distance one part of the black community from the other, bargaining with the white community that they deserved respect. 

This identity redefined itself pretty much every 10 years so that the “New Negro” of the past was now the “Old Negro.” This resulted in the creation of the Harlem Renaissance where black intellectuals were devoted to proving to the white elite that they were worthy of respect and prestige, trying to end oppression through art. But as Gates states in Stony the Road, oppression has never been ended solely through the use of art.

This “New Negro” mentality was connected to what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “Talented Tenth,” which stated that only 1/10th of black people were talented, and it was this section of the black race that needed to cultivate itself to prove to white people that black people were worthy of respect. You can see this viewpoint in movies like Django Unchained where the eponymous Django goes on a whole monologue about how many only 1 out of 1,000,000 black people are special, and he is that one in a million. 

This is getting a little lengthy, but the myth here is that black people need/have to change. As Gates puts it, there’s no amount of changing black people that will satisfy white people. It is the white population that needs to change. 

Stupid people shouldn’t vote/decide politics. -- Any time you call voting rights into concern, the argument is inherently racist. I know this view seems extreme, but I know people who think some people just shouldn’t vote. This viewpoint is positioned in the white supremacist, capitalist view that only well-educated white people should vote, and that we are spoiling and ruining democracy if we let the “uneducated black person” vote. This was especially the perspective of white people after the Civil War where black men were granted the right to vote and then proceeded to vote black men into government. 

This perspective was also shown in the 1915 movie Birth of a Nation that showed a group of black people in government doing nothing and passing a bill to let different races marry as an excuse to rape white women. This film was screened at the White House. 

Racism wasn’t/isn’t as bad in the North! -- I listened to a very good episode of the NPR podcast Throughline available on Spotify called American Police, which detailed the development of the police system in the South and the North [which, long story short, were both based in ethnic and racial profiling]. I’ve heard this myth my whole life, but something I learned from Gates was that many abolitionists were against slavery but were not for giving freed people any rights! They literally thought slavery was bad but also wanted all the freed black people put somewhere [like Africa] where they didn’t have to socialize with them. This viewpoint included black abolitionists whose families had been free for generations and didn’t want to be conflated with this new population of free black people.

[arcticdementor]

Ok, I'll do my best to try, because reading some of the galaxy brained takes about China and the Chinese government have cemented in my head the agonizing fact that most people prefer simple narratives and have little understanding of history, let alone an understanding of how history affects the present.

This will be long and requires some groundwork on explaining the modern Chinese mindset as a whole. Disclaimer: I am currently in Hong Kong, I hold British citizenship by birth and frequently do business with Chinese companies.

1) Big China and Collective Society.

This is something most people really don't grasp the scale of. To assign shared characteristics to fully one quarter of the human race would be broad enough to make those descriptors basically meaningless. Dividing sections of China along any non-geographical lines, economic lines, socio-political lines, this is all incredibly difficult. Despite a massively homogenous Han Chinese population, just looking at Chinese food culture would tell you just how freakishly diverse and different each section is. There are different dialects, accents, lifestyles all across China. When people say "China" it is often completely unhelpful when it comes to pinning down what they mean. For the sake of this discussion, we're assuming that we're talking about the type of Chinese person that the central government has taken pains to portray to the world. Which is, the middle class, consumerist, worldly and tech-savvy Han Chinese. Native of a Tier 1 city (e.g. Shanghai or Beijing).

Most Chinese people are aware of just how big the country is and how difficult a task it is keeping it all together, on a scale I've seen very few people outside of China appreciate. There is a real ethos of "tianxia", or the concept depicted in the Jet Li movie Hero (criticized for being state propaganda at the time, it was largely missed that most Chinese understand, if not support, this thesis). Chinese see themselves as sharing in a common destiny and collective group ethos. This can be traced back to Confucianism - a young person can have said to have "come of age" when they have fully adapted to and understood their role within a harmonious society. This both gives the common Chinese a shared purpose and skin in the game. They literally feel a stake in the collective power and status of their own country. This is not the flag-waving nationalism that the western nations consider passe, but a belief that China must hold together as a shared country and people.

…

Chinese pride is young, and very damaged. There is a sense of grievance and hurt pride that has never been resolved, and this is occasionally glimpsed in everything from their foreign policy to their mass market serialized literature. The reasons behind this can be traced back to a century of colonialism and rampant opportunism by the world powers during the 19th and 20th centuries. Chinese histories and memories are very long, and despite happening a few centuries ago this is very fresh in people's minds. An old joke about China's view of history has the Chinese waiting to see if the French Revolution is still a good idea. China has never forgotten that despite a massive population and huge amounts of territory it fell from being one of the world's oldest civilizations to becoming the "weak man of Asia", and their modern politics has mostly been about resolving this pride. There is a shared belief, or a hidden form of mass psychosis, that China has been denied its destiny as the foremost world power, either through treachery, the work of foreign powers, or other means. Even worse is the proof that the old rival Japan, a similarly impoverished nation, had managed to drag itself onto the stage of the world powers in the late 19th/early 20th century. This has caused some real complexes in the Chinese psyche.

Adding to this is the understanding of recent history. Coupled with historical understanding that ruling China is an incredibly difficult job and only people like the legendary Emperor Qin were able to unify the country in the first place, China collectively remembers the much more recent history of the Communist revolution, the Great Famine, the Cultural Revolution, and more. The fact that China's current financial power and global status is largely a result of Deng Xiaoping's market reforms and liberalism is besides the point - the defining thing that most Chinese in the older generation take away is that revolution led to some truly fucking heinous shit and a death toll enacted on its population greater than any ever seen in the history of mankind, and as a result they have no taste for another revolution. The government stays in power largely because the older generation are aware of just how much death is involved with a changing of the guard. There is also no promise that whatever comes to replace the government will be in any way better than what came before it. Sure, the kuomintang government were corrupt as sin, but was that really preferable to having everyone starve because nobody knew how to farm land for years?

…

It is no surprise that the most radical nationalist pro-Chinese are the young students sent overseas to study in western universities. The Chinese attitude towards these western academies is not great; they attend for credentials and status, but these places of study have become cultural battlegrounds and ground zero for showing Chinese students that the Western societies and arguments are fractured and impotent. Students are given courses and humanities curriculum that demonize western civilization and its achievements, and emphasize the breaking down of existing power structures. Of course this would lead to nationalist students violently attacking pro-Hong Kong protesters and demonstrations, as both sides consider each other indoctrinated suckers (and one sees the other as trying to destroy the power structure of the country). An attack on China and Chinese identity is both a dangerous attack on national and societal cohesion and stinging Chinese pride. They have been handed something that can be easily interpreted as an attempt by foreign powers to fracture the unity of Chinese society, cause chaos in their country, and stop China from achieving its destiny of world #1 power and subjugator of other nations.

…

Many people have asked me why Chinese people put up with their government being totalitarian, so many human rights abuses, this and that. Social credit system, organ harvesting. No end of horrible things we hear about Chinese government. The corruption. The dark things the CCP has done to consolidate its power. Tiananmen.

Well, the unfortunate answer is that China, as a collectivized group, wants to fuck over people who looked down on them, even if it means causing itself grievous injuries in the process. It's painful to admit, but the regular Chinese is perfectly okay with the Uighur death camps, even if the government goes to some length to pretend they don't exist. After all, surely they must be doing something to destabilize and weaken Chinese society if the government is putting them in death camps. Don't you know Uighurs can be unpredictable, barbaric, and violent? And if Chinese society is destabilized and weak, the Chinese people won't achieve our common destiny of being the #1 world power.

Chinese people don't care that there is anti-Chinese sentiment internationally. In fact, it even helps. It plays into the narrative that people hate China now because China is strong.

Privately, Chinese people will celebrate the NBA and Blizzard backing down in fear, because they equate this with power and respect. It is perfectly natural for the NBA to apologize for offending the Chinese government, because this is a display of strength. How will you be able to tell that you are stronger than someone, if they are not underneath your boot heel?

…

China has gone from largely a nation of rice farmers to modern state with terrifying speed. They are now the world leader in 5G communications technology, technological integration into daily life, the world's biggest consumer market. By every single metric, logistics, travel, entertainment, living standards, Chinese life has gotten better. And they are completely aware of this. Twenty years. Thirty years?

…

So there is an unspoken pact between the government and the people. In exchange for getting rich, the people have willingly given up their freedoms. Because you can't eat freedom. Many of the social problems in China are rooted in this short-term manner of business thinking; tomorrow, there may be trouble. Maybe the country would be in trouble. I'll never see this customer or client again. Why bother maintaining anything? If I can get a benefit out of cheating, why wouldn't I do it?

Chinese, especially the older generation, understand existential failure on a level the western nations don't. They don't take anything for granted, including the attitude of the government (and this has in fact driven a lot of asset flow out of China into other nations). They remember the Cultural Revolution, the societal madness that took hold when roving gangs of diehard Communists went around lynching people who wore glasses or owned books. They understand that the possibility of that shit happening again, or coming for them, is non-zero. So the attitude is to use every trick in the book to make sure that they come out on top.

…

There is a recurring belief from Americans that most Chinese are brainwashed by their authoritarian government, and if they only understood democracy, knew about the atrocities of the CCP, or were exposed to the taste of an All-American cheeseburger, there would be a great awakening and China would truly "become free". While certain elements of brainwashing and information control are most certainly true, there is a certain level of arrogance in this method of thinking.

For one, this viewpoint has completely ignored the possibility that China already knows exactly how cheeseburgers taste, all about the atrocities of its own government, and about democracy.

…

China's political and social state project has openly stated its intent to utilize and take advantage of what worked before, while adapting it to fit their own situation. Throwing away what doesn't work, surgically excising elements they consider dangerous or don't like. 'Socialism with Chinese characteristics'. 'China Dream'. These are adapted policies, methods, and ideals, refocused through the lens of the Party. Yes, they are stealing. They are also adapting.

Any good propagandist will tell you that the ideological battle is the first battle that must be won, and on this note America has failed utterly at defending democracy and personal freedom. This is not by Chinese design; rather, a combination of factors including financial inequality, changing demographics, chaotic governance, political point-scoring and media clickbait have done their best to demonstrate that American government is both unstable and spectacularly inept, and no longer believes in the values set down in the Declaration of Independence. America has considered the argument for democracy so thoroughly won that it has forgotten to defend it, or even the value of it. Into this void steps the Chinese government.

…

It is impossible not to watch. The US is the world's only really global power, and the current measuring stick by which all global powers are compared against. China wants what the US has, but is going to attempt to do so without the mistakes the Americans have made. After all, American empire is ending, or so everyone says. The bars are equalizing. America was a leader in space travel, so China will become a leader in space travel. America was a leader in world culture and entertainment, so China will become a leader in world culture and entertainment. America has a strong military, so China will have a strong military.

…

To leave with one last note, in the online kerfluffle surrounding Hong Kong's current situation, Chinese netizens think it's fair play to "support 9-11" and advocate for California seceding from the United States, as payback for a mistaken belief that the fight in Hong Kong is over independence. When confronted with the fact that edgy teenagers in America have been making 9-11 jokes barely a week after the tragedy and a non-zero amount of non-Californians in the US would also prefer it if California sunk into the ocean, they are legitimately surprised. The idea that this kind of independence would be preferred by both parties is almost completely alien to the Chinese, who wonder and are surprised at the fact that Americans apparently wish their country to be weaker.

[centrally-unplanned]

Napoleon’s Culture Victory Strat

So I recently returned from a month-long trip through a bunch of European places, and I may have a few posts in me on it. A lot of the trip was spent in North Italy (or, if you were to ask Lega Nord, Actual Italy), where I visited three (beautiful) locations.

First up was Lake Como for a wedding, part of a long tradition of Americans using favourable terms of trade to purchase romantic legitimacy. Lake Como is dotted with historical villas, including the site of the declaration of the crusade against sand and all its ilk, but its most impressive is the Villa Carlotta:

Possessing one of the largest botanical gardens in the country and a host of Romantic-era art, it was finished in 1745 by a Milanese merchant family, but they were bankrupted in the process of building it and other projects, so it sat bare and underutilized until Napoleon’s Republic of Italy puppet state was established. Sold to Giovanni Sommariva, a leading politician of the new republic that Napoleon elevated, he set about beautifying as many places as he could get his hands on to establish the new legitimacy of the fledgling state (not to mention his own legitimacy, compensating for his roots as a barber’s apprentice). As such the Villa Carlotta came out of that process one of the most intricately decorated estates in Italy, with multiple statues and frescoes of Napoleon approaching various states of divinity, and stands as one of most-visited sites in the area today. 

Next up was Milan, capital of fashion & finance, criminally under-visited as far as Italian cities go. Seriously, they have some of the best architecture in the world, no city is as obsessed with design and as open to experimentation as Milan (check out the Bolsa Verticale for one). And at the literal center of it all, all-roads-lead-to-Rome style, is the Duomo Cathedral:

The Flamboyant-Gothic pariah in a sea of Renaissance constructions, the scale of its aesthetic impact is matched only by the scale of the boondoggle that was its construction. Started in 1386, the facade and main decorative elements still remained unfinished by 1765, when construction halted for the seventh-odd time due to funding and political constraints, and it stood imposing but incomplete.

That is until Napoleon, on the eve of his crowing as King of Italy in 1805, ordered the magistrates of the city to finish the Duomo as a symbol of his new reign. Promising Milan a blank check that would be borne by the French treasury, the government erupted into action and completed the Cathedral in 7 years, and giving Napoleon pride of place as one of the statues topping the spires of the facade alongside the saints. Ironically, this date put the completion of the Cathedral right around the disintegration of the Grande Armée in Russia, and the disintegration of Napoleon’s empire followed soon after. France wound up never paying Milan a cent for the construction, but the Duomo was already finished, and the third-largest cathedral in Europe stands today, defining the city, covered with Napoleon’s prints.

The final stop in the Italy-part of my trip was Venice, which is where the pattern inverts as Venice is a far older city than most. The height of the Venetian Republic begin in the 13th century, and by the 18th century it had entered terminal decline, and as such its cultural and architectural achievements all back-date the modern era. Most of these achievements surround the Piazza San Marco, named after its dominant building, St. Mark’s Basilica:

Completed in the 11th century with 13th century expansions on its domes, it is the standard-bearer of neo-byzantine architecture. Yet the leaders of Venice in the 13th century were apparently full-on hipsters - why settle for a modern recreation of something historical when you can have the authentic thing itself? As such, in 1204 when Venice baited the 4th Crusade into pillaging Constantinople as a participation trophy for their failure to even reach the Middle East, they took as compensation four Roman-era horse statues that the Byzantine Empire had on display in the Hippodrome, and mounted them on top of the front gate of St. Marks. Very vintage.

Over time the Four Horses of St. Marks became a symbol of Venice’s independence, with rival merchant states and monarchies alike aspiring to “tame the four horses” and bring their ambition to heel. None succeeded at that task, and Venice remained an independent, unbridled republic for centuries after. 

Until Napoleon came along, that is. In 1797 Napoleon blitzed through Italy on his way to confront the Austrian forces taking the direct route to France. Venice tried to play the Swiss-style neutrality card and rebuffed offers from both sides for alliances, but apparently forgot they lacked the Alpine mountains terrain bonus that made such a play viable, and Napoleon found it easier to simply invade them and be done with it. To commemorate the ease and completeness of his victory, in what was described at the time as the most “big-dick energy play of the 18th century”, Napoleon had the Four Horses of St. Marks stripped from the basilica and sent to Paris, where they were mounted on top of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. They were eventually sent back with the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, but replica’s were commissioned and remain on top of the Arc to this day. Venice itself never regained its independence, being traded in between France and Austria until its annexation by present-day Italy in the 1860′s. 

Napoleon is obviously someone that you learn about in the history books, but his influence is maybe sometimes a bit inscrutable from a distance, as he was a short-lived military conqueror whose states did not outlast his campaigns. Its in his nation-building that his legacy is the most lasting, and I was shocked at how pervasive it was. My trip had zero thought put into “Napoleon” in its planning, and I never set foot in France, yet every Italian city I visited didn’t just have a “mark” of Napoleon on it, but had that mark on their most central cultural achievements. And it wasn’t just one-way, as the Venice story showed - he not only built up these monuments locally in Italy, but brought elements back to France as well. You cant just make Italy love being part of the global empire, but also need to make Paris love being the center of it, shape their own identity around it.

And the way he was able to do it consistently is interesting - his methods can honestly be summarized as “just do it”. He was personally involved in all of these projects - issuing guidelines for the villa-type projects, directly ordering the construction of the Duomo and the confiscation of the Four Horses for the Arc. Yet Napoleon didn’t bring in grand new sources of funding or innovations in construction technology - he just let his aura of invincibility lead the way on letting him do things others never could muster the collective willpower for. Milan always had the capability to finish the Cathedral, and other invaders could always have confiscated critical monuments to build even-more-impressive moments as symbols of power. Napoleon just...decided to be the one to do it. And it he did it everywhere he could. These projects were strategies to build the empire, and its impressive to notice the effects of that strategy defining cities still today.

[atheistforhumanity]

A few days ago Sessions announced the formation of a religious liberty task force. This task force comes in combination with an order to all courts and governments to use the broadest interpretation possible of this administration’s previously released 20 principles for religious freedom. The purpose of this task force will be to seek out any “failures” to accommodate religious freedom in their view.

Like many moves from this administration and in politics in general, how this initiative looks on the surface is much different than how it will be implemented in reality. This administration has been defined by regular Orwellian double speak and this is a prime example. When Sessions says religious freedom he really means religious privilege.

What I will do in this post is explain that this administration’s intentions are not religious freedom at all, but rather the enforcement of Christianity on the population.Then at the end I will defend my position as a secularist and atheist in contrast to theirs.

First, we must take an honest look at where this push is coming from. Trump has been criticized widely for trampling the religious freedoms of Muslim people and spouting hate speech since the beginning of his presidential campaign. If you look at a timeline of Trump’s public comments about Muslims, you’ll see that he has professed a very clear disdain for them as a people, has demonized them as terrorists, and toyed with outright persecution of them. These include, but are not limited to, instituting a travel ban, which he said on the campaign trail would be to keep Muslims out, directly calling all Muslim refugees members of Isis, saying that Muslim citizens should have to register with the government, and saying he would seriously consider closing all Mosques in America. All of these comments are the literal antithesis of religious freedom. Not only would it be unreasonable to believe this administration wants to uphold religious freedom for everyone, it would be downright delusional to believe such a claim.

Trump’s anti-Muslim speech and policy only scratches the surface of the problem with the right wing in this country. Conservatives everywhere have been trying to force Christianity into the public sphere by erecting monuments of the 10 Commandments. There has been a constant battle to stop Christians from imposing their beliefs on communities on government property and using tax-payer money. Many conservative law makers such as Mary Fallin and Roy Moore have refused to remove statues in the face of losing their legal battles, where they were ruled to be infringing on other’s religious freedom. Roy Moore in particular was suspended twice from his job as a judge for violating higher courts rulings on his actions to push his religious beliefs.  

In a broader look, right wing politicians have been demonizing secularism and non-belief for years, blaming the lack of Christianity as the direct cause of virtually all of America’s problems. Ted Cruz regularly paints a dismal picture of America, a place filled with demons and in need of being saved through Christian values. He often overlays Biblical mythology on real world events and institutions, claiming signs and prophecies. Most importantly, he clearly promotes Christianity in government with extreme bias and cannot be trusted to uphold protections for others. Mike Huckabee flat out blames school shootings on the fact that God (the Christian one) is not in our public schools and public sphere. Newt Gingrich also blames mass shootings on the removal of God from public life. My point in exposing these comments is that people who feel so strongly that instituting their religion on the public is the solution for social ills cannot be trusted to respect everyone’s freedom of religion. Specifically, the freedom of non-believers. To put a fine point on it, Governor Rick Perry stated that “freedom of religion is not freedom from religion,” expressing a very real and dangerous prejudice from a position of power. These words have an ominous ring as they clearly state their is no escape from religion and no freedom to not be subjected to it. This is clearly the intent of Sessions’s task force. All of these comments, which are only snippets of on going rhetoric from the right prove not only the bias promotion of their own religion, but a real bigotry toward non-belief, which is widespread in this country. Several states still hold unenforceable laws in their state constitutions that ban atheists from serving in pubic office.

So we see Republicans openly express their desire to make their religious beliefs state sanctioned, which would be a direct violation of our constitution. That is exactly what these principles Sessions wants to enforce do. Among this list are provisions to discriminate against LGBTQ in business, schools, and adoptions, and possibly even housing, allowing employers to not cover birth control, rolling back separation of church and state. These are the first steps toward creating a Christian nationalist state that is a true reflection of Middle Eastern countries that force religion on the people and deny freedom to practice other beliefs, especially non-belief.

My Defense of Secularism

“A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom,” Sessions said, which “must be confronted and defeated.” To be clear here, Sessions is referring to secularism curbing unconstitutional privileges that religion has enjoyed. Sessions called secularism dangerous because of this.

Sessions is referring directly to people like me when he says a “dangerous movement.” I want to be clear that I’m only speaking for myself in my response. I have stated that I want to see the end of religion, because I oppose it on an ideological level and belief it does more harm than good in society. My intent though is to debate religion and promote replacement social movements until we as a society naturally grow out of belief in the supernatural.

Secularism is only the separation of church and state. That’s it. There’s no nefarious intent behind the idea. It’s exactly the opposite. If any religion or non-religion is be treated fairly then the government cannot advocate, take part in, promote, or favor any religion at all. Republicans talk about wanting prayer in school, but think about how you would feel as a Christian if that were Muslim prayer, or Jewish prayer, or Buddhist prayer. What if a court building had a plaque that promoted the old testament and denied the divinity of Jesus Christ? What if teachers started teaching that Zues was a real literal entity and should be worshiped? Secularism is the effort to avoid all these situations so that no one has to be in a situation of having another faith forced on them.

Christians often mistake a philosophy of neutrality to be having non-belief forced on them. This is a reaction to losing privileges that Christianity has enjoyed in this country for many years. Despite all the advantages Christians have had due to their population, this nation was not founded as a Christian nation or on Judeo-Christian values. I won’t go into that argument for now, because that could be an equally long post by itself. But instances such as not having the ten commandments on government property and not having school led prayer are not anti-Christian at all. They are also not meant to only accommodate non-believers. They are designed to keep ALL people on equal footing by keeping faith a private affair.

Conservative Christians often have the misplaced belief that atheists want to create an anti-religious government that will persecute them. First, I’d like to say people often fear others will do to them what they are willing to do or have done to others. This is a prime example. It also the reason they fear Islam. As an atheist I have NO DESIRE to no desire to promote any discriminatory legislation that would stop people from practicing their faith in ways that do not interfere with or harm others. I would never support legislation that gives unequal power to any group in America.

Atheists are often the first people to defend the religious rights of any group and fight against religious oppression, because we understand better than anyone that if one group is not free then everyone is potentially not free.

One of my very first posts on this blog was about how I found it horrifying that Trump would talk about creating a Muslim registry. I don’t want or feel the need to put non-believers in a position of legal advantage over religions. I don’t need to repress religion to win the culture war or to prove it’s fallacies and imperfections. I only need freedom of speech, open knowledge, a government that doesn’t take sides. The real reason that the right wing pushes so hard to maintain legal privileges over others is because their position is weak and they can never win an ideological battle on equal ground.

[jewish-privilege]

The Anti-Defamation League publishes an annual report on incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States. This year’s audit, made available in November, showed a significant increase in relation to the previous year: 2017 saw a 67% rise in anti-Jewish hate speech, harassment, vandalism, and violence. 

It’s a disheartening measure of a terrible phenomenon. Yet in the three months since the audit was released, it’s garnered little attention. 

...Underlying this is a pervasive point of view is the notion that Jews, who are often conflated with whites, should “check their privilege,” because anti-Semitism just isn’t as bad as other forms of racism. On campus, where the ADL notes an acute rise in anti-Jewish hostility, alarmed Jewish students are sidelined for being white and middle-class and the Holocaust is trivialized as “white on white crime”. Elsewhere, Jews who protest anti-Semitism are dismissed for failing to ante up sufficient concern about people of color. 

This erasure of anti-Semitism isn’t simply callous. It exposes a huge moral failure at the heart of the modern Left. Under the enveloping paradigm of “intersectionality,” everyone is granularly defined by their various identities — everyone, that is, except white Jews, whose Jewishness is often overwritten by their skin color. Not simply a moral failing, this erasure is deeply hazardous, inasmuch as the fight against racism happens by and large in sectors where the Left perspective dominates — the academy, pop culture, and much of the news media. 

...For in a key sense, regular racism, against blacks and Latinos for example, is the opposite of anti-Semitism. While both ultimately derive from xenophobia, regular racism comes from white people believing they are superior to people of color. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural powers, in other words, it stems from the models of thought that produce conspiracy theories. Where the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind. 

This is also why the Left is blind to Anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power — a form of speech of which the Left is currently enamored. 

...At its most trivial, a conspiracy theory is the idea that a circumstance or event can be explained by the influence of an evil secret society. As the historian Norman Cohn has shown, European civilization has embraced this idea since the beginning. The “fantasy,” writes Cohn, “that there existed somewhere in the midst of the great society, another society, small and clandestine, which not only threatened the existence of the great society, but was also addicted to practices which were felt to be wholly abominable, in the literal sense of anti-human,” has targeted different groups — the Jews, in particular — ever since Christianity conquered Europe. 

...But the idea at the center of the long history of Jewish persecution is a conspiracy theory: that a wicked cabal of international Jews conspires to leech from and destroy mankind. 

...As they were emancipated, Jews loomed as direct competition in economic and political life. As the preeminent historian of anti-Semitism, Robert Wistrich, writes, “Alongside the dominant cultural matrix of late-nineteenth-century nationalism, volkisch racism, and imperialism,” a new “populist social dimension” recast Jews as collaborators with the secular demons of laissez-faire capitalism and liberal democracy. 

Thus, as the center of civilization shifted from Church and King to the nation state, anti-Semitism, at least outwardly, lost its religious focus. Foes of the Jews who aspired to power cast them as diabolical puppeteers who controlled the state; anti-Semites in power libeled them as seditious parasites who undermined it. This was the milieu that produced the foundational document of political conspiracism, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. 

Purporting to be the minutes of an international meeting of evil Jewish elites, “The Protocols” was a detailed outline of how the Jews would enslave and exploit humankind. First circulated in the Russian empire, it was then exported by charlatans and military officers and spread throughout the world. Effectively the first “fake news”, the pamphlet, which Cohn memorably called a “warrant for genocide”, still flourishes today, especially in Arab and Muslim countries. 

While it is a quintessentially modern document, “The Protocols” owes a clear debt to medieval thought. Murder, greed, warmongering, enslavement, false consciousness, opposition to the truth, and betrayal of the good are all explicit in the work. 

...The Nazis furnish the best testament to the lethal power of this sinister little book. Look how indebted to it Joseph Goebbels revealed them to be: 

“Jewry has so deeply infected the Anglo-Saxon states both spiritually and politically that they are no longer have the ability to see or accept the danger. It conceals itself as Bolshevism in the Soviet Union, and plutocratic-capitalism in the Anglo-Saxon states. The Jewish race has always been an expert at mimicry, that is, the systematic ability to fade into its surroundings. We know that from our own past. They put their host peoples to sleep, they drug them, paralyzing their ability to defend themselves against the life-threatening danger from Jewry.” 

...Today’s conspiracist blends the mindset of the medieval magician with the viciousness of the inquisitor. The old fears about crop-fouling and well-poisoning, for example, are now directed at GMOs and fluoride in the water. The idea that doctors and sorcerers were one and the same surfaces in paranoia about AIDS and vaccines. And flat-earthers rehearse astrological debates about the cosmos. 

But the Jews remain a primary target. 

And it’s anti-Semitism’s source in conspiracy theory that renders it so different from non-conspiracist forms of racism, like anti-blackness. 

As with most racism, antiblack bias constructs an underclass to be exploited or avoided. It positions blacks as inferior to whites and charges them with stereotypes that signal weakness: They are libeled as lazy, stupid, lustful, criminal, and animalistic. 

The conspiracy theory of anti-Semitism turns this on its head. The Jew becomes a magical creature: Brilliant, cunning, greedy, stealthy, wealthy, and powerful beyond measure. Anti-Semitism imagines a diabolic overclass to be exposed and resisted. 

...Above all else, anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite. And it’s this that makes it easy to disguise as a politics of liberation, or at least, to embed anti-Semitism quietly in efforts for social justice. 

...It’s critical to note that Americans are not accustomed to recognizing, let alone understanding, a sizable portion of anti-Semitism, because it typically doesn’t resemble antiblackness — the horrific down-punching form of racism that haunts American history and reverberates into the present. 

But this blindness doesn’t just make space for anti-Semites to operate domestically; it occludes our sense of the history of other parts of the world (do you remember the concept of conspiracy theory coming up during your education on the Holocaust? Me neither). 

...In the spring of 2016, the Stanford University Student Senate debated a resolution, undertaken in light of strident activism on campus against Israel, to condemn anti-Semitism, citing conspiracy theories about “the power of Jews as a collective—especially but not exclusively, the myth about… Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.” 

A student senator named Gabriel Knight objected that the resolution would “irresponsibly” stifle what he thought was a “very valid discussion.” He admonished that “Questioning these potential power dynamics… is not anti-Semitism.” 

A week ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a rant of over two hours to assemble Palestinian leaders. He alleged wild conspiracies, raving in what would have been news to Anne Frank that “[The Western powers] wanted to bring Jews here from Europe to maintain European interests in the region. They asked Holland, which had the largest navy in the world, to transfer the Jews.” 

...Neither of these episodes would have been likely if we primarily understood anti-Semitism as a conspiracy theory. If he had recognized anti-Semitism as a paranoid religion that offers vulgar salvation to the oppressed, Gabriel Knight might not have insisted on interrogating the privilege of Jews. If J Street’s leaders [who publicly decried Abbas’ comments] knew the classic tropes of conspiracism, they would have heard in Abbas’ drug-dealing canard and Holocaust denial echoes of something too big to be laid at the feet of an American politician — two thousand European years of fanatical dualism, feudal fatalism, superstition, fear, and cleansing violence. 

Americans are — thankfully — tuned to detect and deplore racism that punches down. But we must broaden our perspective if we want to reverse the progress of anti-Semitism, which punches up toward mass murder and extermination. 

So when the ADL reports that incidents of anti-Semitism rose by 67% in 2017, view it in this light. That’s what it means when white supremacists march and shout, “Jews will not replace us!” This form of hatred thrives in conditions where demagogues undermine the institutions of liberal democracy. 

We live in a time of hateful rhapsody where truth is relative and fear prevails. 

This is a conspiracist moment and it’s bad for the Jews. 

Read John-Paul Pagano’s full piece at the Forward.

[acidwaste]

hey so it seems i’ve forgot to do a l o t of tag memes, and i’m lucky i drafted a big bunch of them! lots of questions overlapped so i did my best to answer in different ways, sorry for the lateness! also @ the people that tagged me here, i wouldn't hesitate to kill for you

@natcaptor / @gayspaced

name: leon or lionel!

nicknames: literally the only nickname I’ve been referred to is “big gay” and like. word!

gender: im pretty sure im a guy, i have been kinda 🤔🤔🤔 abt my gender identity since around november-ish though

star sign: sagittarius!

height: 6’1! i��m told that I’m tall but my uncle is 6’7 so...

time: 3:36pm rn! ive been watching video essays and binging music all afternoon

birthday: december 9th!

favourite bands: animal collective, beach house, camp cope, car seat headrest, death grips, fleet foxes, florence + the machine, gang of youths, glass animals, gorillaz, hop along, iceage, idles, kero kero bonito, mgmt, miike snow, modest mouse, run the jewels, superorganism, the avalanches, the cat empire, the go! team, the mountain goats, the wombats, xiu xiu

favourite solo artists: alex lahey, anderson .paak, ariana grande, billie eilish, bjork, cashmere cat, charli xcx, courtney barnett, cupcakke, d.r.a.m, eric taxxon, frank ocean, gfoty, hatchie, janelle monae, jeff rosenstock, joanna newsom, jorja smith, jpegmafia, kacey musgraves, kali uchis, kendrick lamar, khalid, kimbra, lorde, mac demarco, madeon, mick jenkins, mitski, oneohtrix point never, perfume genius, ravyn lenae, rina sawayama, serpentwithfeet, sophie, st. vincent, sza, vince staples

song stuck in my head: caramelo duro | miguel // kali uchis! its a bop, miguel is one of the few singers that can convincingly make sex jams

last movie i watched: deadpool 2! it was even better than the first, which is a feat in itself ngl

when did i create my blog: december 2016??? i only started using it properly in february last year tho

last thing i googled: “im in my mums car broom broom.” dont @ me

do i have any other blogs: yeah, plenty actually!! i have blogs for aesthetic (@moltenstar), general inspo (@wverns), flight rising (@szarising, kinda inactive?), and overwatch (@blackhardts) tbh the vast majority of my ‘sideblogs’ are just saved urls H

do i get asks: when i say stupid shit like “rung has the ass of a dilf but the dick of a cockroach”

why i chose my url: that one panel where kobd have a vacation at the acid wastes because fuck its finally canon babey!

following: 1,767, which is kinda horrifying!!

followers: 890?? somehow??? thats almost One Whole Thousand and i don't even make content

average hours of sleep: around 6 or 7!! n e v e r more though

lucky number: 43 and 64!!

instruments: i'm too poor to afford music lessons or instruments jsbddsjknfs

what am i wearing: a grey shirt and nothing on my bottom half so my [redacted] is hanging tf out, i should put on some damn clothes

dream job:  oooo uhhh, i’m studying to get an education degree rn because i’d love to teach children (around grade 3-4s preferably because i'm too jittery to handle anyone younger and older kids probs won't listen to me as much as i lack plenty of assertiveness), but!! i’d honestly love to be a musician, one of those underground ones that get lots of critical acclaim

dream trip: one day i wanna gather up some friends and just go on a road trip! idm where we go to, as long as we just have fun and just! adventure!

favourite foods: rare steak, mashed potatoes, eggs, and energy shakes made with like. fruit / cheese / yoghurt / oats / chia seeds ! protein is a large part of my diet

nationality: new zealand, but living in australia

favourite song right now: best part | daniel caesar // h.e.r - gosh i need to re-listen to daniel’s album again, i don’t remember this beautiful song being there and that’s a crime

@damndesi / @novarebel / @luciform-philogynist

APPEARANCE - I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo (but I am getting a tā moko in December, I believe) - I have at least one piercing (planning to get a nose ring, like a bull!) - I have blonde hair - I have brown eyes - I have short hair - My abs are at least somewhat defined (b a r e l y) - I have or had braces

PERSONALITY - I love meeting new people - People tell me I am funny - Helping others with their problems is a big priority of mine - I enjoy physical challenges - I enjoy mental challenges - I am playfully rude to people I know - I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it - There is something I would change about my personality

ABILITY - I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping (barely) - I am a fast runner - I can draw well - I have a good memory - I am good at doing math in my head - I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - I have beaten at least 2 people arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch - I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES - I enjoy sports - I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - I’m in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in the past week - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in the past month - I enjoy writing - Fandoms are my #1 priority - I do some form of Martial arts

EXPERIENCES - I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol (tastes like shit) - I have scored a winning point in a sport - I have watched an entire TV series in one sitting - I have been at an overnight event - I have been in a taxi - I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day - I have visited another country - I have been to one of my favorite bands concerts

MY LIFE - I have one person that I consider to be my Best Friend - I live relatively close to my school/work - My parents are still together - I have at least one sibling - I live in the United States - There is snow where I live right now - I have hung out with a friend in the past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone

RELATIONSHIPS - I am in a Relationship - I have a crush on a celebrity - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least 3 relationships - I have never been in a Relationship - I have admitted my feelings to a crush - I get crushes easily - I have had a crush for over a year - I have been in a relationship for over a year - I have had feelings for a friend

RANDOM - I have break-danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name that is hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair - I’m listening to a song on repeat right now - I have punched someone in the past week - I know someone who has gone to jail - I have broken a bone (do fractures count?) - I have eaten a waffle today - I know what I want to do in life - I speak at least two languages (not fluently) - I have made a new friend in the past year

@smstransformers

age: 16

birthplace: auckland, nz

current time: 4:19 pm rn!!!

drink you last had: i just skulled half a liter of water whoops

favourite song: jesus etc. | wilco if we're talking abt an all-time favourite

grossest memory: accidentally swallowing a bee when i was seven years old (somehow nothing bad happened?)

horror, yes or no: not unless it’s an incredibly tame horror t b h, my threshold for scariness is very low

in love: i believe so!

jealous of people: lots of times, over really dumb things

love by first sight or should I walk by again: i believe that infatuation can exist at first sight but true love not so much. wish that could happen tho :C

middle name: shane!

siblings: my sister is eight years old, and my brother is seven!

one wish: EZ, make my anxiety disappear, i’d have a much more productive life

song i last sang: jupiter | haiku hands

time i woke up: 7:13, woke up immediately because i usually like to wake at 6:30

underwear colour: blue + purble

vacation destination: auckland / kingston / sydney!

worst habit: not remembering to make my goddamn bed, it looks like garbage

favourite food: mashed potatoes….

zodiac sign: sagittarius !!!

@alyonian

relationship status:

at the moment i’m single! and while being in a relationship sounds brilliant, the last two relationships i was involved in? didn’t work out to say the least, lucky i’m still young

favourite colour:

it’s been emerald green for the longest time but orange seems to be dethroning it at a steady pace

lipstick or chapstick:

i haven’t used chapstick since i was six but i probably should use it again, water is my substitute rn fdghdgh - and i haven’t ever used lipstick in any capacity? so i’d have to go with the former

last song i listened to:

the space traveller’s lullaby | kamasi washington - i’m trying to get through his second album rn (i left off on the second disk yesterday) and while everything he makes is undeniably amazing, it’s? a three hour album? i don’t have the attention span for his spiritual jazz, as great as it is

last movie:

monsters inc is playing on the television right now, i’ll go with that! the animation aged kinda badly but it’s still such a fun movie! sidenote: james p. sullivan? a childhood crush, so this gives me memories

top 3 tv shows/podcasts/comics:

i rarely, if ever, venture into these forms of media but! if i had to answer, i’d say;

unbreakable kimmy schmidt / parks & recreation / luke cage

taz / mbmbam (i havent like. watched a full episode of either but they seem cool,)

tf idw / …………. yeah that’s it, i’ve never read anything else. probably should!

additional favs:

my friends, writing (in theory), listening to video essays, learning music theory + instruments and understanding audio production software

top 3 bands / artists:

HHH okay if i had to limit my choices to just three artists, uh. lorde, the mountain goats, and sophie. i couldnt even fit janelle in i hate th is

----------------------------------

@alyonian

color(s): light colors are always nice and pleasant, though anything peachy and sandy are the best! orange (specially pastel orange) is like. the best thing

last band t-shirt i bought: usually merchandising is very expensive and i dont have the money to accommodate that, but like. i do recall having a wiggles shirt when i was five. i wore it all the time, shjdjgsksd im sure that counts

last band i saw live: i almost went to splendor in the grass last year with family, which wasn't only cool since i’ve never been out of the state since i immigrated - the festival was in queensland, which is around a two hour flight from victoria - but the lineup was pretty fuckin lit too! the xx, haim, peking duk, tash sultana, future islands, vallis alps, a.b original,, i was p excited! unfortunately my uncle fell ill and so they had to give the tickets to extended family :( otherwise, i haven't been to a single concert in my life

last song i listened to: street fighter mas | kamasi washington - up to this song on the album and i really fuckin dig this! also the video is hypnotizing

last movie i watched: monsters inc is about to finish and up next is monsters university! which like…. honestly, this is an extremely unpopular opinion but, i like it just as much as the original? my opinion might be skewed because i’m a monster [hugger], but i like everything abt the movie! except for the finale of the scare games and the last five minutes of the movie, both were just. dreadful.

last three tv shows i watched: if aggretsuko counts that’s the last series i watched of my own volition, which is a miracle in itself considering that’s legit only the second anime i’ve watched to completion (the first being shirokuma cafe, which i probably need to re-watch). otherwise, the last two shows i had beared witness to were thirteen reasons why and queer eye bc my cousin put them on! that first show i could completely do without but queer eye is iconique

last 3 characters i identified with: grimlock (legit. all of them), urdnot grunt (mass effect) and vector the crocodile (sth), i’m not sure what this says about me other than Big

book(s) i’m currently reading: i’m reading ‘maus’ by art spiegelman at the moment, for the third time i believe? i believe my classmates are supposed to be writing an essay on this next term and shit, this novel is heartbreaking, i haven't been this emotional when reading a book than… ever, really. it’s a recommendation of the highest caliber

@victorion

name: leon / lionel, i picked up the second name because i was in a server with an admin that was also a Leon™

nickname: besides ‘Big Gay’ i also have the nickname ‘lemon lion’ which is! nice!!

zodiac sign: archer man

height: Tall™

language(s) spoken: english / some maori + italian

fav fruit: watermelons (only when in season)

fav scent: the smell of a freezer tbh? it just smells Nice i don’t know how to properly explain it

fav season: spring! the breezes are welcoming without being overbearingly freezing

fav color: ornge,,,,

fav animal: SHARKS + CROCS + FERRETS

coffee, tea or hot chocolate: tea! with some milk tho

average hrs of sleep: too little

fav fictional character: One character?????? uhhhhhhh……. like. biggest cc right now is either idw skids or oz from monster prom

no. of blankets you sleep with: depending on my mood but i’d say the average is like, 3??

fav songs: i quickly whipped up some songs i listen to

fav artists: i came to the realization that i like acts that are considered ‘bad’ like maroon 5/drake/lil yachty etc in specific doses… i wouldn't call them good yet, but! i have no beef and thats good

fav books: remember ‘where the wild things are’??? that shit was like. literal childhood, man.. :happytears: i really need to look for a copy again

@thonany-klieme

name: leon / lionel, interchangeable really

gender: male, im probs an nb guy

star sign: sagittarius!

height: 6’1

sexuality: gay??? im not sure, im mostly attracted to other guys but i have had very brief crushes on girls + nb people? sexuality’s confusing so im gonna just latch to the gaybel (gay label) for now

lock screen image: its the album cover of 1992 deluxe by princess nokia, tho it was “T Hanos” a few days ago since i change it often - my home screen is venom but his torso says ‘fuck machine’

ever had a crush on a teacher: no??

where do you see yourself in ten years: ideally i’m teaching kids math n english, realistically i’m probably going down with the political climate

if you could go anywhere, where would you go: new zealand!! or the netherlands

what was your favorite halloween costume: halloween is not big at all where i live, the only time i tried trick or treating was when i was like 7?? i threw a bedsheet on myself and pretended to be a ghost, though since there were no eyeholes + the sheet was blue, it looked more like i was just a moving lump

last kiss: never had one

have you ever been to las vegas: nah and i dont plan to?? how do you handle regular days of 40C wtf

favorite pair of shoes: i have this pair of jandals that ive worn for a fair bit longer than my other pair of shoes, tho i only wear them in summer + very warm nights

favorite book: ngl its. ‘the very hungry caterpillar’ by eric carle. i just, love it alot and i cant explain w h y

[andrewuttaro]

30 Years on: What is America?

I am not of the belief patriotism is a disappearing attribute in this country. I think those who say such a thing tend to struggle with the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I digress, I already wrote that article. I’ll let you do your own research on that. To the degree patriotism is in flux at the moment regardless of anyone’s relative love for America I think it’s because we are at something of a national crossroads.

We’re collectively looking critically at our own history again for the first time in a long time. In the aftermath of a global pandemic the craving for normalcy belies an unsettling question about what that normalcy actually is and if its worth going back to: What is America? No really, what is the lived vision of America in 2021 CE? To the extent you read overzealous nuts on social media drooling over the prospect of Civil War or national partition there is in fact some hard soul searching about the what of America that has potential to lead to real political sectarianism.

I’ll check my privilege at the door and say yes: I, as a straight, white male, has never had a lot to lose in any past incarnation of the American identity. Part of the struggle here is a truly inclusive answer to Who is America? I write this under the assumption literally anyone can be American, and we should build systems that reflect that. Nonetheless, we do have to look to the past for fear of repeating it.

What is America? Well it’s a country for one: more than two hundred years old with a congressional democratic republic form of government. It’s had 46 Presidents and counting. It is composed of 50 States for now. America was founded on a couple core principles it defined around “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Anyone who seriously studies American History will tell you the promises of America’s founding documents were not all fulfilled in the beginning. America’s domestic history is defined by Civil Rights movements, reactions against said movements and a Civil War largely about who would receive the full promise of what America is. Indeed Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President who led America through that Civil conflict, spoke of this nation as the “American Experiment” that would not perish from the earth as long as the Union won. The Gettysburg Address Lincoln delivered about this vision of America was delivered on a battlefield where that nation was invaded by what can properly be called a different imagining of what the U.S. should be. Those invaders were former countryman, looking to make a different formulation of the experiment. America is an experiment, a work in progress, a project.

Nation-States as projects is not a new concept. Even before the United States of America’s War of Independence new nation-states were being founded across the world out of the milieu of Enlightenment Philosophy meeting political realities. In many places the nation-state was a more democratic, self-determining incarnation of what kingdoms and empires had been for millennia prior: the collective force of a like-minded ethnic, tribal, or familial group or otherwise aligned interested parties. The innovation of the American experiment, among other things, was perhaps that it was a nation-state for everyone seeking liberty and personal autonomy. Even though the founders envisioned the enfranchisement of a very specific kind of citizen, this American nation-state had potential from the beginning to be something that had never been attempted before.

Fast forward 128 years on from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The U.S. has not only survived its Civil War, but it has also exploded onto the global stage after two world wars catapulted it to an international superpower. Still believing itself to be the project of liberty and self-determination America had stood opposed to a distinctly oppressive superpower in the Soviet Union and won. In the process the American experiment had been exported anywhere the Soviets couldn’t stop it and now the whole world was familiar with its tenets if not copying its institutions. A Cold War that held all of humanity in suspense at the precipice of nuclear annihilation has yielded to a new reality where America found itself the dominant political force in the world unopposed. 1991, thirty years ago now, was a rare inflection point in history where suddenly massive forces of power were upended at once and there was no clear guiding philosophy for the global political order going forward… except the United States of America. What would America be now? The Post-Cold War reality was ours to lose.

Canada, America’s most intimate international partner and closest neighbor, similarly finds itself at a philosophical turning point. The Canadian author and commentator Will Ferguson points to three core guiding themes, however misled they were, for the Canadian project upon its modern founding in 1867: 1. Keep the Americans out, 2. Keep the French in, 3. Somehow make the indigenous disappear. In Canada’s 150-year history these three ideas color its every decision and define its character. All of these founding directives are now either reversed because they were outright morally wrong (See number 3) or have been killed by a thousand cuts. The nation-state to America’s north is also set to reexamine what it’s all about. In that reexamination of national identity there is great opportunity and great danger. As if an international support group, Canada’s stereotypical niceness reaches out to tell us, we’re not alone in this self-discovery process.

The answer to the Post-Cold War world for the American Experiment in 1991 was doubling down on Americana and exporting our cultural and economic mores around the world. Though this process had already begun in earnest after World War Two, now the whole world was its oyster. From aggressive, no-prisoners capitalism to unapologetic, imperial democracy, you can now find few places on the planet that are not familiar with some facet of the United States’ self-perception. America globalized who it was and not everyone liked it. Indeed many Americans began to increasingly look in the mirror this cultural hegemony provided with a critical eye. Then September 11th happened.

After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 the United States cast its enemies in an axis of evil dualism in the War on Terror that provided an endless horizon of conflict for a military apparatus unseen in human history. The polar opposite, the truly evil enemy the Fall of the Soviet Union deprived America of, would now be replaced with a complex networks of dictators and non-state entities who recorded death threats in caves. While America doesn’t exist today like a traditional empire, its reach is unparalleled, and it can strike almost anywhere on earth in a matter of minutes. With no sufficient counterbalance it would seem its military industrial complex doesn’t know what to do with itself. That menacing, widespread inhuman enemy doesn’t actually exist much in the real world if it even did during the many proxy conflicts of the Cold War decades.

Domestically the thirty years of the Post-Cold War American Experiment has seen the two branches of our government that were supposed to be lesser to the legislative, balloon in importance. In a nation where every philosophical difference is magnified into a culture war the ultimate arbiter of those borderline violent disputes is a Court system that is supposed to be an afterthought and a Presidency that has become outright imperial in spite of the founders explicit anti-monarchical sentiments. When Supreme Court justices die or retire it really seems to be on par with a Pope’s death for political partisans stateside. All good and evil in the land of liberty seems to run through a council of black-robed appointees. All 5 Presidents of Post-Cold War America were cast as lightning rods for their bases and chastised by their opposition with every scandal that would stick (to varying degrees of success). The fourth of such Presidents, Donald Trump, openly rejected the idea of America as a pluralistic nation-state with any international responsibility at all to the contrary of the image that defines Post-Cold War America, in favor of a Pre-World War II image of an isolationist, explicitly white Christian nation. Yes, the current identity crisis played out in sharp contrast in the 2016 election cycle. Many Americans consider that election the perfect storm of two intractably terrible major party choices.

Perhaps we need to face the fact we did it to ourselves. We elect no-compromise fighters whenever we vote only to be shocked when Congress turns into a toxic mess that gets nothing done. It’s always easy to criticize a one-term President but the re-evaluation of what the American experiment will be is not limited to those of a more right-wing conservative bent. The left wing in this country increasingly discusses myriad reforms to everything from our election and representation systems to our healthcare and welfare systems. No matter what your future vision of America is you probably agree, perhaps for vastly different reasons than your neighbor, that America is not the somehow uniquely exceptional nation-state it’s insisted it is, not anymore at least. The Post-Cold War era saw the concept of “American Exceptionalism” become a punchline for Americans of both and every political affiliation. For numerous reasons America’s international and domestic vitality has diminished.

The current President, historically more of a traditionally moderate, establishment democrat, has even engaged in this revisionism aggressively seeking to revive Americans faith in their very form of government with stimulus, infrastructure and voting reform in the most evenly split congress in decades. More progressive types of the left-wing beckon in every election cycle now just as the former President refuses to go away, trying to weaponize the grievance of his increasingly right-wing base in the reimagining of the American experiment he set forth as a more authoritarian leader. We have to make an honest, good faith accounting of this effort toward a new definition of ourselves if any shared consensus as a nation will ever be possible again. There is of course great danger in redefining the purpose of a national project.

However America redefines herself going forward, finding these new definitions is not an optional project. With the U.S. shaken down from its international pedestal by trade war, an ascendant China, and a stubbornly plutocratic Russia, even America’s closest allies are reconsidering how they will persist with an unstable American self-image still able to exert its hard power anywhere on earth. As some Americans pursue a more equitable society at home for historical outgroups still struggling with society’s aged mores, those efforts have been met with open racism and a kind of selfish nationalism that has not been seen this ferociously in three generations. Unless a new lasting, inclusive, American self-image is agreed upon we may be at only the beginning of a long period of internal strife and discord. Increasing numbers of ideologs of both left wing and right-wing persuasions fantasize about cutting off whole sections of the nation whom they rarely agree with. American Statehouses are dominated by right-wing majorities more often than not who have actually initiated voter suppression efforts which positions America in a dangerous place for the next close enough national election. This is not to mention the way gerrymandering steals the power of congressional representation from the very people it was supposed to empower. This whole discussion doesn’t even touch on the increasing threat of environmental catastrophe rarely addressed in the halls of power.

The current American Identity Crisis leaves many issues unaddressed as a matter of fact. An opioid epidemic that is erasing broad swaths of the population, a wealth gap unseen since the gilded age, a skyrocketing suicide rate, a gun violence epidemic, natural resource exhaustion unrelated to climate change, police violence, the fourth rebirth of white supremacist organizations, DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, the Student Debt Crisis, an increasingly intractable housing market putting home ownership out of reach for many young Americans, and numerous other problems sit on the backburner without any signs of meaningful progress. On some level it seems we’ve all given up the project of governing for earning the most points in culture wars that now express themselves on as big a scale as a national election and all the way down to dinner tables and date nights.

What is American? How might we be optimistic about such a rapidly changing country on this Independence Day thirty years on from the end of the Cold War? Among people my age it would seem pessimism if not an outright nihilism about these sorts of things is the common response where activism seems to only make minor gains. Among the general population still rebounding from the COVID19 pandemic it would seem a certain empathy fatigue has set in. Where meaningful answers to these big, generational national identity questions are being formulated it is yet to be seen if a new American consensus can be found.

Perhaps our friend Canada would tell us: these days the most patriotic thing you can do is push for your country to do better. Reckoning with the past and present treatment of minorities and atrocities abroad is not optional if we are to have an honest, effective, united future. For now, if nothing else can move us to truly feel proud of our nation, then maybe this independence day we can recognize our internal interdependence on each other, however different we maybe. If anything the most patriotic way we can be this holiday and every day going forward as Americans is honest and patient about who we were, what we are and what we could possibly be if we commit ourselves to progress once again.

[smokeybrand]

Fly By Night

Black people don't care about Superman but making him Black in the next series of films, isn't going to solve that the problem. It's his upbringing, the cultural touchstones which define him. Clark Kent is intrinsically White. He looks White, definitely, but he was raised in Kansas, too. That's a Heartland State, places notorious for their aggressive intolerance and laughably disproportionate ethnic breakdown. Eighty-four percent of the people who live there are White and, while that's a stark cry from, say, Idaho's Ninety percent, only five percent of the populace is Black. How the f*ck can Clark BE full-on Black; ethnically, mentally, and culturally, when he's surrounded by so much White?

The short answer is that he can't. He doesn't have those values or experiences. How can he? He'd be part of five percent in two million. What is that? One hundred thousand, spread out across an entire state? I mean, at that point, he's more Kansas than he is Black so what does "fighting for truth, justice, in the American way" mean to someone from Kansas? A State as Red as a baboon's ass? A State where Trump won fifty-seven percent of the vote in both 2016 and 2020? A State that seems to support the same people that refuse to accept Joe Biden won that race, even after several recounts on their terms, several court cases lost to their judges, and a whole ass attempt to overthrow the government because they didn't like all those L's piling up? Never mind the question of raising a demigod with those incredibly problematic "values", how can a Black person come up in that level of racial animosity, cultural alienation, and abject disdain based solely on how he looks, possibly be all of America's Superman?

At the end of the day, JJabarams wanting to make Clark Black in this next run of films, is just a tone deaf, performative, dog whistle for all the little Blue Checkmark, fake woke, twatter asshole to fellate themselves over. I don't know a single Black person who is gassed that Clark will look like us. Dude basically represents everything wrong with America, to us. Clark is an out-of-touch White guy, born with unheard of power he didn't earn, imbued with a f*cked up savior complex, raised on a steady supply of zealous Patriotic ideals which borders on straight up Nationalism, in the cultural vacuum of Smallville, Kansas. Turning him Black without fixing that origin is tantamount to throwing Blackface on some White actor to play T'Challa instead of casting Chadwick Boseman. Imagine how THAT should would have gone over with the Blacks. Exactly.

You can't separate Clark from his cultural identity as the Whitest motherf*cker not from this Earth. You can't. It literally defines his entire worldview. Clark's Whiteness is intrinsic to who he is as a person. However, there are alternatives to that which ring truer to a Black Superman, to the Black experience, one of which has a dope ass backstory. Val-Zod, son of THAT Zod, took up the mantle of Superman in nu52 Earth-2. That version of the character could work because his race is intrinsic to his character on both sides; The Kryptonian and the Earthling. He is vague enough of a character to play around with content wise but recognizable enough for literally everyone to not lose their sh*t over Blackfacing Clark. Another lesser known option, the one i would personally pass on, is Kalel of Earth-23. He's a blank slate because no one remembers anything about the dude. Calvin Ellis' last appearance was in 2009 so, you know, have at it, i guess? Both of these options are much better than forcing a White Kent into a Black Peg.

I'm not usually one to be so uppity about bent characters, be they gender or race. They're just another take on an established fandom and i think that's great, as long as that alteration is respected and adapted into the character properly. Superficial sh*t like turning all of the ginger characters into Black people, just because they're going to be onscreen in some form or another, is f*cking ridiculous to me. Sometimes it doesn't work out all that well, like Iris West in the DCEU. Kiersey Clemons had, like, a minute of screentime in The Snyder Cut so why the f*ck was she even in there? I get you need to establish her as part of The Flash's lore but wait for his actual film if that's all we're going to see of her. Other times, it works very well, like with Mary-Jane and Zendaya. That case was a little more tricky as, at the time Homecoming was in development, Marvel didn't have the rights to the Mary-Jane character so they had no choice but to create Michelle. She's a brand new character who fills the role of MJ but in a completely unique, standalone, fashion. I adore that chick. She and Pete have this adorkable energy together, chemistry attributed to Zendaya and Holland. Ms. Coleman really sells MJ as a proper “MJ” and that's because her MJ is her own “MJ”. And, while we're on the topic of Spider-Man, Miles Morales is exactly how you racebend an established character with any hope of success.

Mile Morales is the blue print you need to follow in order to make your ridiculous reach at altering such an established persona, in such a drastic way. Miles is, from top to bottom, Black as f*ck. Every ounce of that character resonates with the culture. Early on in hi genesis, it was a little iffy but, as the character has grown, his swagger and identity has become much clearer. It's more defined and rings truer to what we, as Black people, see in the world. Hell, his movie, Into the Spider-Verse, is arguably the best Spider-Flick ever made and it is properly Black as f*ck. From the swagger, the cultural language, the music, the animation style, the tagging; All of it is too Black for words and the country ate that sh*t up. I saw SO much of US in that film and it really lent itself to giving comic Miles the boost necessary to really come into his own. Not to slight his Puerto Rican heritage at all, you get a bit of that, too, but, for all intents and purposes, society at large sees Miles as Black and Spider-Verse leans into that, heavy. Because Miles has no choice but to so as well. Pete had a lot more going for him growing up in Queens thank Clark's halcyon experience in f*cking Kansas, so he was already accepted in the community. You don't do the numbers Spider-Flicks consistently do at the box office without them Black dollars, but Miles was whole ass embraced by the culture. No one is mad at kid now that he is finally himself in the suit. He's not a legacy, he is a Spider-Man. That's how you do it. That's how you make racebending such an intrinsic character to the American zeitgeist, work. You don't dress Michael B. Jordan up as Clark and tell me he's my Superman. That's a lie and everyone is going to see through it. Everyone already has. You don't need x-ray vision for that.

[himalayaz]

Title: I hope the fact that I voted makes this an easier read 😬 

By: Miliaku Nwabueze

 Part One: Examine the Self

I was appalled at the cognitive dissonance in movement thinkers this summer. I witnessed “radical” organizers, activists, and thought leaders encourage members of the rebellion to channel their rage and frustration with state sanctioned violence into voting. Simply and unilaterally, “Vote!”, was the universally agreed upon call to action. Folks rarely identified whom to vote for or on what which ironically symbolizes the meaningless nature of their compulsing. The investment into state infrastructure puzzled me. 

Organizations and individuals that do land acknowledgements before meetings know whose territory they’re on, but insist on realizing freedom through participating in state systems of governance that further solidify the state’s occupation. I’m not feeling that folks can legitimately have a decolonial or anti-coloniality orientation while they are actively advocating for voting and other methods of change-making that involve the state over autonomous, localized, and collective organization of meeting human needs: the commons. 

The work of feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway, Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Hartsock and others teach us that we know our world from what identity-as-spaces we occupy. Marginalized people have insight to build consciousness about their worlds and their oppressor’s because their positionality within them is defined in relationship to the violences of structural hegemony (i.e. woman to man, colonized to colonizer/settler, undocumented to citizen, black to white, etc.). Mahmoud Keshavarz builds on this theory by asserting “One’s class gender and/or ethnicity shape [their] being, interactions and inhabitations in the world...” 

Aspiring revolutionaries “often present themselves as being critical, political and radical yet, in practice, and by what they produce, remain innocent, neutral or, merely well-intentioned.” People trying to design existences different from our status quo consistently give way to reform. I feel this is because we have not collectively nor individually interrogated our cognitive dissonance. We have not killed the cops, the state, the capitalist, the oppressor, the aspiring winner in our own heads. We have treated the means of allowing for the emergence of generative deviations from our trajectory of global, ecological collapse as somehow separate from the ends. Kehavarz continues: “...designers cannot simply engage in such complicated issues without a complex political understanding of their own position in terms of gender, class and ethnicity as well as how the contemporary orders of capital and the bodies serving those orders are organised by dispersed material articulations such as passports, camps, and borders, all configured by design.” Our failures to develop self awarness are the precursors to reform.

Part Two: “We Want to Do More Than Survive”: Self Examination

As Imani Scott-Blackwell penned so eloquently in a Facebook status about the 2020 Presidential election:

“While y’all mourn the results, I’ll continue grieving the fact that rather than using our resources, time, and talents to fortify local mutual aid networks that can sustain and protect us regardless of who the elected official are, we instead put that into elections, pamphlets, yard signs, social media tech company coffers, Halloween candy and snacks for the sake of “voter outreach”.

……

I’m really just confused like what are we actually doing.....what is it we actually want? Because impact > intent and we seem collectively committed to the wrong solutions and though I do see people that are critical of electoral politics few seem ready to talk about what we really need to do here.....divest from electoral politics all together.”

The amount of people encouraging other people to vote this year was historic. In my personal experiences, strangers with my private information texted and called me, knocked on my door, and hand wrote me letters urging me to engage in the spectacle of emergency voting. In meetings with grassroots and change-oriented organizations, people are doing land acknowledgments, and discussing indigenous sovereignty. These same meetings that begin with land acknowledgement often ended in encouraging attendees to vote. 

But, aren’t the state and its power inherently colonial? So how does a strategy that envisions freedom and/or sovereignty for black, incarcerated, indigenous, and/or undocumented people include actions that codify state hegemony?

The first type of cognitive dissonance that “hit me in the head” was W.E.B DuBois’ Double consciousness in high school; in an English class with the only black teacher. It applied so directly to my experiences as a working class black girl packaged and scholar-shipped into a wealthy, predominantly white private school with a college acceptance rate of 100%. I took so much pride in this despite constantly having to be “twice as good to get half as much”. I spent so much time explaining I tested into Detroit Country Day, that I wasn’t there because I was good at sports. I spent so much time laughing on the outside while crying on the inside at insensitive jokes and comments. I spent so much time embarrassed by being dropped off in my father’s rumbling work van. Upon understanding W.E.B DuBois’ theory I realized all that time was wasted. I made an instantaneous shift in my consciousness. Learning about my positionality disrupted how I speculated my future.

In becoming aware of my own cognitive dissonance I was able to immediately re-imagine myself off of the trajectory of becoming a black femme agent of white supremacy. I leaned into my queerness, I continued to wear my hair as it grew out of my head, I defended myself and others against racism, and became increasingly disinterested with seeking the approval of my white classmates. One might have seen a Condeleeza Rice as my future, but I became an unemployed, overworked, weed-smoking, mushroom tripping (okay, only like twice), hippie dippie black abolitionist, gay ass radical. I changed my belief system and praxis to incorporate what I was learning about myself in relationship to the structures that dominate our lives, and the trajectory of my life was disrupted.

Part Three: The Theory 

Again, can we who believe in freedom from US hegemony have a decolonial orientation while encouraging engagement in state infrastructures? Is channeling mass frustration with state violence into voting a decolonial framework? I ask, declaratively. Decolonization is a speculative disruption and a deviation from the trajectory laid out before us, requiring the abolition of the state. I believe this is an issue with speculative design - it’s failure to disrupt our thinking and how we might imagine life after now.

Professor Jamer Hunt at The New School once summarized a point by Arjun Appadurai from his piece “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy”: “We lean on sameness, really, to understand if we’re doing things right.” We do this in the most mundane of ways. If you got the same answer as me then I must have gotten it right! Right?... In her iconic work, “The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle The Master’s House,” Audre Lorde teaches us difference is a practice of discovery. However, we respond to differences -not the status quo as difference within marginal contexts- as if it's a disruption. As a deviation in need of discipline. We then, sometimes, rely on our conceptions of hierarchy to determine “rightness”: young over old, literally any racial-ethnic identity over black, teacher over student, man over woman, etc.

Sameness can build a nation. Appadurai asserts a nation is a set of communities based on shared cultural values. In the US that culture is whiteness. That is the “nation” in the “nation-state” on Turtle Island. The dash is the “articulatory” piece. “Nation” and “state” were intentionally intertwined and can be separated and destroyed. 

The job of the “state” in “nation-state” is to spread itself. Colonization (direct and indirect) is what makes/made this possible; coloniality is what makes it enduring. After all, a state is simply a condition or what “is”, and white supremacy is what articulates and unifies this being. Therefore, one can only conclude that on turtle island, the “United” “States” is the product of spreading white supremacy in all shapes and fashions, enduringly. This has shaped identity, positionalities, and mobilities and thus speculative design(ers). Statist thinking is thwarting possibility and distorting it into limited likelihoods. This is a trap door to reform. This is where decolonization, returning land to the not only indigenous people, but indengous life--the commons--is transformed into a metaphor to live in infinite land acknowledgements and celebratory, meaningless court decisions. The endurance of the state’s illusory nature forces us to endure, feeling as though nothing will change nor end. Right? Nope, that’s not the answer I got.

In Design Politics: An Inquiry Into Passports, Camps and Borders the most fire book on design right now, Mahmoud Keshavarz asserts the non enduring nature of statehood: “The State is designed”. He says, “Refugee, settlers, displacement,” and I would add colonization and racism etc. is realized via statehood. Statehood will not be the liberating variable in these narratives as these positions are diametrically opposed to the ever demonstrating settler, colonial, capitalist, and violent interests of the nation-state.

Advocating for divestment from state infrastructures is unfamiliar, different, and possibly unsettling. Unsettling is our future state if there’s anything real behind your land acknowledgements. To summarize Yang and Tuck in Decolonization is Not a Metaphor: “What is unsettling about decolonization” is the literal unsettling. To “Unsettle” is to disrupt. As designers think about futures we must be aware of our standpoint, reorient, and think about what decolonization, anti-racism, undocumentedness, anti-capitalism, etc. wants - designing from this standpoint is where speculative disruption is born.

Part Four: Speculative Disruption

Speculative Disruption begins where reform ends. Speculation, unimaginatively, has become a practice of prediction. A space we’ve let our data-driven culture of determining likelihoods colonize (Lol, jk.) imagination in service of accuracy. We let our obsession with predicting outcomes, performing certainty, and being “right” be conflated with and distort possibility. 

There’s a saying circulating around radical communities: “abandon the capitalist, king, and the economy to govern an empty house”. Designers can materialize the future right now. “...Zoom out and start with new realities (ways of organizing everyday life through alternative beliefs, values, priorities, and ideology) then develop scenarios and possibly personas to bring it to life (173)”

This is deeper than designing what we “want”. Folks love to metaphorize colonization in the following phrases: “decolonizing our desires” or “decolonize our minds” though I think they mean our thoughts have been co-opted by the enduring nature of the nation-state and reinforcing of sameness and correctness. What we want is influenced by what we want to destroy as evidenced by the cognitive dissonance rampant through change making institutions. “VOTE!” But “Police are bad”, “So we have to vote for the people who vow to hire them!” [I’m not making this up]. Or immigrants or black people who defend their piece of the settler pie while feeling “it’s a shame what happened to the ‘natives’”.

My friend Sasha once said we need to organize to make things possible and impossible. This is the speculative and disruptive process of designing the unfamiliar -- the being that does not replace what we have and is not an evolution of the existing. The word unfamiliar comes from the Latin and Old English words for servant and family, respectively. Humans need to prepare for freer worlds that don’t currently serve our present ways of thinking and that are non-proximal to us. The designs for free worlds will come from the wants of the subaltern who have consciously refused to endure. We need to design the abolitionist mechanisms that will make a commons possible while making the empire impossible. 

Speculative disruption speculates the unsettling, the deviation from where we are headed and the orientation towards the directions in which we hope to journey. I ask declaratively: How can we learn to be okay with what is not familiar to us and how can we allow that which does not serve the current and dominant trajectory to inform what we create? How can we engage in a radically feminist practice of embracing uncertainty by acting without fear of consequences we are also uncertain of? 

[rockenlarocas-blog]

Rock Culture in Mexico – Part II: La Onda Chicana

The literal translation for the phrase “La Onda” is “the wave”, synonymous with the word “groovy”, and the movement of La Onda began as a small movement in the mid 1960’s for the middle-class, identifying as a literature genre defined as “literature written by youth and for youth”[1], complimented with new hairstyles and a change of clothing styles, a new jargon, and of course the new rock sound.

The term itself, “La Onda”, had come to stand for cultural revolution, rebellion against a patriarchal authority and a one-party state, self-discovery and unity. Then, to the Mexican youth, despite it’s historical and nationalist connotations within the United States, “Chicano” was associated more with a loss of identity; a chicano was someone “outside of Mexican culture and society.

During the La Onda Chicana movement, in amongst protest and political unrest, the youth of Mexico looked to appropriate the fashion styles of foreign hippies; although what made this complicated was that foreign hippies were also appropriating Mexican indigenous styles, so really, Mexicans were re-appropriating their own culture’s previous style.

In musical terms, native rock music had began to resonate all over the country, and hundreds of thousands of youth discovered a sense of empowerment through La Onda Chicana’s music and the discourse of a reinvented sense of community[2]. At the heart of the movement were the new bands that were emerging, who were gaining acclaim from original pieces of music. As groups like La Revolucion de Emiliano Zapata, Bandido and Nuevo Mexico began to emerge, bands no longer felt like they were under the thumb of a recording industry that had previously intervened and tailored the music of Mexican bands. The new sound of rock music was a combination of Mexican and foreign rock n roll, and quite often creating imagery of political protest.

[La Revolucion de Emiliano Zapata (pictured) broke sales records with their track “Nasty Sex”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mb0xL2Y2b8]

For such an original new rock movement though, there was one major contradiction to it’s ‘authenticity’; the music of La Onda Chicana was written almost exclusively in English[3]. The English songs symbolised a fusion of cultures, and it’s used worked as a weapon against official nationalism[4]. However there were other contributing factors to the use of English of course, like how America’s influence when it comes to musical trends was much stronger than that of, for example, Argentina, and so bands were aware that performing in English could assist them in reaching a wider audience.

In the end, La Onda Chicana was actually quite a short-lived movement, and in culminated in the form of a two-day rock festival named Avandaro in 1971. Several thousand Mexican youths attended the festival, returning La Onda to a musical demonstration of a political movement fighting for democracy, and instead of violent displays against authority, it taught passive resistance, peace, and unification.

[1] [2] [3] [4] Zolov, E., “La Onda Chicana: Mexico’s Forgotten Rock Counterculture”, Rockin’Las Américas: Rock Music Cultures Across Latin & Latin/o America (2004).

[Photo from sourced from Discogs]