#especially through the lens of current politics and social organizations

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Frederick R. Prete

Published: Apr 18, 2023

In a recent article for FAIR Substack, David Ferrero argued convincingly that school programs designed to view their subject matter through an “ethnic studies”— rather than an “ethnic histories”— lens can be “reductive, tendentious, divisive, and doctrinaire.” He also pointed out that this narrow approach, which includes indiscriminate references to putative ‘racial’ groups (“black”, “Asian”, “white”, etc.), is antithetical to the ideal of bridging our “ethnic and religious differences in the service of forging a shared civic identity.”

While I am in complete agreement with Ferrero, I would go even further. I believe that there is a fundamental conceptual flaw in using current racial categories in any academic analysis. These categories have become so hopelessly ambiguous that they are virtually meaningless, and they now function as terms of convenience, used only when they serve a political agenda. This is true throughout academia, but is most evident in discussions about academic achievement.

In biology, “race” is a taxonomic term, and like all biological terms, it can be ambiguous. Sometimes it’s used as a synonym for subspecies. Most often, however, it refers to a group of organisms that is biologically or geographically distinguishable from other groups within a species but is still able to reproduce with them. 

On the other hand, when referring to humans, most contemporary scientists consider ‘race’ a social construct based on societal definitions without any inherent physical or biological meaning. That point of view is based on the understanding that there is more genetic variability within human racial groups than between them. In other words — to paraphrase the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins — whereas human sex is binary (there are only two), race is a spectrum.

Ironically, despite the fact that most academics consider human racial categories to be socially constructed, they continue to use them enthusiastically as if they represented well-defined, homogeneous groups of people. Think of the controversies over college admissions, disparities in academic achievement, or ethnic studies curricula.

The problems with grouping students in terms of contemporary racial categories are most evident — and most instructive — in how we interpret their academic performance, especially on standardized tests like the ACT. I’ve argued (here, here, and here) that racial categories are virtually useless in explaining student performance differences because the categories are largely arbitrary, often contrived, and always confounded by self-reporting biases and socio-economics. Nonetheless, a race-based narrative continues to dominate our discussions despite the fact that thinking in those terms perpetuates a host of inaccurate, deleterious stereotypes.

The ACT is a standardized test that predicts the likelihood of student success in the first year of college. The overall score is based on the results of four, multiple-choice subject tests, English, math, reading, and science. The number of correct answers for each subject test is converted into a scaled score and averaged. Thirty-six is perfect.

In 2022, approximately 1.35 million students took the ACT. Overall, the average score was 20, about one point lower than the average between 1990 and 2021. In terms of the ACT’s racial categories, the highest 2022 scores were earned by students identifying as Asian (25), White (21), and Two or More Races (20). The next three groups were Hispanic/Latino, Prefer Not to Respond/No Response, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (18). The two lowest-performing groups were American Indians/Alaskan Native, and Black/African-American (16).

This ranking by race has remained virtually unchanged for a decade, and when viewed in terms of these categories, the ranking seems to support the divisive and inaccurate belief that the test is racially discriminatory. However, there are two problems with viewing the scores in this way. First, it’s impossible to know exactly how students sort — or choose not to sort — themselves into racial categories, and there is no way of knowing the ethnicity of those in the Two or More Races (first introduced in 2012), or the Prefer Not to Respond groups.

Second, the categories, themselves, have always been somewhat arbitrary. For instance, in 2012, the ACT separated the so-called, Asian-American/Pacific Islander category into two cohorts that turned out to be completely different in their test performances. In that year, there was a 13% increase in the number of students in the Asian group, and a 12% decrease in the number of Pacific Islanders who met the ACT’s College Readiness Benchmarks compared to 2006. That remarkable divergence has continued. Since 2012, the Asian group’s ACT scores have steadily improved while all other groups have steadily declined. This clearly demonstrates that the original Asian-American/Pacific Islander group was a demographic of convenience with little external validity and which masked dramatic within-group differences. Further, because the two newly created groups are so diverse, it would be virtually impossible to determine precisely why the group performances are so different. Assuredly, the same thing would happen if any of the other racial categories were similarly subdivided.

Then, in 2006, the ACT began analyzing student scores in terms of Postsecondary Educational Aspiration (what students planned to do after graduation). This parameter included seven categories: Vocational-Technical Training, Two-Year College Degree, Bachelor's Degree, Graduate Study, Professional-Level Degree, and two which I won’t consider here, Other and No Response. When the data are considered in terms of these categories rather than race, a very different picture emerges.

In 2006, 2012, and 2022, across all racial groups, ACT scores were 31-51% higher for students aspiring to a professional-level degree compared to students planning on vocational-technical training, and scores were 12-17% higher for those aspiring to a graduate degree compared to a bachelor's degree.

The effects of postgraduate aspirations have been even more dramatic within racial groups every year since 2006. For instance, in 2022, students in every category who aspired to a professional-level degree had ACT scores averaging 47% higher than those planning on vocational-technical training. The largest differences — 53% and 61% — were in the Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and Prefer Not to Respond/No Response groups. The smallest (but still significant) difference — 35% — was in the American Indian/Alaska Native group.

More importantly, in 2022, students in the four (overall) lowest-performing racial groups who aspired to graduate study or a professional-level degree earned scores as much as 39% higher than students in the (overall) highest-performing groups who aspired to vocational-technical training or a two-year college degree. In other words, Black, American Native, Hispanic, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students with high educational aspirations outscored Asian, White, multiracial, and non-identifying students with lower aspirations.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have noticed that aspirations are more important than race in predicting academic performance on the test. I guess that doesn’t fit the popular narrative.

Over the past 15 years, educational aspirations have consistently had a greater impact on ACT performance than self-reported race. This suggests that by doing what we can to elevate student aspirations, irrespective of their race, we will benefit their academic performance. One way to do this is by teaching students that they can and will succeed if they work hard, rather than telling them that they are at the mercy of uncontrollable external circumstances. This will also give the lie to the worn out, race-based tropes about academic performance that are so psychologically damaging to students.

As a Biological Psychologist — and someone who taught standardized test prep for over a decade — I understand that the factors influencing student performance are complex and often the result of long-term trends that vary within and between groups, regardless of how the groups are defined. However, using anachronistic, ambiguous, or contrived racial categories to interpret educational performance is misleading, unhelpful, and divisive.

Racial categories have external validity only to the extent that each represents a meaningfully homogenous and distinct group of people. However, none of these criteria are met by the colloquial categories currently applied to people. Distinguishing students by, for instance, family or socioeconomic demographics, internalized cultural beliefs, personality traits (such as resilience or aspirations), school district, or ZIP code would all be more informative and useful in improving educational policy than the current crude racial categories. Further, to paraphrase Ferrero, refocusing our conversation on aspirations — rather than on our perceived ethnicity — will help us bridge our imagined racial differences, recognize our shared humanity, and encourage us to pursue our goals together.

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@madwriterscorner You might find this interesting.

This demonstrates the problem with univariate takes, like those of Kendi, whose entire academic output sits precariously atop the fallacy of Causal Reductionism and his complete lack of interest in understanding a problem before pretending he does.

[scoutshonor97]

Gender Identity and Diversity

Written for and published originally by The Daily Oklahoman, 2022 

Recently, the topic of gender identity and diversity has received some negative air time. There has been some general disagreement in the public due to inaccurate rhetoric about what gender is, how it functions, and why it is significant. And many people have not received an adequate gender education to dispute false claims, so these inaccurate claims only grow and mutate. Something so personal as gender is rightly bound to be political, but is then impractical to legislate or regulate. And there lies the issue that many people have with gender diversity, it cannot be regulated. So, gender diversity is often rejected. I urge readers that are still unsure about how they feel about gender identity and diversity, or perhaps want to learn more, to read this piece and do some self reflection about how they define their own gender. 

But what really is gender, if it is not sex? Gender is an expression of one’s social, personal, and political identity through their relationships with masculinity and femininity. Gender has also been defined by a leading gender theorist, Judith Butler, as a “stylized repetition of acts.” People are defined by patterns in behavior, habits, and thoughts. Although personal, gender is strictly regulated by law and through the perpetuation of social norms. Think to yourself for a moment, have you ever noticed how at gender reveal parties, the sex of the baby is often symbolically replaced by a color? That is an accessible example of a gender norm: Pink is for girls and blue is for boys. It is my belief as a highly educated and open-minded person, that gender is far more complicated than that. 

Through many pieces of proposed legislation, press releases, and even social media posts, the very idea of gender as personal has been discredited. The idea that your gender is yours, belongs to you, and is a reflection of your self-image is not very popular in dominant American discourse, especially when that means that the possibilities are endless and not generalizable. When something cannot be generalized or defined for the masses in law, it tends to make people uncomfortable and their thoughts flood with big “what ifs'' about gender that often stem from a lens of gender-based crime. However, restricting the human rights of a minority group from a place of misunderstanding, is not a sustainable solution to a problem with diversity or crime. 

On the other hand, allowing people to exist and self-define in creative, non-restrictive ways could lead to a higher rate of community participation and economic development, an increase in the quality of life, specifically for LGBTQ+ people, and a reduced rate of suicidal ideation in the LGBTQ+ community. Furthermore, the current sex-linked, binary system of gender does not account for intersex people, whom are much more common than you think (1 in 2,000 to be exact, which roughly equates to about the same percentage of people with red hair).

Being intersex means that one’s chromosomes and/or sex phenotypes do not reflect either side of the sex binary, neither male (XY) nor female (XX). This group of people often undergo invasive medical procedures as infants to alter their sex organs, and some people live their lives completely unaware of their true sex identity. This is truly an injustice. So, if the gender binary leaves out 1 in 2,000 people, why do we still swear by it? This brings us to the idea of gender as a spectrum. 

The concept that some people do not conform to binary gender at all, often loses momentum in the political arena because it can be seen as a threat to natural order. But, with intersex and even transgender people in mind, we cannot neatly define in law the unlimited ways gender can be expressed, unencumbered by one’s sex identity. If every person has the autonomy to dress themselves and behave in ways that reflect personal values, why do we not allow these same people to use more descriptive words to define their self concept? Why does gender have to be limited to one word or the other (man or woman)? Furthermore, why do we represent every person on earth with divergent sexual or gender identities with one acronym? This creates an “us” against “them” complex which is more divisive than helpful.  

The LGBTQAI+ acronym is mosaic; It represents a span of many identity groups that have vastly different experiences, different identity performances, and different needs. Generalizing such a diverse group is an impossible task that we are reminded of each time a new letter is added. This acronym is made up of all types of people that have different cultural, racial, and sexual identities and abilities. Yet, we still lump them together because they are all similarly “different.” This is something I want you to really think about: What truly separates you from your queer neighbors? My guess is, not much. 

I have dedicated my personal and academic life to the study of gender, so I have given this topic more thought than most. The one thing I wish more people understood about gender identity is how freeing it should feel. When we are granted the agency to self-define, we ought to seize it and maintain full power over our self presentations. People already self define in creative ways such as abbreviating a birth name, like changing Charlette to Charlie. But why do we draw the line there for queer people? 

I changed my name socially about seven years ago, but I still get the question “...but what is your real name?” when I introduce myself. A question like that undermines and polices the authority I have over my own life. Think about it. I am pretty sure I have the capacity to know my name and share it appropriately when asked, just like everyone else. So why question the identity of any other person, unless you do not find them to be personally credible? If you find yourself questioning someone in that manner, ask yourself, “What do I have to believe that they are not credible? 

Perhaps it is because queer people challenge the dominant social structures under which we live, and that can be scary. I am a non-binary person and my gender is untethered from social norms because I exist outside of the binary we are ruled by. To some, it may seem like I am bending the rules of our social contract. In reality, I am using personal agency and power to govern the rules of my own life. Most people would agree that personal power is important. Doesn't sound so bad when it's put like that, does it? 

_____________________________

SOURCES:

 Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893 

 Badgett, M. V. L., Nezhad, S., Waaldijk, K., & Rodgers, Y. van der M. (2014). Linking LGBT Inclusion and Economic Development. In The Relationship between LGBT Inclusion and Economic Development: An Analysis of Emerging Economies (pp. 13–19). The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep35047.6

 Flores, A. R. (2019). INTRODUCTION. In SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE OF LGBT PEOPLE IN 174 COUNTRIES 1981 TO 2017 (pp. 4–7). The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep35024.4

 Cottrell, D. B., Gonzalez, J. D., Atchison, P. T., Evans, S. C., & Stokes, A. (2022). Suicide risk and prevention in LGBTQ+ youth. Nursing, 52(2), 40–45. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nurse.0000803432.31284.34 

 How common is intersex? Intersex Society of North America. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://isna.org/faq/frequency/ 

 What is intersex? Frequently Asked Questions. interACT. (2022). Retrieved from https://interactadvocates.org/faq/#whatis 

[ucflibrary]

November in the United States is Native American Heritage Month, also referred to as American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month. It celebrates the rich history and diversity of America’s native peoples and educates the public about historical and current challenges they face. Native American Heritage Month was first declared by presidential proclamation in 1990 which urged the United States to learn more about their first nations.

 Join the UCF Libraries as we celebrate diverse voices and subjects with these suggestions. Click on the Keep Reading link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the featured Native American Heritage titles suggested by UCF Library employees. These 16 books plus many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 Bird Songs Don't Lie: writings from the rez by Gordon Lee Johnson In this deeply moving collection of short stories and essays, Gordon Lee Johnson (Cupeño/Cahuilla) cements his voice not only as a wry commentator on American Indian reservation life but also as a master of fiction writing. In Johnson's stories, all of which are set on the fictional San Ignacio reservation in Southern California, we meet unforgettable characters like Plato Pena, the Stanford-bound geek who reads Kahlil Gibran during intertribal softball games; hardboiled investigator Roddy Foo; and Etta, whose motto is “early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise,” as they face down circumstances by turns ordinary and devastating. From the noir-tinged mystery of “Unholy Wine” to the gripping intensity of “Tukwut,” Johnson effortlessly switches genre, perspective, and tense, vividly evoking people and places that are fictional but profoundly true to life. Suggested by Megan Haught, Research & Information Services/Teaching & Engagement

 Coming Down from Above: prophecy, resistance, and renewal in Native American religions by Lee Irwin An introduction to an important strand within the rich tapestry of Native religions, this shows the remarkable responsiveness of those beliefs to historical events. It is an unprecedented, encyclopedic sourcebook for anyone interested in the roots of Native theology. From the highly assimilated ideas of the Puget Sound Shakers to such resistance movements as that of the Shawnee Prophet, Irwin tells how the integration of non-Native beliefs with prophetic teachings gave rise to diverse ethnotheologies with unique features. He surveys the beliefs and practices of the nation to which each prophet belonged, then describes his or her life and teachings, the codification of those teachings, and the impact they had on both the community and the history of Native religions. Key hard-to-find primary texts are included in an appendix. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Fools Crow by Thomas E. Mails; assisted by Dallas Chief Eagle Set in Montana shortly after the Civil War, this novel tells of White Man's Dog (later known as Fools Crow so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid), a young Blackfeet Indian on the verge of manhood, and his band, known as the Lone Eaters. The invasion of white society threatens to change their traditional way of life, and they must choose to fight or assimilate. Suggested by Mary Lee Gladding, Circulation

 Four Souls: a novel by Louise Erdrich After taking her mother’s name, Four Souls, for strength, the strange and compelling Fleur Pillager walks from her Ojibwe reservation to the cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. She is seeking restitution from and revenge on the lumber baron who has stripped her tribe’s land. But revenge is never simple, and her intentions are complicated by her dangerous compassion for the man who wronged her. Suggested by Jada Reyes, UCF Libraries Student Ambassador

 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday He was a young American Indian named Abel, and he lived in two worlds. One was that of his father, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, the ecstasy of the drug called peyote. The other was the world of the twentieth century, goading him into a compulsive cycle of sexual exploits, dissipation, and disgust. Home from a foreign war, he was a man being torn apart, a man descending into hell. Suggested by Mary Lee Gladding, Circulation

 Keepers of the Morning Star: an anthology of native women's theater edited by Jaye T. Darby and Stephanie Fitzgerald This is the first major anthology of Native women's contemporary theater bringing together works from established and new playwrights. This collection, representing a rich diversity of Native communities, showcases the exciting range of Native women's theater today from the dynamic fusion of storytelling, ceremony, music and dance to the bold experimentation of poetic stream of consciousness and Native agitprop. Suggested by Rich Gause, Research & Information Services

 Native Southerners: indigenous history from origins to removal by Gregory D. Smithers Long before the indigenous people of southeastern North America first encountered Europeans and Africans, they established communities with clear social and political hierarchies and rich cultural traditions. Award-winning historian Gregory D. Smithers brings this world to life in Native Southerners, a sweeping narrative of American Indian history in the Southeast from the time before European colonialism to the Trail of Tears and beyond. Suggested by Megan Haught, Research & Information Services/Teaching & Engagement

 Nature Poem by Tommy Pico This work follows Teebs―a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet―who can’t bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He’d slap a tree across the face. He’d rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he’d rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he’s adamant―bratty, even―about his distaste for the word “natural,” over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the “natural world,” he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 On the Rez by Ian Frazier This is a sharp, unflinching account of the modern-day American Indian experience, especially that of the Oglala Sioux, who now live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the plains and badlands of the American West. Crazy Horse, perhaps the greatest Indian war leader of the 1800s, and Black Elk, the holy man whose teachings achieved worldwide renown, were Oglala; in these typically perceptive pages, Frazier seeks out their descendants on Pine Ridge―a/k/a "the rez"―which is one of the poorest places in America today. Suggested by Larry Cooperman, Research & Information Services

 Shapes of Native Nonfiction by Elissa Washuta Just as a basket's purpose determines its materials, weave, and shape, so too is the purpose of the essay related to its material, weave, and shape. Editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa Warburton ground this anthology of essays by Native writers in the formal art of basket weaving. Using weaving techniques such as coiling and plaiting as organizing themes, the editors have curated an exciting collection of imaginative, world-making lyric essays by twenty-seven contemporary Native writers from tribal nations across Turtle Island into a well-crafted basket. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 Surviving Genocide: native nations and the United States from the American Revolution to bleeding Kansas by Jeffrey Ostler An authoritative contribution to the history of the United States’ violent path toward building a continental empire, this ambitious and well-researched book deepens our understanding of the seizure of Indigenous lands, including the use of treaties to create the appearance of Native consent to dispossession. Ostler also documents the resilience of Native people, showing how they survived genocide by creating alliances, defending their towns, and rebuilding their communities. Suggested by Megan Haught, Research & Information Services/Teaching & Engagement

 The Man to Send Rain Clouds: contemporary stories by American Indians edited by Kenneth Rosen Over a two-year period, Kenneth Rosen traveled from town to town, pueblo to pueblo, to uncover the stories contained in this volume. All reveal the preoccupations of contemporary American Indians. Not surprisingly, many of the stories are infused with the bitterness of a people and a culture long repressed. Several deal with violence and the effort to escape from the pervasive, and so often destructive, white influence and system. In most, the enduring strength of the Indian past is very much in evidence, evoked as a kind of counterpoint to the repression and aimlessness that have marked, and still mark today, the lives of so many American Indians. Suggested by Rich Gause, Research & Information Services

 The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks. The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands. For now, survival means staying hidden … but what they don’t know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.

Suggested by Mary Lee Gladding, Circulation

 Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War by Daniel J. Sharfstein Recreating the Nez Perce War through the voices of its survivors, Daniel J. Sharfstein’s visionary history of the West casts Howard’s turn away from civil rights alongside the nation’s rejection of racial equality and embrace of empire. The conflict becomes a pivotal struggle over who gets to claim the American dream: a battle of ideas about the meaning of freedom and equality, the mechanics of American power, and the limits of what the government can and should do for its people. The war that Howard and Joseph fought is one that Americans continue to fight today. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Where the Dead Sit Talking by Brandon Hobson With his single mother in jail, Sequoyah, a fifteen-year-old Cherokee boy, is placed in foster care with the Troutt family. Literally and figuratively scarred by his mother’s years of substance abuse, Sequoyah keeps mostly to himself, living with his emotions pressed deep below the surface. At least until he meets seventeen-year-old Rosemary, a troubled artist who also lives with the family. Sequoyah and Rosemary bond over their shared Native American background and tumultuous paths through the foster care system, but as Sequoyah’s feelings toward Rosemary deepen, the precariousness of their lives and the scars of their pasts threaten to undo them both. Suggested by Rich Gause, Research & Information Services

[itsmedianuh]

Week #11 Blog Post due 11/04/20:

What influence does the mainstream media play in how black victims of police brutality are depicted?

“Days following the deaths of Garner and Brown, news reports of the incidents characterized Brown as a thug, gang member, and lawbreaker. Garner was characterized as a repeat offender with news reports discussing his criminal history. News reports also made reference to the height and body size of both Brown and Garner, using fear-mongering labels such as ‘giant’ and ‘huge’ to make Brown and Garner seem superhuman, dangerous, and therefore needing to be tamed.” (Lee, 2017). Mainstream media takes an innocent black individual and draws them out as the enemy, the one to blame, dangerous and “needing to be tamed”, finding the smallest of details from their lives and amplifying it through a negative lens to justify the use of force and police brutality. Cops are put in place to deescalate situations. Even if an individual is found guilty, cops do not play the role of executioner, jury or judge. Mainstream media forgets that when it comes to black lives. They find any reason or image to justify the cops’ abuse of power towards the black community and paint the individual as a ‘thug’, threat, danger, and criminal. Mainstream media enables cops and the law to further feed into this idea that it’s okay to kill black people if cops feel threatened. Mainstream media enables our society to be okay with this behavior from cops who are meant to protect us— not create fear in communities and kill innocent lives through the use of force and illegal tactics. Mainstream media adds gasoline to the fire that already exists in the tension between cops and black communities.

What is ‘Black Twitter’ and ‘blacktags’ as described in the reading, “Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media”?

The term ‘Black Twitter’ refers to the black community present on Twitter. Blacktags refers to: “Building on this concept, this article is interested in the textual poaching that occurs in social media, specifically black Twitter, for purposes of challenging and resisting dominant degrading narratives placed on black and brown bodies through mainstream news coverage...She argues that black Twitter’s power comes from its participatory democratic nature—the idea that users, through the creation of ironic, yet cutting-edge hashtags, create a space to address social issues of racial bias and discrimination. Indeed, this forum allows for textual poaching as resistance, where the user produces content that challenges dominant (oppressive) cultural ideologies and norms, including racial bias” (Lee, 2017). This is an act of demanding justice where justice is lacking or not present. This is an effective response through the use of hashtags to inform and expose the injustices that the black community is constantly facing socially, economically, politically, educationally, culturally, and overall any possible aspect. Through blacktags, Black Twitter draws out the oppression and racism that still exists against them and their entire community. This is a smart and strategic way in utilizing social media platforms to create conversation where progress and fixing is very much needed. Through the use of twitter, information and voices are amplified and spread at a significant speed, making action follow faster than it normally would.

How can one be an active ally to people of color, particularly the black community?

“Ross shared his own story of ‘criming while white’ to mark the racialized double-standard of our criminal justice system, and encouraged other white folks to share their stories...this hashtag, which was named one of the most trending hashtags for 2014, demonstrated an unequal justice system and a racial double standard…[An example provided being:] When I was 20, I stole a pack of cigs, cop prayed with me and made me promise I wouldn’t do it again. #CrimingWhileWhite..” (Lee, 2017). People get uncomfortable when it's time to talk about racism and white privilege, but the time to talk about it is now, even when we don’t know how to get started. Getting the conversation going is the first step to creating a voice, community, and action in fighting for true justice for all. One can not say they are not racist and stay silent about the issues that black communities are currently facing. It is especially our responsibility to dismantle the structure and systems we currently have in place that strive off the oppression of the black community. The incarceration of the black community is a huge example of modern day slavery, the acts of inhumanity and violence towards them is an example of racism, hate, white supremacy and oppression that is still very much alive in our country and all over the world. To be an ally, we must use our privilege to speak and amplify what it is they are demanding, equality and humanization, equal opportunities, equity, and overall respect of their entire existence and identity, to acknowledge their suffering and to most importantly, listen. It is not our place to speak for them, but rather to share their stories, hear them out, and fight against injustices happening every single day.

What are some positive benefits that can be obtained through internet activism?

“Public awareness is achieved by accessing information that is relevant to the cause. Naturally there is often difficulty involved. Since the traditional information channels may well be controlled by those whose interest is counter to that of the activists, the Internet may serve as an alternative news and information source. The news and information are provided by individuals and independent organizations, largely focusing on events and issues not reported, underreported, or misreported in the mainstream mass media. The forms of obtaining information include visiting relevant Web sites or participating in different types of email distribution lists.” (Veghs, 2003). Through internet activism, as I stated earlier, information travels at a significant speed, making it faster and easier for information to travel across the world and form communities that share the same goal and values. This creates a sense of unity for some communities where it may be harder to find that overall safe space offline. The internet allows for many opportunities to arise with the use of forming and planning events such as protests, creating and participating in signing petitions, creating groups, sharing stories and overall posts with a message and purpose. Internet activism, if done right and being aware of falling into slacktivism, it can create widespread and rapid change if enough people are able to amplify the message, and with the internet, it is much faster and easier to bring this level of awareness to issues and problems that our country is currently facing— whether it be a hashtag, a headline, a post, or group messages. All of these are a few examples of the benefits that internet activism could provide for some communities in getting stuff done at a faster and widespread rate.

Fuchs, C. (2004). Social media and communication power. In social media: A critical introduction (pp. 69-94). London: Sage Publications Ltd. doi:10.4135/9781446270066.n4

Lee, L. (2017). Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 26. doi:103390/socsci6010026

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying Forms of Online Activism: The Case of Cyberprotests against the World Bank.

[sscriqui]

10-Ways To Be Anti-Racist

1) Hold your friends and family accountable. Challenge yourself to engage in respectful conversation with people close to you when they make problematic comments by actively listening and utilizing the E.A.R.S strategies (credit: Dr. Kathy Obear). -Explore, inquire and ask questions(s) -Acknowledge their feelings -Restate what they said to check for accuracy -Exploring Solutions together

2) Attend workshops, events, conferences, and protests that focus on race-related issues. Conduct research on local non-profit organizations to locate resources and opportunities to engage. Many of these events are free and open to the public!

3) Diversify your knowledge and check your information bias. Subscribe to newsletters from nonprofits focused on racial equality and diversify your news outlets to include different viewpoints, ideologies, etc. Utilize different resources (i.e. educational videos, news articles) with more nuanced analysis through a lens of race/ethnicity, including updates and action steps.

4) Engage in race and ethnicity courses through different course or educational sessions. Take race and ethnicity focused courses outside what is required for your major or area of study. Engaging in classes you wouldn’t otherwise take allows you to gain more-in-depth perspectives and knowledge of current racial disparities through history exploration, contemporary issues, and theory.

5) Have intentional conversations with peers, friends, co-workers, etc. with respect to each other’s boundaries. Step out of your comfort zone to engage in conversations that challenge the way you see the world by exchanging stories and sharing different perspectives. Learning about other people’s lived experiences can broaden your preconceived notion of racial issues.

6) Learn with humility. Try to practice active listening by listening to understand rather than listening to respond. When you choose to engage, do not assume you know or understand the experiences of marginalized communities, especially those you do not identify with. If people share their experiences with you, be sure to affirm and validate their experiences while being cautious of the space you are occupying.

7) Support the work, art, and businesses of people of color. Institutional and systemic barriers have led to a lack of representation and support for many marginalized communities in mainstream media, politics, and organizations. It is important to champion their work in movies, art shows, books, and music by promoting it on social media, purchasing their materials, and recognizing their contributions to their respective industries.

8) Become involved in organizations that support racial justice issues. Locate organizations that are working within communities to enhance the lives of those disproportionately affected by racism. Support them by donating money (if possible), volunteering time, or spreading awareness of their mission.

9) Avoid usage of stereotypical and normalized, microaggressive comments. Examples include: -“Where are you really from?” -“What are you?” -“You sound white” or “You’re really well-spoken.” -“I don’t really see you as Indian.” -“You have really big eyes for an Asian person.”

10) During a national crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, do not scapegoat certain racial and/or ethnic groups for the crisis. Blaming entire communities for crises can lead to increased violence and overt discrimination towards the targeted group(s). Remember that the U.S. consists of a diverse group of people and one's race/ethnicity and/or skin color does not determine one’s claim to being American. Recognizing the racism behind certain comments or actions will allow you to become a better ally to the targeted group(s).

From Michigan University

[abjectaspiringfailure]

Touka and Kuzen - contrasting managerial styles

TG 143

I wanted to take a look at Touka and Kuzen through the lens of how they handled situations differently, and how they handled their creations of cafes for their loved ones. It’s well known that Touka’s creation of ;re paralleled Kuzen’s creation of Anteiku. However, Ishida goes out of his way to show the immense differences between these two characters. This difference, and how it came to be, is portrayed in their backstories, and how  they carry themselves in the actual story. This post will cover things in both TG and TG;re.

So, to start with, we’ll cover Touka’s backstory. Then, we’ll cover Kuzen’s backstory. Then, we’ll note the difference between these two characters, how it shows in their backstories, how it shows in their characters, so on and so forth.

TG;re 71

Touka’s first encounter with tragedy is at a very young age. Her mother and father are engaged by Arima. While her mother holds them off, her father escapes with her and her brother. The loss of her mother leads her father to engage in ghoul cannibalism and developing a kakuja. Eventually, he ends up running into multiple ghoul investigators lead by Shinohara and Kureo Mado and is captured by them.

There are two versions of the stoy here - according to Yomo in TG;re 71, Arata was targeted for his power. Touka’s story in TG;re 120 is that her father was killing ghoul investigators; there, we learn she laments her father’s decisions, and blames herself for his actions.

TG 71, 70

Touka and Ayato end up being turned into the CCG by the very human neighbors their father encouraged them to trust, respect, and make sacrifices for. Touka is forced to kill one of the CCG agents that attempts to capture them as a result, and they flee.

TG 71, 70

Of course, before he left, her father instilled lessons on Ayato and her. These aren’t the only ones, of course but they are the ones we’ll be discussing. Before leaving, Arata instructs Ayato that he must keep his sister safe. For Touka, he instructs her that she must teach him about life. These are things that parents often say to their children, but it ends up taking on a different meaning for Touka and Ayato due to their childhood. Because of their circumstances, Touka ends up shouldering these burdens herself, quite literally, in the form of Ayato.

Now, lets talk Kuzen.

TG 119

Kuzen grew up completely alone. He never had anyone but himself to rely on - as a result, he ended up killing countless humans and ghouls. He started cannibalizing at a young age not for the reason that many other characters do - loss of others and the desire for strength - but instead because he wanted to live a long life and not go hungry (this is reminiscent of Roma’s backstory TG;re 135). Because of his strength and willingness to kill, he comes into contact with V. V provides him with food, shelter, and clothes, and in exchange, he continues what he’s already doing - killing. Kuzen’s needs in regards to safety, food shelter, and clothing are met. However, he feels unfulfilled.

The hierarchy of needs is not necessarily linear, but, generally speaking, it goes like this: human beings have physiological needs (eg food, water, shelter), safety needs (eg not fearing death), esteem needs (eg a career), social needs (eg love and family), and finally this leads to self actualization (eg fulfillment of one’s potential). Kuzen’s physiological, safety, and esteem needs are all being met by his employment by V. However, he still lacks loving and belonging. He still isn’t reaching his potential.

TG 119

And in comes Ukina, serving Kuzen coffee. Ukina was, according to Kuzen, an undercover journalist. The topic of her current story was V, the organization Kuzen worked for. Kuzen believes that Ukina was unaware of his status, as he was of hers, and that they happened upon one another. Eto provides a different version of the story - Ukina approaches her father because she’s aware he’s a member of V (TG;re 64).

Ukina is the first person Kuzen ever connects with intimately. She teaches him how to read the complex kanji he cannot understand. Through Ukina, Kuzen finds a place of belonging and higher fulfillment. Kuzen gets close to Ukina; she accepts him even after she finds out he’s a ghoul. Kuzen spares Ukina, and they eventually have a child together.

TG 119

Eventually Ukina’s objective is found out. Of course, V cannot let that stand. V orders Kuzen to kill Ukina. He does so, with Ukina’s last words being her remarks about his loneliness. One thing I want to note here is that, contrary to popular belief, Kuzen didn’t leave V. He simply stopped being part of their secret police. He just flat out says this, in much more polite words. That’s what “unable to cut ties” means. That’s why every time he goes to “work”, he’s wearing a V uniform. It’s why Kaiko can just walk right up to him later on in Tokyo Ghoul. There’s a reason why Eto was left in the 24th ward, after all.

This isn’t to say Kuzen didn’t make his own moves against V (such as sheltering Rize from their view), but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a member still. All of the members of V are shown making moves against other members of V - eg, Kaiko, introduced as the face of V, helps Furuta kill the Washuus who are supposed to be higher ranking members of V. Arima and Furuta are both members of V and make their own moves against it. Matsuri also immediately considers members of V to likely be the culprit behind the attempt on his life. V in general is a very Darwinian organization that seems to compartmentalize and encourage, unintentionally or not, competition among its members as is common with authoritarian organizations.

Now that we’ve established these backstories before they began interacting in universe, lets take a look at how these two characters interact, and how they play off one another.

TG 71

There are substantial takeaways from these backstories, and what these characters actually value at heart. Kuzen’s story is a story of loneliness preceding tragedy - Touka’s story is a story of loneliness succeeding tragedy. Kuzen was always alone, but surviving. That is his state of being. It is what he knows. Touka’s situation was always with a family - making sacrifices to protect family, to survive with family. While both Kuzen and Touka ended up alone for a time, their actions and reactions are different.

It’s best encapsulated by Kuzen’s words to Touka after he hears of her and Ayato getting into a fight Tsukiyama, and splitting up once again. Kuzen’s words to Touka here aren’t exactly subtle - he’s not exactly being coy about implying Touka should prioritize herself over Ayato, by noting that fighting for family and food has its limits before mentioning Ayato’s violent tendencies. Kuzen then implies that Touka going for school and working at Anteiku would help her do better with Ayato. This makes no logical sense, however.

TG 71

The tragedy of Touka and Ayato was, from Ayato’s point of view, caused by humans. Arima took away their mother, followed by their father being taken away by Shinohara and Mado, followed by almost themselves being taken away by their own neighbors. They were betrayed by the very humans they suffered for at their fathers request. Touka is not only going to school with more humans, becoming friends with humans, she’s also spending time at Anteiku working as a human waitress, seving human customers, to pay Kuzen back. As a result, Ayato is being left alone, unchecked, and unguarded. Ayato gets upset and ends up running away, causing even greater chaos than he did when he was with Touka, and in much greater danger as a result.

This isn’t Touka’s fault. She’s a child herself in a very rough situations. Children running away from home isn’t uncommon, especially when they’re under stress and they feel they’re unappreciated and unloved, as Ayato does here. That doesn’t mean that he’s actually unappreciated or unloved, of course. The difference between a normal human teenager running from home, and Ayato running from home, is that Ayato’s family, in the form of Yomo and Touka, aren’t doing the smart thing and coming after him. They’re just letting him run rampant. Now, fortunately, this ends up working out for Ayato (YMMV) in that Aogiri Tree takes him in, rather than the CCG, or a rival ghoul gang that was angry at his attacks.

However, this is still the exact opposite thing that Kuzen intended. If it wasn’t for things that Kuzen couldn’t have predicted (eg Tatara), Ayato may very well have died. This is kind of a repeating pattern with him and it goes understated. So, before we go any further, lets go over his and Eto’s backstory again, before we get back to Anteiku.

TG 119

Ishida actually demonstrates how this plan failed, but lets go over this story, because there’s some obvious flaws with it.

So Kuzen leaves Eto in the one place that V will never find her. Inexplicably, Eto just comes out of nowhere, “filled with hatred of the world”, and decides to attack the CCG. During these attacks, she receives a lethal wound. Fearful that V might pursue Eto in addition to the CCG, Kuzen becomes Eto’s substitute and attacks a random CCG base, receiving a lethal wound himself.

Okay, lets start with Eto’s motivation for her attacks. This is only going to be briefly covered, because the Eto/Touka parallels post covers this attack more thoroughly. Eto didn’t just pop up out of nowhere, as we know, she was actively being hunted by V and the CCG to begin with.

TG;re 66

Noroi ended up like Noro because V killed him. Shortly thereafter, as coincidence would happen, the CCG decided to do a “whack a mole” operation where they run into Eto at the specific coordinates they were sent to investigate in the deep section of the 24th Ward. It really can’t be stressed just how low the odds of this are.

TG;re 127, TG 80, TG 95

The Goat base in the middle of the 24th Ward in the D sector was 5 kilometers below the surface. The place they were attempting to escape to by going deeper was E14. Sector F124 is described as being part of the “deep”. We’re not given any reference points, and because V14 was just below the surface, it’s not necessarily linear. However, Eto was still located over 5 kilometers beneath the surface at the minimum.

The 24th Ward is a highly confusing, inconsistent labyrinth that is incredibly hard to navigate. And yet somehow, inexplicably, Marude’s team happen to run into Eto in the deep section they were sent to investigate. The implication here is that V failed their mission of killing Eto, and then tried to follow up with the CCG to kill Eto.

Why do I say the CCG’s battle with Eto occurred shortly after Noroi was killed? It’s simple.

TG;re 62

Noroi isn’t present with Eto when she is attacked by Marude’s team. You’d think that as her protector, he would be. Even Noro isn’t mentioned at any time for the original Owl campaign, despite being a known as a powerful fearsome ghoul of Aogiri. Eto’s also explicitly a penniless orphan right after her rebellion.

This is the first sighting of the One Eyed Owl and Eto cited both her mother’s death and Noroi’s death as a reason she cannot accept V, and Eto’s battle with Kasuka Mado is a parallel to Touka’s and Hinami’s fight against Kureo Mado, wherein Eto plays the part of both Hinami and Touka.

TG 124, 16

Eto didn’t just pop out of the abyss a fully formed kakuja that just hated the world. She didn’t even have a kakuja when she started her campaign, it’s shown as just a kagune. She was provoked by the the world controlling fascists that were intent on killing her and even went looking for her in the place that her father said would protect her from them to begin with. Kuzen knows, even after he “protected Eto”, that V was still pursuing her. We know this because he explicitly says so.

TG;re 71

So, lets move on to the part where Kuzen says he protects Eto. Eto receives a “lethal” wound…

TG;re 61

…that isn’t lethal to a kakuja one eyed ghoul. She literally lost an arm. It’s just damaging her combat ability to the point she was forced to run against multiple special class level investigators with reinforcements on the way. This type of injury is a non issue when it comes to “survival” to someone like Eto, who can, for example, be sliced in half and then chucked off the top of a skyscraper and survive. A ghoul’s regeneration is only stopped when their kahukou is severely damaged.

Then Kuzen takes her place without informing her or coordinating with her, and then also receives a “lethal” wound…

TG 69

And this somehow makes V and the CCG stop pursuing Eto because why, exactly? What changed here? If anything, shouldn’t the CCG and V be more enticed to go after the Owl, as it just received yet another supposedly lethal wound, if said lethal wound was really considered significant to begin with? It’s not like Kuzen immediately stepped in minutes after Eto received her wound and covered for her while she escaped. She explicitly escapes on her own.

Lets look at the logic here from two perspectives, one where Eto is in hiding and  the CCG and V don’t know her identity, and one where she’s in hiding and they don’t.

If Eto was in hiding, and CCG and V didn’t know who or where she was, they wouldn’t be able to find her immediately to finish her off anyway. She’s in no immediate danger danger of being attacked as long as she’d not found. In that case, Kuzen’s attack is pointless. Actually, it’s less than pointless - it’s pinning an attack she had nothing to do with on her, and giving the CCG valuable anti-Owl experience to use against her due to the similarities of their kakujas.

If the CCG and V does know who she is, then it doesn’t matter if Kuzen attacks again. This attack doesn’t change the fact that, in this theoretical scenario, Eto’s identity has been exposed. Kuzen’s just getting into another fight that is pinned on Eto and changes nothing.

How does this stop Eto from going on the offensive again and running into V or the CCG? What’s stopping the CCG and V from going after Eto while Kuzen’s faking his attack? Now that Kuzen just ran into some random fight completely unrelated to Eto and received a “lethal” wound, how will he be able to help Eto if she is attacked? The answer is “it doesn’t do any of that”, because we know what ends up happening.

TG;re 86, 69, 52

Arima engaged Eto so close to the time frame that he engaged Kuzen, you can even see that Eto hasn’t even gotten enough time to regenerate her arm yet. Eto was made into a figurative quinque of Arima’s at the age of 14 because Kuzen’s attempt to protect her had no logical way of doing so.

TG 139

Because Arima wasn’t referring to a replacement for IXA here when he said he needed a quinque. Because Kaneki was not literally a quinque he went around killing ghouls with. Arima was referring to a new metaphorical quinque to replace an old one. The old one being Eto.

This isn’t fridge logic, this is something Kuzen should have thought about immediately, and it’s not like he didn’t have time. Kuzen says that he immediately knew that Eto was his child, and consider the description of the Owl campaign.

TG 69

Kuzen had months to think of a plan to help Eto. This was what he decided to do. Kuzen’s plan was liable to fail. It never made sense to begin with in any way, shape, or form to accomplish its goal to save Eto, and so of course it didn’t. Why would it? Kuzen’s not solving any of Eto’s problems - making her feel loved, actually protecting her, giving her guidance.

If it weren’t for Arima secretly hating V and his job, and Eto telling Arima she wants to “fix the world” she would have been killed. Eto survived because of Eto. Lets compare this to Touka, who was in a similar situation with Hinami

If you’re wondering “what should Kuzen have done?” the answer is to ask Touka, who actually succeeded at her goals.

TG 23

I talked above how Volumes 2 and 3 of Tokyo Ghoul are effectively a parallel between Eto, and Touka and Hinami. It’s well known that Touka’s creation of ;re was meant as a parallel for Kuzen’s creation of Anteiku. There’s a reason for this. Lets take a look at how Touka handles the situations with Hinami and Kaneki that Kuzen’s also in, shall we?

TG 16

Kuzen left Eto in the 24th Ward. He tries to do the same with Hinami.   Immediately, Touka gets enraged. You can’t just leave an orphaned 14 year old alone in the 24th Ward. The 24th Ward is considered one of the worst places in Tokyo Ghoul to live, let alone for an orphan. Children shouldn’t be left unattended in general…

While Touka’s reaction here (”Kill all the doves”) is an overreaction, it’s an overreaction to Kuzen’s overreaction. And yes, this is an overreaction. What logical reason is there for Kuzen to throw Hinami in the 24th Ward? I think it’s safe to assume it relates to the CCG confrontations that he gives moments later to Touka’s idea of killing all of the CCG.

TG 16

That still doesn’t make sense, though. Because even if he’s not on the radar because of his connections with V, Kaya, Koma, and Yomo are. A ghoul’s face being exposed is a big deal, yes, but the investigators had no knowledge of what Hinami actually looked like, and a simple investigation of his own could have solved that.

TG 20

To clarify this description is so vague as to be meaningless. It’s basically saying “this vaguely child sized person with a clover dress and a coat”. Hinami literally has to change her clothes and survive a few months and she’ll no longer fit this description in any way. In the end, there is a middle ground between these two sides - Hinami stays with a member of Anteiku and they protect her, and that’s exactly what happens anyway.

TG 31

Oh and also Hinami gets a haircut, grows because she’s still growing, and changes her clothes. Because she’s alive. The thing is, this is such an obvious and simple answer to the problem at hand that it should have been Kuzen’s first reaction. Touka’s not realizing this immediately is logical. Touka herself has a history of losing people to the actions of the CCG - her own parents directly, and indirectly Ayato. Touka being blinded by her rage is understandable.

Kuzen, meanwhile, has no excuse. He’s many times her age. He’s coolheaded enough to realize not to attack the CCG, and he’s old enough that he should have experience to realize the flaws in his logic. Again, like with his decision to “help” Eto, this is not a split second decision.

TG 17

As a result of him not doing so, the very thing he was trying to avoid, Doves dying, ends up happening anyway. And the very result he was trying to avoid, vengeful Doves, follows. This is a pattern with Kuzen’s actions. His actions keep leading to results he doesn’t want, because his actions have no logical basis of succeeding at anything he claims he wants them to.

TG 25

Kaneki, Touka, and Hinami subsequently are all almost killed. Kuzen and Yomo eventually show up, but they were mainly preoccupied with Kaneki and in the case of Touka it wasn’t even a last second save Hinami did. Kureo Mado’s quinque was in the midst of being swung meters away aimed at Touka’s head when Hinami cut it off.

All because Kuzen lacked the foresight to think that abandoning an innocent 14 year old in a hellhole was a bad idea. And he really should know better. Kuzen left Eto in the 24th Ward after Noroi died and he got… obvious results.

TG 32

Lets move on to Kaneki’s encounter with Tsukiyama. We’ll start this by making an observation of Touka warning Kaneki about Tsukiyama. This might seem insignificant, but it’s not. Touka’s warning almost worked, were it not for Tsukiyama’s cunning and Itori’s goading, Kaneki would have likely avoided the Gourmet Arc. It’s rather interesting comparing this to both Itori and Tatara’s commentary on Kuzen, where they both make a good points about Kuzen’s treatment of Kaneki.

TG 34, TG 54

There was literally no good reason for Kuzen to not warn Kaneki of the impending danger around him. We know Kuzen’s reasoning here, according to Yomo, it’s to keep Kaneki from getting caught up in the confusion. The problem is that’s already too late. Kuzen already knows Kaneki’s mixed up in V’s business, the CCG’s business, and the Clown’s business, whether he likes it or not. He knows, and decides not to tell Kaneki.

To get back to Tsukiyama, Kuzen’s reaction shows, once again, a lack of learning anything.

TG 40

This is one of the many times that Yomo starts to questions Kuzen’s decision, but doesn’t fully follow through with the thought process. And it’s hard to do so, which I’ll get into later, because Kuzen has many redeeming qualities. But that doesn’t change his downsides. Remember, his inaction almost resulted in three of his people getting killed, and resulted in two members of the CCG getting killed.

Tsukiyama himself literally almost just had Kaneki tortured to death and eaten alive by a group of hungry ghouls. They just finished having a conversation with Kaneki about this very issue. Yomo is clearly worried about Kaneki, and he has a very good understanding of his strength because he’s been training him. This is not stuff that has not already come to pass - this is stuff that has passed.

TG 40

Que Touka, almost as if it’s a joke and she was listening in on them. As if her expression directed at the discussion and Kuzen’s poor decision making, and not Loser. As if it’s meta commentary.

TG 42

Touka picks the opposite decision that Kuzen does, and is in the right. Had she not shown up, Tsukiyama would have likely eaten Kaneki and Kimi, and killed Nishki. You can’t really be hands off when the guy in question is trying to kill one of your people, you know? But Kuzen doesn’t see it that way.

TG 18

You could say that, in a sense, Touka is paying Kaneki back for his own disregarding of Kuzen’s direct orders saving her in the process. One of the patterns that goes hand in hand with Kuzen constantly getting the worse outcomes is of course, characters going against Kuzen’s will and getting improved outcomes.

TG 59

Kaneki’s rescue from Aogiri is actually an example of Kuzen doing the right thing. Still interesting to note that Touka immediately knows she’s going to save Kaneki and makes it known, which contrasts with Kuzen’s malingering on the issue.

TG 124

Kuzen’s stand at Anteiku was also just pointless. He frames it as a stand against V for Eto when Kaiko chats with him, but how does fighting at Anteiku do so? How does this protect or help Eto? How does fruitlessly dying against the CCG stop V from going after Eto? Again, it doesn’t.

Even if Kuzen was going to be chased by V, we know you can avoid them for years with occasional fighting (see: Shachi, Noroi and Eto, Rize pre-Binging). And if you actually want to fight them, there are better means than playing defensive against a bunch of CCG agents protecting literally nothing.

TG;re 140, 65

It’s not like this is like Rushima and Coachlea, where the goal is to split the forces of the CCG to enable a rescue operation. The diversion Aogiri Tree made was an absolute necessity for the success of the Coachlea raid. And it’s not like there are countless numbers of noncombatants who couldn’t defend themselves if Kuzen didn’t fight, like in the 24th Ward. The stand made there was a necessity to stop the slaughter of civilians.

Kuzen didn’t have to fight, and neither did the Dobermans or the Apes. A lot of people just ended up dying for no reason. Anteiku was just a place that could have been rebuilt, which is exactly what the rest of the Anteiku crew sans Kuzen and Kaneki did. It was literally a building, the people inside the building are what mattered. And Kuzen decided they had to die and then effectively blamed it all on Eto. Because regardless of whether or not that’s what he intended, that is what he did.

TG 128

Kaneki is clearly implying that this entire battle, this entire fight is entirely Eto’s fault here, he’s just not saying her name. We’ll get back to this later on, because it’s important, and it explains a lot of the Anteiku/Eto interactions.

TG 130

Now the Anteiku raid itself. Kuzen framed the entire thing as a fight for Eto. He brings Kaya and Koma along with him, but as noted above, this doesn’t actually help Eto in any way. As noted above, if Kuzen just ran away, hid himself, anything, really, there would be no consequences to anybody.

Touka attempting to rush to Anteiku was a foolish move, and it makes sense that Yomo stopped her. The problem is Yomo’s response to Touka’s response. Touka’s the only person in this situation who’s actually shown putting any thought into the situation, and yet she’s being belittled for it.

TG 130

Kaneki, Kaya, Koma, and Kuzen are all on suicide missions for no good reason, hoping that things will work out. Touka is desperately trying to understand, but can’t, because there is no logical reason for this to happen. People are just dying over a literal building. Touka’s objection destroys Kuzen’s argument here about redemption through death and how arbitrary he makes it. Yomo really has no good responses to Touka’s objections here, he just deflected with saying she’s too young to understand the thing that he himself doesn’t understand. He even outright agrees with her.

TG 130

He tries to play off her being confused by a senseless action leading to countless deaths as her “throwing a temper tantrum”. He adopts Kuzen’s policy of inaction once again, even though he feels this is all wrong. He even acknowledges this years later.

TG;re 171

The problem is that he still doesn’t see the pointlessness of Anteiku, here. No one does. Even Nishki and Kaneki were trying to rationalize the battle as Kuzen trying to cause enough chaos that the Anteiku crew would not be found.

“Or how it could have ended without losing Anteiku…”

We are literally shown how to have ended the situation without losing Anteiku, outside of a name change. It’s literally a situation that Yomo himself was in just months before in universe. It’s just that Yomo can’t bring himself to acknowledge the reality of Kuzen’s actions. He somewhat seems to have started to understand it towards the end of ;re, but not quite. On some level, he’s still trying to justify the battle. “Maybe if I had fought in that battle” is just that. The right answer would have been to… not fight.

So, what was Kuzen’s real reason for the battle of Anteiku?

TG 120

I think the answer is the same as it is for many characters in this series. We hear it from Touka, who rather purposefully shares many parallels with both Kuzen and Eto, talking to Kaneki, in an arc that is a parallel to Kuzen’s own. Saying this to Kaneki in the chapter right after Kuzen tells his story to Kaneki, and right before the destruction of Anteiku.

Kuzen didn’t establish Anteiku solely for Eto’s sake. He did it so he could say to himself he founded Anteiku for Eto’s sake. Kuzen didn’t fight the CCG for Eto’s sake. He fought the CCG so he could say he fought for Eto’s sake.  He did it for the self satisfaction, a way to soothe the guilt.

Because Kuzen , just like Kaneki, hated being alone. And so he starts doing anything he can to stop from being alone, while paradoxically wanting to die while living as long as he can, like Kaneki did. Anteiku is a parallel to Kaneki’s story as a whole.

TG 126

Just as there’s a reason Eto was hunted down and forced to work for Arima (and yes, she’s forced to; the moment Arima discovered her identity, she has no choices left) despite Kuzen’s “protection”, there’s a reason that Anteiku was destroyed despite Kaneki’s “protection”. Because destroying Aogiri doesn’t solve the underlying issues that cause threats to Anteiku to begin with.

It doesn’t break the bird cage caused by V, it doesn’t solve the issues between humans and ghouls, it doesn’t even remotely encourage that. Destroying Aogiri doesn’t even solve the immediate threats to Anteiku in Tokyo Ghoul - V, and groups that work with them, like, say, the CCG. The groups who actually targeted Anteiku and actually destroyed it, and not just a theoretical that Kaneki proposed in his head.

TG 63

Because Aogiri never intended to attack Anteiku, a few individual members did of their own accord. Think about it this way: If they were intending to destroy Anteiku and kill all of its members, why would Ayato be in Aogiri when his goal is to protect Touka? There’s nothing that actually indicated that Aogiri had any interest in Anteiku outside of just checking out Kaneki’s worthiness as a possible One Eyed King.

Tatara, Eto, and Arima never even intended for Kaneki to be tortured in the first place.

TG 54, TG 75

Tatara actively writes off Kaneki and gives him to Ayato, not Yamori. Ayato, as in the guy who angers Yamori, and who Yamori didn’t want to cross. The reason Kaneki was tortured was’t because of Aogiri using Yamori as a roundabout means to do so (why would they bother doing so in such a manner?), it was because of, primarily, Nico’s extensive machinations enabling Yamori to do so.

TG 58

Kaneki projected Yamori, a guy who has less in common with the average grunt of Aogiri as Kijima does the random grunt of the CCG, onto the rest of Aogiri Tree. Yamori was legitimately hated by the Aogiri members as a whole, this is made explicit on multiple occasions. Yamori also rather explicitly has literally no loyalty to Aogiri Tree.  His motive? “it’ll be fun”.

Yamori torturing Kaneki was explicitly treason here, in the sense that he had to commit treason to do so. The only reason that the Bin Brothers didn’t try to fight Yamori was Nico and the oncoming CCG battle. We’ll leave this at that for now. However, it’s made clear that Nico was the one who enabled Yamori to torture Kaneki by stopping Kaneki’s and the others’ escape at every turn and being the one who lead Yamori to him in the first place.

TG 139

The tragedy of the original Tokyo Ghoul wasn’t that Kaneki’s actions amounted to nothing because the CCG’s attack made Kaneki’s actions against Aogiri meaningless, and he decided to shoulder the burden of fighting everyone alone. The tragedy of the original Tokyo Ghoul was that Kaneki didn’t actually protect Anteiku, because his actions had nothing to do with protecting Anteiku. In the end, Kaneki ends up in an unwitting battle against the One Eyed King and is defeated before he can reach his goal of Anteiku. He fought a series of pointless battles against Aogiri, because a Clown set him up.

TG 78

That’s why Nico’s saying all this to Furuta in a chapter called “Diversion”. It’s… literally right there. Eto and Aogiri a diversion for Kaneki from his true goal: being loved and finding happiness. Nico even kind of just outright says they had Kaneki tortured because they wanted to see the changes a human goes through when they enter despair. There is a very, very good reason why Kaneki is always portrayed as being at his worst when he’s going after Eto in both Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Ghoul ;re.

They’re mentioning Eto indirectly here, and how she’s not the One Eyed King (Nico lied to Kaneki - not Furuta) to foreshadow quite a bit. The tragedy of the original Tokyo Ghoul was that Kaneki’s actions were meaningless the entire time, that he wasn’t actually fighting the real threats to his loved ones, and he learned the wrong lessons from his experiences.

TG 143

That was the point of this entire scene with the Clowns celebrating at the end of Tokyo Ghoul. Like, they’re even referencing Yamori’s line here. Kaneki went on some random warpath against someone who is mostly irrelevant to his happiness and could have even been an ally to him (like Tsukiyama, or Nishki), who eventually became an ally to him in ;re, but not the actual threats to Antieku.  Kuzen is the same as Kaneki. That’s how they parallel. The only difference between Kaneki and Kuzen is that Kaneki was tricked and misled, whereas Kuzen wasn’t.

TG;re 71

Kuzen is completely aware of this fact. He knows his actions aren’t actually helping Eto. That’s the subtext here, even if Yomo doesn’t pick up on it. Yoshimura even lampshading that, more often than not, he gets the opposite outcome than what he wants in his statements here.

TG;re 62

I believe this scene to be grossly misinterprreted. The question I usually see pop up here is “Why is Eto getting so unreasonable here, so ungrateful towards her father?” There seems to be this perception that Eto could just walk in through the front door, that Kuzen would just welcome her with open arms. But there’s nothing to suggest that he would.

TG;remake 1, TG;re 62

This novel Eto drops in front of Anteiku is about the longing for parents, or in other words, a family, while living in a hellish situation. Just look how long he lingers on the novel she drops in front of his door. This indicates the novel itself has meaning to him.

TG;re 63, TG 124, TG 119

Consider that Eto looks just like Ukina. Now consider that Eto makes public appearances and has her novels known around the world. Kuzen even imagines Eto in his mind’s eye during his speech to Kaneki. The implication here is that Kuzen is just as aware of Eto as she is of him. The other implication here is that Kuzen’s lingering on Eto’s novel because he knows she just walked by and dropped the novel as a message to him.

The real question should be “How does Eto know who Kuzen is?”

TG;re 71

The implication here is that Kuzen came forward to Eto. Given his foiling with Touka, and his intentions with Hinami, all point towards one thing: Kuzen’s last embrace of Eto? Wasn’t from when she was a baby. It was probably shortly after she published her novel. That is how he knows V is still pursuing her. That is why she is so angry. That is how Eto knows who he is. That is why Kuzen lingered on Eto’s novel for so long. Kuzen did with Eto the exact same thing he wanted to do with Hinami. Only with Eto, there was no one to tell him “this is wrong”.

Eto started working as a novelist as a 14 year old. Eto was forced to become a child soldier as a 14 year old, fighting a war against V, who controls the entire world, as a 14 year old. Not for her own selfish ends, not for simple revenge, but for the plight of her fellow ghouls.

TG;re 65

And Kuzen’s not helping her, he’s not taking care of her, he’s not taking notice of her, he’s not actually doing anything for her. The opposite of love is not hatred - the opposite of love is indifference. And Kuzen comes off as being completely and utterly indifferent towards Eto’s struggles. Eto’s writing novels about living through hell, because she’s being hunted by V, other ghouls, the CCG, and the only support system she believes she has at that moment is maybe Arima.

TG;re 62

So when Eto walks by Kuzen having a happy fun time with his new family, while she’s suffering alone, when she’s being hunted by V, she gets upset. And it’s completely understandable. She’s struggling alone.

(this image is from TG 125 and TG;re 71)

Kuzen wished for Eto’s embrace, to have a cup of coffee with her. He created Anteiku as a home for her, the name being an anagram of her name and her mother’s name; but in the end, it never amounted to any more than a wish. V was never going to go away without someone to stop them, and Kuzen had already resigned himself to never be able to do anything to beat them.

Therefore, Eto could never come to Anteiku. Kuzen referred to Eto using such terms with fantastical connotations, but simultaneous common usage, such as “wish” and “miracle”. Perhaps that was by design? Because he knew the arbitrary requirements he designed to be met could never be.  These words would have immediate meaning to those around him as merely expressing desire; but in reality, they’re acknowleding it’s pure fantasy.

We’ll contrast Touka’s inaction with Kuzen’s inaction, because they’re two very different things. Both Kuzen and Touka made homes for Eto and Kaneki respectively to return too, and both avoided grabbing them and bringing them to those homes. But the reasoning here is polar opposite.

TG;re 42

Touka doesn’t want to bring Kaneki to this home she made for him because by being part of the CCG, he’s protected. The investigators know his identity, and will search him out if he runs away. Being in CCG custody and under their protection? It’s the safest thing for him. Of course, if he does run, he will always have a home at ;re. Touka is actually ignoring her own wishes, her wish for Kaneki’s return, because she thinks this sacrifice is necessary to keep Kaneki safe - because she believes he’s safer without her.

The other part of this equation is, of course, Haise Sasaki and the members of the CCG. Haise Sasaki is just as much a part of Ken Kaneki as any other “personality”. Haise is not something that can simply be removed from Kaneki.

TG;re 121

Which is something that holds to be true. The moment “Haise Sasaki” became “Ken Kaneki”, Akira Mado stopped associating with him. Because names are not without meaning. Memories are not without meaning. The thing that brought Kaneki to Touka, was the thing that took away Haise from Akira.

TG;re 99

And in the end, when V and the CCG does come for Kaneki, even after his identity has been exposed and his face plastered all over television?   Touka has Kaneki stay at ;re, fulfilling her promise.

TG;re 124, 123

And Touka is also forced into a situation where she learns there’s an army on its way to her location. So what do she and Kaneki do? They don’t fight a pointless battle they run, sending Kaya and Koma aways instead of forcing them into a suicide battle. While Touka is fond of ;re, she recognizes ;re as what it is: a building. Something that can be rebuilt, an inanimate object. Of course, things don’t go as planned, and Mutsuki, Aura, and the Oggai show up to fight Kaneki.

The violence Kaneki and Touka used here is proportionate to the threat they faced until they can find an opening to leave. Because the important people were sent off. They had already left, because that’s the logical thing to do when you find out an army is approaching your position and there is nothing of strategic value in the place you’re staying at.

TG;re 130

And even when the CCG followed, Touka still stayed with Kaneki. Compare this to Kuzen’s response to V and the CCG hunting for Eto, his teenaged daughter, who’s identity is not truly known by anybody. And hey, even if they come for you, guess what? Touka has the answer there, too. Touka had an objectively harder job than Kuzen at this point, because Kaneki’s face is now being plastered all over the news. Eto is a… relative nobody. V is hunting her down, they’re trying to kill her, but it’s not like her identity is known to such an extent.

Many people recognized Touka’s parallels to Kuzen with regards to ;re and Anteiku, but I’m not too sure I agree with people about what they meant. The reason Touka succeeded in making a home for Kaneki and Kuzen failed in making a home for Eto wasn’t because Eto “couldn’t understand Kuzen’s love for her”, but because Kuzen never made the right decision, and moreover, knew that in his heart. Touka makes this explicit by rebuffing every decision he makes at every level. That’s why she’s a better manager.

That is not to say that Kuzen didn’t make some very good decisions, because he did.

TG 9, TG;re 71, TG 125, TG 71, TG 47

Kaya and Koma were, at one point, violent ghouls who fought others often. Because of Kuzen’s leadership and guidance, they calmed down. They joined him, and became more peaceful. And not just them, but those who followed them.

Or lets use Yomo as another example. Kuzen saves Yomo’s life from Arima, then brings him under his wing. Mellows him out. This is going to be a pattern with Kuzen. Kuzen also saved Yomo’s niece and nephew.

For Touka, Kuzen acts as her father figure and sends her to school. Touka is noted to have “cooled” a lot from this. She established one of her most important relationships here.

For Kaneki, he gives him a family. He tells him, at his weakest moment, he has a place to be. Anteiku is a place of belonging Kaneki discovers when he, as someone who always felt he had nowhere to belong besides Hide, believes he has become a creature alien from both worlds.

He also gives Nishki a way to have relatively moral food. Nishki is also mellowed out by Kuzen’s actions. He becomes far more accustomed to peaceful interactions with others.

It’s just that, if you notice the pattern, none of these good decisions have anything to do with Eto. And indeed, good decisions make people more willing to make people overlook bad decisions. But it doesn’t change the fact that he failed Eto. It doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t help her. It doesn’t change the fact that he got people killed, because of decisions that had immediate, easily seeable answers available to him. But, a reoccuring theme of Tokyo Ghoul is this:

TG;re 159, TG 1, TG 47, TG 98

People really, really, really don’t like to acknowledge the bad. They only want the good. That there is a hidden truth to the world, a darkness, that no one wants to face.

TG 54

It’s best encapsulated by Kaneki’s statement here. Kuzen hid a ton of information from Kaneki - information Kaneki desperately needs. But at the same time, Kuzen gave Kaneki food, a family, counsel, and the ability to do things. Kaneki has very good reason to have doubts in Kuzen, but he writes it off as just his irritation and confusion. Irritation and confusion that was caused in part by Kuzen’s hiding of information from him.

As for why Kuzen treats Eto the way he does? He can say it’s V, but I think it’s more than that. Kuzen has some interesting wording that he uses when he goes on his speeches, pertaining to one thing: “Birth” and its negative effects.

TG 78

He first says it here, relating birth with anger, sadness, death and mass murder. But the best example, the one that gets cited as being “such a good speech”, is the one I want to focus on:

TG 126

“from the instant we are born, we are evil”

His speech itself is in reference to an interpretation to the idea of the Original Sin, which is literally the chapter title. The Original Sin, in the way Kuzen applies it, is the belief that all people are born filled with sin, more or less as Kuzen describes it. This speech itself comes off as kinda cool when you consider how it contrasts with his managerial position at Anteiku, his attitude, and his past, but as Kuzen describe the Original Sin, it’s arguably literally meaningless.

“acts which snatch things away are equally evil”

“life itself means evil”

Kuzen’s statement equates, say, Donato stealing children’s lives with Amon stealing donuts as a child. It’s honestly a really depressing speech. The speech comes off as someone who was forced to kill countless people to survive, and then willingly killed countless more at the behest of a conspiracy, attempting to justify themself. A conclusion so meaningless that “death squad member” is equal to “newborn baby”, which is literally the point, because he’s clearly trying to rationalize his treatment of Eto here with this philosophy.

TG;re 63, TG 119, TG 1, TG 70

Both Eto and Kaneki greatly resemble Arata and Ukina. Kuzen’s killing of Ukina is the darkest moment of his life. It is, quite literally, the only time that we ever see Kuzen shed a tear - that we ever see Kuzen truly express vulnerability to such a level. For Touka, this is a reminder of the good times she had, the more simple times. The time she spent with her father was special to her. Touka has positive memories of her father, who kept his darkness hidden from her; Kuzen has negative memories of Ukina, who he was forced to kill. The resemblances carry emotions that are completely contrasting, and further explain Kuzen’s avoidance of Eto.

“I know that I am ‘evil’, and so are you“

Based off of what Kuzen’s wording here and his mind’s eye view of a “violent ghoul”, he associated Eto with death, with destruction, with evil.

TG 40

Because when he’s describing a ghoul committing senseless murder, he’s thinking constantly of Eto. Eto’s body language actually contradicts his descriptions of course, showing immense stress. This is honestly just Kuzen projecting, which you realize in chapter 119, because he’s describing himself when he was younger and thinking of Eto. He’s literally seeing the worst of himself in Eto. And Eto also sees the worst of Kuzen in herself. That’s part of the reason why she wrote the Black Goat’s Egg.

Kuzen’s rebellion, in the form of the Battle of Anteiku, did nothing that couldn’t have been done better. No one ever got the chance to directly call Kuzen out for what he did, to try to get him to reconsider, Touka being the only one who even considered it, at least not in a way were it was trying to justified his actions. He staged this massive battle that legitimately served no purpose. All because, ostensibly, “for Eto”.

TG;re 86, TG;re 52, TG;re 69

The One Eyed King plan is something that has a limited time table to complete. And if Eto doesn’t do what Arima says, then he could force her to become the One Eyed King by attempting to fight her and killing himself like he did against Kaneki. Which is something Eto doesn’t want, because she thinks everything she touches dies. Because she thinks she’s toxic. I went over this in the Eto’s novels post, but the Black Goat’s Egg is basically about Eto’s self loathing and belief she’s toxic.

TG;re Vol 5 poem, Black Goat’s Egg excerpt

TG;re 74

There is some inference here, essentially the idea that Arima gave Eto the same choice he gave Kaneki when it came to Touka - it’s not explicitly stated, but there’s some hints. I understand there’s the idea that Kuzen and Eto made no attempt at reconciliation, and that’s actually understandable. But… I’m pretty sure the subtext is they did, because the literal text is that she’s bothered by his passing.

TG;re 65

Furuta brings up Kuzen here, and the death of those around her because of her actions. Something that really grates on Eto. Eto has no real response to Furuta’s points, because these things actually bother her, which is why she just responds with “I’m on the size of the weak, you’re on the side of the strong”. It’s a deflection about  

Eto is planning on dying here to atone for her sins. She doesn’t think she’s someone worth living, worth saving. That’s why she smiles in the same manner as Kaneki after making a request for someone to do something they’re already planning on doing, for Kaneki asking Urie to save Mutsuki, and for Eto asking Kaneki to fight Arima. Eto is actually paralleling Kaneki throughout his “Reapernki” and “Shironeki” phases, and these parallels run back 13 years.

TG;re 68, 55

You’ll notice there was an awkward pause here from Eto that went completely overlooked during this conversation when Kuzen was mentioned by Kaneki. This isn’t her being angry. This is her not having anything to say when he immediately brings him up, the rest of her conversations with Kaneki being constant quick witted banter (that devolves into mentally ill rambling shortly after this, but).

This awkward pausing is actually repeated later, with Eto’s human father figure, Shiono. An awkward pause, followed by a joke. These scenes aren’t a perfect parallel; but they’re rather close.

TG 99, TG;re 119

There’s more hints of course, and it relates to Rize’s treatment by Furuta. You can actually see Rize here and the immense agony she is clearly in. This is a clear cut indication that Kanou donors aren’t given any type of pain supression system, and that more over, they’re fully aware of their surroundings.

Why is all of this relevant?

TG 143, 124

When you cut to Kuzen, if you look closlely you’ll notice that he’s smiling. And it’s in a panel that was paralleling an earlier panel, where he’s miserable when talking with Kaiko (with the panel mentioning Eto’s existence is a betrayal of V), but smiling next to Eto. Pretty hard to do when your body is hooked to machines and being harvested, right? The idea that the last panel we see of Kuzen was drawn this way for no true purpose seems rather unreasonable, no?

You can’t peacefully smile in immense pain like that. But you can if you’re not in immense pain. Kuzen would logically be on painkillers here, and since Kanou didn’t do this for Rize, it would logically be at Eto’s request. Is that a good ending? No. And this also doesn’t excuse what Eto did here. I think that will probably be hard to swallow given the general assumptions surrounding Eto, but I didn’t agree with the idea that Eto didn’t care for her father, because her actions towards him don’t make sense otherwise. I’m also not sure how else someone going through a painful procedure would smile and be completely asleep outside of painkillers.

TG 99

It further explains why Furuta knew to use Kuzen against Eto. If Kanou knew Eto cared about killing Kuzen, he would have probably mentioned that to Furuta. Kanou and Furuta were consulting constantly. Kanou knew, back when Kaneki confonted Kanou in his lab, that Kuzen and Eto were related by blood. Kanou had been aware of Kuzen and Eto’s relationship from the beginning.

To get back to Eto, the problem here is that Kuzen’s speech, his entire rebellion against V, is being framed as for Eto, but because how horribly he pulls it off it ends up being against Eto. Because no one actually benefited from the Anteiku battle outside of V; it was demonstrably meaningless in its objectives. But in the end, it wasn’t meaningless to the people it left behind.

Because everyone who survived Anteiku? They all worshiped Kuzen. And Kuzen just staged this massive fight, which meant nothing and did nothing, while framing it as for his daughter who they don’t know. The daughter they’ve been told is a horrible monster. The daughter they believe was the one who was being unreasonable, when Kuzen was the one who decided they could never be together. The daughter who objectively had no control over Kuzen’s actions at any time, but is being blamed for them regardless.

TG;re 75

Eto, of course, ends up saving the Anteiku crew from certain doom not once, but twice. It should be noted that Eto jams up the machinery here befoorehand, too, so even if she fails to manifest her kakujja, the Anteiku crew won’t die.

TG;re 75

And rather than trying to seek understanding or reconciliation they just. Don’t. Ever. Because there’s good reasons to have blood between them, but there’s… no attempt at understanding. Eto sincerely attempts to help them here. She is the only reason they are alive.

The idea she might be saving them because she’s keeping a promise, or she’s trying to help Hinami out, or they’re her fellow ghouls, or she’s Kuzen’s child, and therefore helping out family, doesn’t even enter into their mind.

TG;re 175

They don’t do much of anything both times, there was a refusal to even acknowledge her the second time. She actually shatters the Kuzen quinque, here, too. That’s how they were able to win against Kaiko, because he lost his SSS rated quinque that allowed him to effortlessly dominate them. They were about to be killed by Kaiko, and she’s objectively the reason they’re alive, and there’s a refusal to acknowledge her.

There was a refusal to even acknowledge her existence for the last 80 chapters. They’re literally doing the exact same thing that Yoshimura and Arima did to Eto. Well, except one person:

TG;re 129

[ourkinfolx]

No. 1: Fania

Fania Noel is a woman with plans. And not just the vast, sweeping plans like the dismantling of capitalism and black liberation. She also has smaller, but no less important, plans like brunch with friends, hitting the gym. 

“Every week, I put in my calendar the times I need to be efficient,” she explains. “So I put what time I work out, with my friends, my time to watch TV shows, to read. And after, I can give people the link to put obligations.”

The link she’s referring to is her online scheduling system connected to her personal website. It’s one I’ve become well acquainted with after our first two failed attempts to schedule interviews. We had plans to meet in person, in a Parisian Brasserie she’d recommended, but between canceled flights and buses, Skype turned out to be the most practical option. Our disrupted travel was just one in a long list of inconveniences brought on by the virus safety measures. It might even be said that the coronavirus also had plans. 

The global pandemic and subsequent slowing of—well, everything comes up a few times in our conversation. Like some of the other activists I’ve talked to, Fania sees a silver lining, an opportunity.

“This might be the only sequence of events in the history of humanity that you have the whole planet living at the same tempo, being in quarantine or locked down or slowed activity,” she says. 

“So we all have a lot of time to think about how [society is] fucked up or the weight of our lives in terms of this society. And I think we have to ask if we want to go back to this rushed kind of living. It’s really a game changer.”

I first heard of Fania, a Haitian born afro-feminist, earlier in the year, while talking to a Parisian friend about the need for more black spaces in the city. She angrily described how a few years ago, Fania tried to have an event for black women, only to be met with fierce backlash and derision from not just right-wing groups, but anti-racist and anti-Semitic groups. The event wasn’t actually Fania’s alone; it was an effort by Mwasi Collective, a French afro-feminist group that she’s involved with. 

Either way, it was a minor scandal. Hotly debated on French TV and radio. Even Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, voiced disapproval. Critics claimed the event, called Nyansapo Festival, was racist itself by exclusion because most of the space had been designated for black women only. 

Despite all the fuss, the Nyansapo Festival went on as planned. Several years later, following the killing of George Floyd and the international movement that followed, Anne Hidalgo published a tweet ending with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. I found it curious, she’s always struck me as more of an #AllLivesMatter type. 

I ask Fania if, given the tweet and possible change of heart from the mayor, she thinks her event would be better received in the current climate. She points out that there had been two Nyansapo Festivals since, with little to no media coverage, but seems overall uninterested in rehashing the drama. 

“We’re way beyond that now,” she says, shaking her head. She ends it in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever been almost imperceptibly corrected by a black woman, and I quickly move on to the next topic. 

It’s not until later, when reading some of her other interviews, that I’m able to fully contextualize our exchange. It’s common for activists, especially those working in or belonging to a culture where their identity makes them a minority, to be asked to view their work through the lens of conditional acceptance of a larger group of oppressors and/or gatekeepers. Asking feminists what men think, asking LGBT how they plan to placate heterosexuals. In her dismissal, Fania resists the line of questioning altogether, and in another interview, she makes the point more succinctly when explaining why she doesn’t believe in the concept of public opinion: 

“As an activist, the core ‘public’ is black people and to think about the antagonism and balance of power in terms of our politics rather than its reception. It’s normal in a racist, capitalist, patriarchal society that a political [movement] proposing the abolition of the system is not welcomed.”

One might argue if you’re not pissing anyone off, you’re not doing anything important. 

Rolling Stone’s July cover is a painting featuring a dark-skinned black woman, braids pulled into a round bun on her crown. She has George Floyd’s face on her T-shirt and an American flag bandana around her neck. One of her hands is raised in a fist, the other holds the hand of a young black boy next to her. Behind her, a crowd, some with fists also raised, carry signs with phrases like Our Lives Matter and Justice For All Now. 

According to Rolling Stone, they tasked the artist, Kadir Nelson, with creating something hopeful and inspirational and he “immediately thought of Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People,’ the iconic 1830 painting that depicts a woman leading the French Revolution.”

Regarding his choice to center a black woman in the piece, he explains: “The people who were pushing for those changes were African American women. They are very much at the forefront in spearheading this change, so I thought it was very important for an African American woman to be at the very center of this painting, because they have very much been at the center of this movement.”

During our call, I mention the painting and ask Fania her thoughts on why, so often, we find black women at the forefront of any social justice or human rights movement.

“Women have always organized,” she says simply. “Women work collectively, they run organizations.” She points to the church and organized religion as an example. 

“Look at the composition of church. Who’s going to church, who’s going to ask for help from God?”

Anyone who’s spent time in the houses of worship for a patriarchal religion has vivid memories of the very present men in the room. From the booming voices and squared shoulders of the pulpit to the stern, sometimes shaming looks of brothers, uncles, fathers. But the women, often more numerous, run the councils and the choirs. Around the world women pray more, attend church and are generally more religious. And the men?

“In a context of church, it’s really acceptable to ask for help from God. Because it’s God,” Fania says. “But you don’t have a lot of black men, a lot of men in any kind of church.”

That isn’t to say that men, especially black men, are complacent. Fania notes that traditional activism goes against the patriarchy’s narrow view of masculinity. 

Activism, she explains, requires one to acknowledge they’ve been a victim of a system before they can demand power. And for a lot of men, that’s not an option. 

“They want to be seen as strong,” she says. “As leaders. They want to exert control.”

In short, both black men and women acknowledge the system would have us powerless, but while women organize to collectively dismantle it, men tend to stake out on their own to dominate it. 

Black capitalism as resistance isn’t new, and was more prominent during the civil rights movement, which was largely led by men. In 1968, Roy Innis, co-national director for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) opined, 

“We are past the stage where we can talk seriously of whites acting toward blacks out of moral imperatives.” While CORE’s other director, Floyd McKissick, reasoned, 

“If a Black man has no bread in his pocket, the solution to his problem is not integration; it’s to get some bread.”

More recently the dynamics of this played out in real time on Twitter as Telfar, a black, queer-owned fashion label, sent out notifications of a handbag restock only to be immediately descended upon by a group of largely black, male resellers. Telfar describes itself as affordable luxury for everyone, and for many of the black women who buy Telfar, it exists as proof that class and fashion need not be so inextricably linked. But for the men who bulk purchased the bags just to triple the price and resell, these were just more items to wring capital out of on their quest to buy a seat at the table. 

Of course, it’s not unreasonable to argue that the purchase of a product, regardless of who makes it, as a path to liberation is still black capitalism. And in another interview, Fania specifically warns against this type of consumption. “Neoliberal Afrofeminism is more focused on representation, making the elite more diverse, and integration. This kind of afrofeminism is very media compatible. Like great Konbini-style videos about hair, lack of shades of makeup, and [other forms of] commodification.” But, she explains, “The goal is a mass movement where our people are involved, not just passively or as consumers.” 

But can consumption be divorced from black liberation if it’s such a key aspect in how so many black people organize? I bring up all the calls to “buy black” that happened in the wake of George Floyd. Some of it could be attributed to the cabin-fever induced retail therapy we all engaged in during quarantine. And for those of us who, for whatever reason, were unable to add our bodies to a protest, money seemed like an easy thing to offer. Buy a candle. A tub of shea butter. A tube of lip gloss. But what did it all really accomplish, in retrospect?

“We have to think about solidarity,” Fania explains. “Solidarity is a project. When we say support black-owned business, we still have to think about the goal, the project. So if we support coffee shops, bookshops, hair dressers that have a special place in the community and are open to the community and in conversation with the community, it’s good and it can help. But if it’s just to make some individual black people richer, it’s really limited.”

Black capitalism vs anti-capitalism remains an ongoing debate, but shouldn’t be a distraction. In the end, everyone will contribute how they best see fit and we still share a common goal. Besides, we’ll need all hands on deck to best make use of our current momentum. And that’s something Fania underscores in one of the last points she makes during our conversation:

“Something we have to repeat to people is that these protests: keep doing them. Because you have years and years of organization behind you. People came out against police brutality and a week later we’re talking about how we move towards the abolition of police, how we go towards the abolition of prison. How we move towards the end of capitalism. And this is possible because you have a grassroots organization thinking about the question even when no one else was asking it. So now we have the New York Times and the media asking if these things are possible. But that’s because even when we didn’t have the spotlight, we were working on the questions about the world after. And every day radical organizations, black liberation organizations, are thinking about the world after and the end of this system. And when protests and revolts happen, we can get there and say ‘we have a plan for this.’”

[pyrceval]

The Three R’s: Republicans, Reagan, and Russia.

For the record, before I proceed with my rambling and somewhat facetious post, I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I claim no part in any political party, as I believe the very idea of a political party is antithetical to the ideals behind this country.

The late seventies through the eighties were every bit as weird and schizophrenic a time as you can imagine. It was a time of growing social and geopolitical awareness, and yet it was also a time of growing mega corporations and greed. It was a time of bizarre fashion trends and giant hair. It was truly a strange and rapidly changing world.

Though we did not yet have the internet, news and information was starting to spread quicker across the globe than ever before. The advent of cable and satellite television, which became commonplace in most homes, and the news channels that then became available helped see to that. World events often became interwoven with cultural and entertainment events. Yet, it was still in many ways the last decade of innocence in the US. Innocence born of ignorance yes, but innocence nonetheless.

Anyone who grew up, or came of age as they say during that time period knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, three things to be true:

1. We absolutely would have flying cars by the year 2000.

2. Madonna was nothing at all like a virgin. and...

3. The Russian was the enemy of all good people in the world.

The Russian was a massive monster of a being. Ten feet tall, with rippling muscles and could bend steel bars in his bare hands. He could chew broken glass and nails with no problem. He was a virtually unstoppable beast, maybe not even human, with bulletproof skin and was determined to destroy the world and all of the good people within it.

Who, one wonders, could possibly stand up to such a beast? Well, that answer was simple: The American Cowboy.

Now, the proper period of cowboy and western movies and shows had of course passed. However, the idea behind the American Cowboy remained. He was a tough mans man. The kind that was intrinsically good simply because he was the American Cowboy. He was all grit, charm, machismo and willpower, possessing not an ounce of fear.

Clearly, I am being a bit cheeky here but this was, essentially, what the eighties gave us. These tropes were everywhere. The American Cowboy as the hero defeating the red threat was everywhere. From movies, to TV shows, to books and music and even comic books and cartoons. This was the narrative everywhere you turned. Oh, it needn't be an actual cowboy. It didn’t need be an actual Russian as the enemy. There could be, and were, stand ins where required.

We had the A-Team. McGyver. Michael Knight. John Mcclane. GI Joe. Even Han Solo and Captain Kirk. Almost to a T, across the board, they embodied the American Cowboy ideal. Full of swagger and arrogance, charm and charisma and unwavering when faced with the enemy that would do us harm. Again, not always The Russian per se, but something that was often a thinly veiled allusion to The Russian.

All of these ideas and ideals were being spoon fed to us for years. All under the guise of entertainment. The message, however, was clear. The country bought in to it, hook, line and sinker.

Now, through the lens of that cultural fascination, lets take a look at one President Ronald Reagan.

No other President in modern times oozed the persona of the American Cowboy like Reagan did. He virtually rode in on his high horse, six shooter on his hip and hat held high. He was absolutely THE American Cowboy ideal. Granted, he was an actor by trade and had the experience of playing actual cowboys in movies.

That is the same charisma and grit he brought to the presidency.

Reagan, as The American Cowboy, went toe to toe with The Russian. The battles, of course, were epic. Yet, The Cowboy never wavered. He stood up to The Russian at every turn. The Cowboy showed no fear. Had no doubts about his course. The American people cheered him on.

Reagans perceived legacy is as the man, who through pure strength of will, collapsed the Berlin wall. Though it occurred under his successor and years after he left office, Reagan is accepted as the one who brought down the Soviet Union. The American Cowboy had, for all intents and purpose, slain The Russian beast.

Now, I am not going to bother getting in to truth versus fiction in this particular post, because that isn't the point. The point here is entirely about what was perceived to be true. To this day, Republicans see Reagan as one of their greatest heroes. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a sitting Democrat in office that would deny him that legacy.

Whether truly earned or not, is irrelevant. That legacy is still accepted by most, particularly in the Republican party, today. The Republicans greatest hero is the man responsible for the defeat of Russia.

Again, to make sure we are all following this point: The Republicans absolutely hero worship President Ronald Reagan for defeating Russia. The greatest enemy of the U.S. as they were viewed throughout the 80's.

Once more, with feeling...The Republicans still claim their great hero, Ronald Reagan, to be a great hero because he defeated the greatest evil they saw in modern times...RUSSIA.

Are we following this point well enough now?

Lets fast forward to...well...now.

Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are the current leaders of the Republican party. Both of these men have clear, demonstrable and well documented ties to Russia. The NRA, arguably the special interest group with the most sway among the Republican party, also has clear, demonstrable, and well documented ties to Russia.

So, to keep track here, the party who claim and worship the legacy of President Ronald Reagan...he who was the American Cowboy and the great hero of our time who defeated The Russian...is the same party today that is beholden to Russia.

Does anyone scratch their heads at this?

This is nearly one of the plots from the MCU. The evil organization is seemingly defeated, only to spring up years later in control of the same group that was seemingly responsible for its defeat. To make matters worse, the Republican party has had that happen twice! Two separate former enemies have infiltrated the Republican party and guided it off the rails. Both Russia, and Nazi white supremacist hate groups have done the same thing. Now, the two interests have co mingled so much within the party, it has become impossible to figure out what, if anything, the actual party might stand for today.

I do know one thing, however. The American Cowboy, the Republicans great hero of old, would absolutely not stand for the Russian involvement of today. In the 80s, had there been even the slightest hint of an insinuation that any politician, especially a Republican, had any sort of ties to Russia they would have been immediately dismissed from consideration if not outright actually tarred and feathered.

Today though, in the year 2019, both of the leaders of the party and the most powerful special interest group within the party are openly and undeniably connected to Russia.

Had you told a Republican from the 80's this would happen in the future, they would rightly never believe it to be possible. Had you shown Ronald Reagan that his party, while still claiming him as their hero, would one day straight up piss all over the legacy they claim to worship by getting in bed with his great enemy he would likely have just given up. What would be the point of his great victory and legacy if his party would just one day sell their very souls to the enemy he spent his presidency fighting?

Yes the self same people who had no trouble believing we would have flying cars within twenty years could never have imagined their party being taken over by the same people they were fighting against.

That should tell you something.

Republicans, your greatest hero would be very ashamed of what you have allowed to happen. If Republicans themselves still held on to any of their so called conservative values rather than falling prey to the inherent tribalism mentality the party system breeds they too would feel a great swell of shame and do something to correct the errors of their party.

[nationaldvam]

Our favorite childhood stories tend to stick with us. For me, rabbits seemed to be prominent characters in the books I loved – from Uncle Wiggily to Watership Down, Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. And more than the adventures of the bunnies, I remember the way the stories made me feel, and the lessons I still carry with me. There were lessons of survival, persistence, curiosity, risk-taking, and problem-solving that reinforced values of leadership, compassion, community, respect, and kindness. These rabbits live on in my subconscious, holding power and space having shaped my understanding of the world and all of its love and pain. Now, as a parent, I’ve come to know just how critical these choices are for my own children, and just how much power a simple picture book can hold.

Enhancing Social Justice Literacy

In 2015, Tanya Nixon-Silberg and Francie Latour, two Black mothers, authors, and community activists, drew on their own parenting practices – especially their use of children’s books to disrupt dominant narratives with their kids – to launch Wee the People (WTP) in Boston. WTP is a social justice project for children aged 4-12 that explores activism, resistance, and social action through the visual and performing arts. As part of their work, WTP hosts Social Justice Storytime at the Boston Public Library for their “Little Voices, Big Changes” initiative, built on the belief that if kids can understand fairness they can understand justice. Tanya and Francie work to builds parents’ capacity to confront topics like racism, deportation, gentrification, misogyny, islamophobia, and homophobia.

Innosanto Nagara, a Southeast Asian immigrant father, author/illustrator, and graphic designer creates new-wave board books that inspire conversations about social justice and encourage children’s passion and action around social causes like environmental issues, LGBTQ rights, and civil rights. With titles like A is for Activist, Counting on Community, and The Wedding Portrait, Innosanto explores themes of activism, free speech, political progress, civil disobedience, and artistic defiance. Innosanto is on the editorial team of M is for Movement, a site dedicated to exploring social justice and activism in children’s literature. The contributors to M is for Movement are children’s writers, illustrators, and book creators who are long-time activists and advocates who “come from and stand with marginalized communities living at intersections of identity, experience, race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, and ability.”

At the 2018 Facing Race National Conference in Detroit organized by Race Forward, Wee the People co-founder Tanya Nixon-Silberg and author/illustrator Innosanto Nagara presented a workshop together on racial literacy for children. They stressed the importance of racial literacy from an early age in the process of dismantling racist systems and structures.

Through their work, Tanya, Francie, and Innosanto are invested in inspiring social action through the arts, and have found that children’s books offer a powerful medium for moving new generations of people towards justice. Louise Derman-Sparks from Social Justice Books (a project of Teaching for Change) agrees:

“Children’s books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children’s affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children’s books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible” (Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books, 2013).

Social Justice Literacy as a Prevention Strategy

Social justice literacy is an effective gender-based violence prevention strategy – a proactive effort to stop violence and abuse from happening in the first place by interrupting the cultural rules, norms, and constructs that support it. Several projects highlighted in the PreventIPV Tools Inventory demonstrate the effectiveness of social justice literacy in creating a more peaceful and just world. For example, Teaching for Change is a project that strives to build a more equitable, multicultural society by promoting social justice activism in the classroom. Their strategies center on leadership development and civic engagement for students, parents, and teachers that draw on real world current events. Teaching a People’s History offers classroom materials that emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. And Rethinking Schools focuses on strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism with a specific focus on promoting equity and racial justice in the classroom. These approaches focus on impacting the outermost layers of the social ecology to shift our cultural norms and values.

Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo, youth activists and creators of The Classroom Index, a textbook on racial literacy, identified two gaps in racial education:

The heart gap: “An inability to understand each of our experiences, to fiercely and unapologetically be compassionate beyond lip service,” and

The mind gap: “An inability to understand the larger, systemic ways in which racism operates.”

TED Talk: What It Takes to be Racially Literate by Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo

Children’s literature is one way to bridge these gaps by inspiring, educating, and engaging readers of all ages in a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of all people, families, and communities in our wide and vibrant world. But the fact is that marginalized people and communities are outrageously underrepresented in books available to children in mainstream American classrooms, libraries, and catalogues – in terms of both those authoring the books, and characters represented inside them. The Cooperative Children’s Book Center found that in all children’s picture books published in 2015, you are more likely to find non-human characters like bunnies (12.5%) than African Americans (7.6%) and Latinx (2.6%) combined. White characters are primarily depicted in the vast majority (73.3%) of these books.

Illustration: Diversity in Children's Books 2015 by David Huyck, in consultation with Sarah Park Dahlen and Molly Beth Griffin

Social Justice Books serves to identify, vet, and promote multicultural and social justice children’s books, building on the tradition of the Council on Interracial Books for Children which offered a social justice lens to reviews of children’s literature. They also help parents and children develop critical literacy skills and promote activism around diverse representation in libraries. One example is their #StepUpScholastic campaign urging Scholastic to “publish and distribute children’s books that reflect and affirm the identity, history, and lives of ALL children in our schools.” Engaging children in proactive efforts to both notice and address the underrepresentation of people of color in literature, as illustrated above, builds their social justice literacy.

Books that Promote Justice and Peace

For those looking for books that promote justice and peace, resources like Social Justice Books offer vetted booklists on a variety of topics, as do Raising Luminaries: Books for Littles and Little Feminist: Books for raising conscious kids. Topics include:

Learning about family structures

Talking to kids about violence

Books for tomorrow’s leaders

Honoring single mothers

Promoting healthy fatherhood

Fostering social and emotional health, compassion, and independence

Helping kids recognize privilege

Cultivating healthy sexual boundaries

Preventing sexual violence

Bullying, civil disobedience, and disrupting injustice

Seek out books by authors of color like Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Honor receipient Kwame Alexander. Additionally, several anti-violence organizations offer book lists specific to addressing trauma. For example, The Child Witness to Violence Project offers books about trauma and violence for young children.

As M is for Movement explains, “Children’s literature—both fiction and nonfiction—is full of inspiration and examples of children and adults who stand up for themselves and others. Whether it’s ducks organizing animals to oppose unfair farm rules, a student listening to her classmates’ concerns when running for student council, or a boy joining his first march, young people’s literature can demonstrate how individuals and communities have the power to act as agents for social change.”

Through children’s books, we can teach justice and peace across generations. By engaging a child in a book with a strong message that fills the heart and the head, we can help build their understanding, compassion, and confidence to impact social change in ways that are meaningful and important to them. And these lessons and values will likely stick with them their whole life long

Images:

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

Counting on Community by Innosanto Nagara

Illustration: Diversity in Children's Books 2015 by David Huyck, in consultation with Sarah Park Dahlen and Molly Beth Griffin

[alexissleeps]

Consumption of Identity via Food Packaging

Consumption is an expression of personal identity, from the clothes one wears to the car one buys, these material goods are an outward reflection of personal taste, lifestyle, and values. Less obviously, food is also an extension of personal identity. Veganism and vegetarianism, for example, are dietary choices which may reflect values, personal health concerns, or simply preference. In this context, food itself represents a faucet of someones individual identity. Less overtly, the packaging the food is in also reflects the identity of the consumer who purchases it. The packaging is more than a protection for the product but a marketing tool, a method of communication from producer to potential consumer, a rhetorical device to influence the buying habits of those examining isles in search for essential food stuffs. By applying Burkean lens on the rhetorical power of co-identification, consumption habits of individuals can be understood through the ability for packaging to resonate with personal identity of a potential buyer. 

Marketing and psychological research has demonstrated that packaging (of any kind) appeals to the subconscious of buyers and elicits irrational buying choices (Kniazeva and Belk, 748). This allows producers to capitalize off of short and informative (although typically misleading) claims on the front of food packaging, a rhetorical exchange which takes seconds to influence the customer. How exactly does it do so? In a 2009 article by Maria Kniazeva and Russell W. Belk, titled “Supermarkets as Libraries of Postmodern Mythology,” they explore the methodology of this phenomena. Kniazeva and Belk organized a sociological study which included nine long interviews of participants, first gathering data on their buying habits and personal philosophies then asking them to interpret the personality of a product based on its packaging. The results of the study unveiled that if the narrative a potential consumer subscribed to a product matched their own sensibilities or lifestyle habits, they were typically drawn to buy it. Buzzwords, such as “homemade,” for example, “imbues food with superior quality (…) [or] is emotionally equated with continuity [and] tradition” (Kniazeva and Belk, 752). It’s not surprising, then, that participant who responded to the homemade claims was a health professional from the baby boomer generation, and refused to purchase products which were processed and frozen, or otherwise stood in antithesis with “old-fashioned” fresh food. Homemade claims on food packaging resonated with her personal identity and values. 

Identity has briefly been shown thus far to operate as a rhetorical device in the food market, yet how identity can function in this manner is a theory greatly attributed to rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke. Most concisely, Burke refers to identity as “the statement of the thing’s nature” (20). The nature of a thing could refer to it’s properties, physical and material, it’s beliefs or factional alignments, it’s interest, activities, or motives. Burke then establishes a paradigm of the process co-identification or “consubstantiality,” starting with defining person A and person B, who are not identical but, “insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B” (Burke, 20). A may identify with B even when their interests are not joined unless he assumes or is persuaded to believe they are. Since “identification is compensatory to division,” consubstantiality assumes cooperation and common interests, both of which are the “characteristic invitation to rhetoric” (Burke, 25). When two or more peoples interests are at least perceived to be conjoined, especially on a particularly poignant or impelling belief or value, it becomes a point of accessibility to employ other rhetorical devices in order to maintain consubstantiality (or conversely division) to achieve the ends of persuasion, in this case buying food. Identity therefore is a powerful rhetoric device in itself and assists in the greater rhetorical process. 

The process of consubstantiality is particularly evident in the Kniazeva and Belk study which uncovers the dual narratives of a product- its identity is a collaboration between producer and consumer, “[w]hile corporations craft the packaging stories by reflecting on societal trends, consumers utilize packaging rhetoric to fit their own individual objectives and desires”  (752). This conceptualization of how identity influences purchasing choices in conjunction with current dietary trends, largely a product of the media creating a more “informed public, but also a more [health] concerned public,” work together to produce a new realm of consumption habits for a particular subsets of consumers (Welford, 4). This realm is that of Whole Foods, Co-operatives, and stores of the like which boast their organic goods and ethical consumption options. 

Beyond just purchasing products which reflect personal identity, stores like Whole Foods allow one to be immersed in their identity and lifestyle. The store itself constructs a narrative which appeals to a particular consumer subculture, defined by advertising researcher Michael Serazio as “bourgeois, bohemian, and baby boomer,” through its carefully curated organic and ethical groceries (159). The name of the store itself boasts the ‘wholeness’ of their products,  word steeped in holistic connotations. Similar establishments, like Wild Oats, also has a name which “anchors the store in nature, in the wilderness” (Dickinson and Maugh, 261). Some producers even donate a small percentage of their profits to various charities which align with the social, political, and spiritual ideals of the typical consumers. Health conscious and global consciousness woven into consumption offer wealthy but liberal buyers “absolution of [their] excesses,” it allows them to reconcile their beliefs and their bourgeois status while buying things (Serazio, 166). Stores like Whole Foods give shoppers the opportunity to “buy values through grocery products… leftist values, 1960s values, environmental values, (…) even anti-consumerist values,” all which align with the lifestyle and identity of the typical shopper (Serazio, 166). Through the process of consumption one is buying more than groceries or food they like, they are buying products which reflect facets of personal identity. 

Identifying with the culture of store or the identity of a product allows other rhetoric devices, such as visual rhetoric and diction, to more forcefully influence the consumer. 

Supermarkets and health food stores act beyond just selling food products, “they materialize consumer culture in tidy, colorful packages” (Dickinson and Maugh, 259). The bohemian bourgeois, for example, identify with consumer culture found at whole food markets and cooperatives. This identification endows producers with more opportunities to employ more direct rhetorical techniques, the most overt of those being diction. Serazio states stores like “Whole Foods rhetorically roots the shopper in this natural utopia” (168). Consumer fads and mainstream lifestyle habits are reflected in these popular buzzwords employed by producers. Words such as ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’ are often boldly plastered on green packaging, all of which act to bolster the ethos of products inside. But what is naturalness and do these buzzwords truly reflect the identity of the product? It is the co-narrative and myth making process between producer and consumer as theorized by Kniazeva and Belk. Legally, these words mean very little, the “FDA has declined to define the term ‘natural,’” and it can be used as a rhetorical tool on almost any food product. (Pomeranz, 628). The identity of the product is therefore defined through the packaging itself and the consumers perception of the its identity. 

Diction employed by food producers allows the process of Burkean consubstantiality, the co-identification of person and product, to deepen and further rhetorically move the buyer in the direction of purchasing a good. These words are considerably more effective because the “majority of consumers are perplexed about how to interpret these ads and labels” (Welford, 4). A misguided and irrational consumer is easily persuaded to buy a product which boast claims that align with personal interests, values, and taste.- a product which is an extensive of themselves or their lifestyle. 

Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification and consubstantiality can be used as a lens to interpret and examine how food packaging influences buying habits directly, beyond formal advertisements. When the interests of the buyer and the product are conjoined or aligned, the confused buyer in a vast marketplace is more likely to purchase those types of products. Possibly the product is more corporate, and therefore cheaper, to align with the lifestyle needs of students and working class individuals. Or, the product claims to be ‘natural’ or ‘low fat,’ or employs other buzzwords which may impress in the minds of the health conscious buyer, or a buyer from an older generation who detests processed foods that are high in fats and sugars. Food products then are not just nourishment, but a reflection of the personal identity of the buyer. 

Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California Press, 1969. 

Dickinson, Greg and Casey M. Maugh. “Placing Visual Rhetoric: Finding Material Comfort in Wild Oats Market.” Defining Visual Rhetorics, pp. 250-265. 

Kniazeva, Maria and Russell W. Belk. “Supermarkets as libraries of postmodern mythology.” Journal of Business Research, vol. 63, 2009, pp. 748-753.

Pomeranz, Jennifer L. “A Comprehensive Strategy to Overhaul FDA Authority for Misleading Food Labels.” American Journal of Law and Medicine, vol. 39, 2013, pp. 617-647.

Serazio, Michael. “Ethos Groceries and Countercultural Appetites: Consuming Memory in Whole Foods Brand Utopia.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 44, no. 1, 2011,     

pp. 158-177.  

Welford, Win. "SUPERMARKET SEMANTICS: The Rhetoric of Food Labeling and Advertising." ETC: A Review of General Semantics, vol. 49, no. 1, 1992, pp. 3-17.  

[casanova-lives]

Hi!! Do you have any book recommendations for someone new to marxism and want to become more educated in general. I apologize if you have links if your page i am on mobil and cant find any. I really lovd your blog and you are so well educated and you argue and explain your point so well. Lol anyway just wanted to say you are rly cool and thx for just being you. Hope you have a good day!

Im“I don’t have links on my page, I was meaning to make one.

There’s a million and one ways to go about it. I am going to try to start with a more ~neutral~ take and at the end add the books that are more pertinent to my politics.Start off with “Principles of Communism,” by Engels. It’s a short pamphlet in Q&A style that answers basic questions.

Move to The Communist Manifesto afterwards. Read it less as a guide, but more as a historical text. Much of it is applicable to today, some it is not

If you are brave enough to tackle Marx head on, then “Critique of the Gotha Program,” “Wage Labour and Capital,” “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” and “The German Ideology,” are all good reads, but a bit difficult. “Capital” is the monster we should all try to take on at some point, but it’s ok if you can’t.

Don’t forget about Engels! “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” and “The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State” are all good.

You don’t have to read all of these in order, or at once. Be sure to take breaks and read more lighthearted stuff as well.

Anyways, moving on. I usually like to say “read the bread book” (Conquest of Bread, by Petr Kropotkin) here because it’s important to have an understanding of anarchist politics as it is useful in order to critique some of the ways we may do things. as @commupissed said, “anarchism is a good political philosophy!!!! and even if you’re not an anarchist, using an anarchist lens to analyze your own politics is very useful for identifying unnecessary hierarchies and systems of violence”

Rosa Luxemburg’s “Reform or Revolution” is imperative for understanding Why we choose revolution.

Now, Lenin:

“State and Revolution,” “What is to be Done?,” and “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism“ are foundational. 

From here, you can take a variety of paths, and I don’t want to unknowingly constrict you too much.

However, I recommend “On Practice and Contradiction,” by Mao. It’s easily digestible and a good read to drive in all the points of the previous texts.

Also, “Settlers,” by J. Sakai. While it is considered “The Third-Worldist Bible” it is still a very important text to understand how the US came to be such a dominant power, how it selectively forgets and remembers parts of its own history to make it seem good, and criticizing the old socialist groups, especially labour unions, of the US is very important to understanding why radical political organizations failed to fully organize the non-white working class. While I do not agree with some of its conclusions, it is still important to read it critically.Now for some of my personal likes:“Another View of Stalin,” by Ludo Martens. I have not finished it, but from what I gathered, it attempts to oppose many of the accusations leveled against him and the Soviet Union in general. Grover Furr is a similar author, and he also deserves a critical reading. While you shouldn’t take everything they say as gospel, it does show that much of what’s said and what’s taught are simply untrue and come from bourgeois sources, which have an incentive to spread untruths or take things out of context.

“Battle for China’s Past,” by Moba Gao, and “The Unknown Cultural Revolution,” by Dongping Han. Both lived through what is called “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” so they offer personal insights.

“Road to Power,” by IV Stalin. I haven’t read it yet, but I had people recommend it to me. Thought I should add it here.

Finally, The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Basic Course ( http://library.redspark.nu/Marxism-Leninism-Maoism_Basic_Course ): I like it because it’s an easily accessible breakdown of current Marxist theory and beliefs. Even if you don’t come from Leninism, it explains their ideas in a very easy to understand manner.Oh, one more short article called “Deep Green Maoism.” ( https://revolutionaryecology.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/deep-green-maoism/ ). While the article has faults, it is the beginning of thoughts on the contradiction between human society and nature, and I think there is a lot of potential there. It’s what got me to start calling myself a “Green Marxist.” Ecology has to be very close to the front of any political program.

[sab-teraa]

You mentioned that peoples livelihoods, education etc are being affected….haven’t you considered that the workers that are striking are also having their livelihoods affected from not getting fair compensation?

Also you’re getting annoyed at the wrong people. If you’re so concerned about how this is affecting public you should be angry at the employers not paying these workers a fair compensation, not the workers striking. It’s in everyone’s interests that they are compensated fairly so they can do their job, so that other businesses can operate.

Anon. You spoke about the public and why they are not supporting the strike … and that is what I replied to you about. MY JOB IS TO BE DIPLOMATIC AND TO PROVIDE AN ANALYSIS ABOUT PUBLIC RESPONSE. I DO NOT HAVE OPINIONS (well other than saying that you didn’t take into consideration context). Having an opinion results in bias which messes up analysis.

That being Said. Apologies. Maybe I was incoherent in my other answer bc I tried to explain it in ‘everyday language’, but now I will explain it using somewhat formal academic + practical language:

1. As I’ve highlighted in my answer, their lack of support stems from a lack of trust in institutions and the current political and economic crisis going on in our country. They are fighting for survival … and are hence upset with all those that threaten their livelihoods? And this can include both employees and the organization. When people are under threat, they don’t care about anything other than their survival. This is a fact of life.

For example, fear, anger and anxiety towards a particular threat (e.g. a certain group of people) resulted in citizens voting for the unusual choice as president … a trend that is seen in multiple countries (a*merica, b^razil, i*ndia, c^hile). If you want to know more about this you can read: The Political Brain by Drew Westen or Affective Intelligence and Political Judgement by George Marcus.

2. Unfortunately we live in a country with high levels of unemployment and we are socialized to be grateful for any job we have. And the behaviour of these workers has gone against EVERYTHING the citizens know. Many perceive this behavior as ungrateful and have called for these workers to be fired? Why? Bc they believe that these workers are not appreciating their jobs, are being used as a political pawn to overthrow the government and are selfish for asking for that increase … especially given the economic crisis (caused by leaders and citizens have anger towards them too … which I also highlighted in my other answer). In political psychology we referred to these as learned behaviors and habits, and as people have preconceived opinions on a situation … they rarely see anything outside of this. Once again, you can read Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment by George Marcus to learn more about how citizens make decisions and form opinions.

In conclusion, these are all factors to take into consideration. It’s not as simple as youre making it seem. People feel the way they do given their lived experiences and socialization. It’s the lens through which they view the world and it dictates how they feel about a situation. All in all … human beings are not completely rational … emotions dictate a much of our decision making.

[graziadiocenterilpostino]

Alumni Spotlight: Thomas Hernandez

Thomas Hernandez is an alumnus who majored in the Italian Studies program at CSULB before continuing on to a master's program in Public Policy at UCLA.  Here, he reflects on his time at CSULB and the manner in which the program broadened his perspective and shaped his current academic path.

"I'd like to start with a brief introduction. My name is Thomas Hernandez and I earned my Bachelor of Arts in Italian Studies at Cal State Long Beach.  I also took classes in computer science, which provided me with a well-balanced set of technical and soft skills that earned me a position as a field support engineer subcontracting for the largest electric utility company in Southern California. I was also involved with community organizations focused on immigrant advocacy and empowerment. My volunteer and work experience led me to the realization that I needed to shift my talents to a more impactful and purposeful career, which is public service. I am now pursuing my master’s in public policy at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA.  

I have been able to incorporate language and culture skills in spaces where communication and language barriers exist and are not limited to Italian or English. Volunteering with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition and Long Beach Mutual Aid Network involves interacting with diverse community members where English is not their native language.

Cal State Long Beach's Italian Studies courses provided me with interpersonal skills that have allowed me to communicate in more effective ways. A part of language and culture skills is having an open mind and being able to listen. It provides different perspectives of the world. It gives voices to people and builds human connections.”

Tell us about your background in Italian studies, especially at CSULB and your current studies at UCLA in the Master's Program of Public Policy.

“I had the opportunity to take classes under the amazing faculty of the Italian Studies department, such as Dr. Vettore, Dr. Donato, Dr. Hopkins, and Professoressa Zappador-Guerra. There was a holistic pedagogy that went beyond learning just the Italian language; we delved into culture, gastronomy, history, literature, politics, and all aspects of Italian society. I also had the life-changing opportunity to study abroad in Recanati during the summer of 2016. UCLA is in the quarter system, so the classes in my new program are just beginning, but so far, the interactions I have had with my cohort, the faculty, and the staff have been surreal. I am excited to be in a space with incredibly talented and ambitious individuals who are focused on a shared mission for social change.

How has your experience at CSULB shaped your post-graduation career path? Specifically, how have your language and cultural skills come into practice as you pursue your master's at UCLA?

“As a member of a mixed-status family, the reoccurring theme of the immigrant struggle has been central to my lived experience. Dr. Vettore did an amazing job structuring the content of his film course to include not just the historical aspect of immigration but to also present it through an empathetic lens that reveals the human side of the struggle.

There were two films that stood out to me in the Italian Cinema class which centered around migration: Lamerica and Quando sei nato non puoi piu nasconderti (Once You're Born, You Can No Longer Hide). The themes present in these films have resonated with my family’s immigrant background and so they were of particular interest to me, a sentiment that magnified as I watched them in class.  Both films follow the transformation of traditional Italian elitists being exposed to the realities of those who are marginalized. The protagonists overcome their ignorance by experiencing the struggles themselves and are reborn into more mindful and empathetic individuals. The entitlement and ignorance initially held by the protagonists of the films mirror certain aspects of society today, and that transformation is what I hope can occur in order to end the generations-old cycle of exploiting and scapegoating migrants.  

This multi-perspective approach was also executed well by Dr. Donato in Italian 345: Italian American Experience (as it was called then), in which the readings and films gave a voice to Italian immigrants. It was through these courses and my time studying abroad that I saw parallels between the mistreatment of Italian-Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Latin American immigrants and African refugees today. The vicious cycle of exploiting and scapegoating immigrant communities throughout American history galvanized me to become involved with various immigrant advocacy groups in the Greater Long Beach area, eventually leading me to resign from my role as field support engineer for the largest electric utility company in Southern California and pursue a more socially impactful career.”

What advice would you give to students considering an academic path in Italian Studies? What are some of the benefits you have noticed?

I would greatly advise students to make the most of their courses as well as build relationships with the amazing faculty; the instructors are there because they genuinely care about their students and always go above and beyond for them. I would also encourage students to take the time to attend the conferences, lectures, and seminars outside of the classroom; the Italian Studies department has an extensive network that will open many doors and lead to amazing new opportunities. I especially appreciate the mentoring I have received from Dr. Vettore over the years; he was extremely instrumental in shaping my graduate school applications and was always very receptive whenever I would reach out to him for guidance. I would also highly recommend taking advantage of any study abroad opportunities, as that exposure really broadens a person’s perspective and appreciation for diversity. My time in Recanati really opened my eyes to how big the world is and I will always cherish the memories and friendships I was fortunate to make there. If it were not for my experience at CSULB and the support of the faculty, I would not be where I am today."

[jeremyhodge2]

Social Networks, Class, and the Syrian Proxy War

New America: 06 April 2021

By Anand Gopal and Jeremy Hodge

Introduction: A Network View of Syria’s Proxy War

The Syrian conflict began as a mass uprising, with protesters gathering in one small town after the next, demanding the end of the Assad family’s 40-year dictatorship. The demonstrators linked arms, chanting “Peaceful! Peaceful!” waving placards with slogans championing liberal values and human rights. Within months, however, the movement for democratic reform mutated into an armed struggle to oust President Assad. The hand of regional powers could be seen and felt everywhere. The conflict became many things at once: an inspiring revolution, a devastating civil war, a magnet for Islamist radicals, and, especially, one of the most complicated and wide-ranging proxy wars in modern history. The United States, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were all, to varying degrees, supporting the rebel movement, while Russia, Iran, Hizbullah, Iraqi, and Afghan militias stood behind the Assad regime.

With its hundreds of factions and dozens of foreign actors, the Syrian battlefield can seem numbingly complex, but underneath it all lies a logic. To grasp this logic, we must turn the analysis of the war on its head; Most studies of proxy war prioritize the interests of outside sponsors and the degree of control they hold over their proxies. While important, this misses the other side of the story: how such outside interests interact with the intimate forms of life on the ground, such as preexisting political currents, economic interests, cultural mores, religious practices, and, above all, the mosaic of friendships and rivalries that help form the fabric of everyday life.

In a proxy-client relationship, the aim of a local actor is to leverage outside support to pursue local objectives, and the aim of a patron is to enroll local actors in the pursuit of external interests. The patron’s interest in directing client behavior is distinct from its capacity to do so. Patron capacity depends on levels of financial support, but other factors can play a role as well, including:

the strength of ties between patron and client,

the internal cohesion of the client actors, and

the client’s ability to secure alternative or independent means of support.

All three factors crucially depend on the features of social life before the conflict. Individuals form a number of stable relationship patterns, including those based on marriage, kinship, joint economic activity, shared geographic origins, shared political membership, and shared religious activity. Social networks such as these represent an important way through which individuals engage in collective action; people occupy squares, join armed groups, and track down funding through their friends, relatives, business partners, political allies and coreligionists. An often overlooked factor in network formation is class, because an individual’s economic position not only influences their worldview, it also defines the horizons for obtaining resources.

Social networks and class played a key role in determining which segments of the Syrian rebellion were more susceptible to forming transnational linkages, and when those linkages allowed foreign patrons to effectively control their proxies.

The rebel movement against the Assad regime broadly fell into two camps—a U.S.-Saudi-Jordanian axis, and a Turkish-Qatari axis. Generally, the U.S.-Saudi alliance backed three types of actors in the uprising: liberals, loyalist Salafis, and tribal figures. Early in the rebellion, it was “liberals”—secular activists emphasizing human rights and democratic freedoms—who played the leading role in nearly every rebelling town and city, where they formed collectives called local coordinating committees (LCCs). Though the LCCs played a pivotal role in organizing peaceful protests, they were not a cohesive national network that could undertake unified political action. Instead, most LCCs were limited to the towns and cities where they had been founded. This is because most LCC members did not have pre-2011 ties, making coordination amid violent regime crackdown difficult. The revolutionary liberals also lacked pre-2011 ties to foreign actors, with the exception of nongovernmental organizations—and Western NGOs typically sought to depoliticize those they supported, diverting their activity into technocratic tasks like grant making or conducting workshops. In many towns, the cultural elite consisted of liberals, but lacked the capital to function as an economic elite, so they were unable to use patronage to achieve coherency in their networks.

Tribal elites, the second major group backed by the U.S.-Saudi alliance, did not form cohesive cross-tribe networks by the very nature of tribal structure, which is fragmented and fractal-like. Moreover, tribal sheikhs owe their authority to their ability to dispense patronage, which required that they maintain access to state power. As a result, those sheikhs who were relatively disadvantaged under the Assad regime also lacked significant revenue to cohere national and international networks.

Finally, loyalist Salafis, referring here to a strain of Salafism that did not oppose the Saudi monarchy, did not constitute a cohesive nationwide network with access to wealth to the extent that other Salafis did Moreover, such Salafis were far too few in number to provide a base for nationwide mobilization. Rival strands of Salafism were able to play such a role, but they were opposed to Riyadh. In short, the United States and Saudi Arabia failed to mold their proxies into an effective force because they backed actors who lacked an extensive network of pre-2011 ties as well as access to revenues to sustain and cohere themselves in the early period of the uprising.

In contrast, Qatar and Turkey chose to back Islamist forces that were built upon, or descended from, networks related to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition to the Brotherhood themselves, these Islamists included so-called activist Salafis, who represented a hybrid of Brotherhood-style political beliefs with a Wahhabi-influenced theology. Historically, the Brotherhood attracted support from Sunni merchant and landowning classes, in large part because their anti-socialist worldview resonated with the economic interests of these elites.

After the insurgency of the 1980s was crushed, many Brotherhood members fled for the Gulf and opened businesses. A transnational merchant network developed, based partly on kinship and partly on business ties. Thus, the link between the Muslim Brotherhood and the “provincial bourgeoisie”—traders and capitalists from rural towns—was pivotal in the group’s ability to survive the 1980s defeat and appear on the stage in 2011 as one of the few organized and politically conscious segments of Syrian society. In some cases, individuals in this network maintained business and political ties with foreign states, such as Qatar. After 2011, Qatar leveraged these preexisting ties to mobilize a cohesive network—in effect, its capacity was actually a reflection of the nature of the network it chose to support.

Saudi-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups, such as Jamal Maʿrouf’s Syria Martyrs Brigade, had few preexisting networks outside of kinship, meaning that as the group expanded beyond Maʿrouf’s kinsmen it proved difficult to control. As aid fluctuated, the group fragmented and relied on banditry to fund themselves. Qatar-backed Islamist groups, on the other hand, emerged from cohesive preexisting networks and were well-resourced because of their links to the provincial bourgeoisie, so were less likely to resort to banditry. Moreover, unlike their liberal counterparts, they maintained longstanding ties to foreign states. This holds an important, and counter-intuitive lesson about patron capacity: While U.S.-Saudi proxies were generally poorer (prior to infusions of funding) than Qatar’s proxies, that did not mean that Riyadh or Washington could more easily buy allegiance or their ability to act as an effective proxy. Instead the relative wealth and cohesion of Qatar’s proxies helped Qatar exercise influence.

In summary, because the nature of prewar social networks differed, the capacities of patron states differed. The remainder of this report is divided into five sections that explore this phenomenon in depth. The next section examines the nature of the key networks in Syria’s war, detailing the role that class played in their formation. Section III turns to the question of patron interests, examining the Gulf states’ motivations for intervention. Section IV narrates a history of the Syrian war through the proxy lens, focusing on how patron capacities intersected with local social structure. In Section V, we apply these concepts to a micro-historical case study of the northern city of Manbij. The conclusion places the issue of social networks and class within the broader context of Syrian history.

A Deeper Look at Patron Capacity: Networks of Solidarity in the Syrian Rebellion

There are many factors that may influence a patron’s ability to shape its clients’ behavior, including levels of bureaucratic efficiency, funding, and expertise, as well as political realities within the sponsoring state. What is often overlooked, however, is that key features of the client also influence patron capacity. Perhaps the most important is the nature of client social networks. Social networks come in many forms; we call those which facilitated collective action in the Syrian conflict solidarity networks.

We can characterize the nature of a solidarity network by describing its “internal” and “external” features. Internally, the more cohesive a solidarity network is, the more easily its leadership is able to exert command and control over rank-and-file members, and the less likely banditry and other criminal behaviors are. Likewise, the more well-capitalized the network is—the wealthier its members—the more easily it can provide start-up revenue and the more able it is to withstand the vicissitudes of patron funding.

Externally, the more preexisting ties between the client and the patron, the more effectively the patron can control client leadership. Such ties allow patrons to better coordinate with their clients, grant them greater oversight over client activities, and generally serve to align interests.

In Syria, there were dozens of prewar networks—Table 1 lists a few—but only some figured prominently in the conflict. Of these, the armed movement was dominated by six: liberals, tribal sheikhs, the Muslim Brotherhood, activist Salafis, loyalist Salafis, and jihadi Salafis. We described the fragmentary nature of liberal and tribal networks above. This section takes a closer look at the other four networks.

The Muslim Brotherhood

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is one of the most important organizations in modern Syrian history. Historically, the Brotherhood was closely aligned with the Syrian merchant class and harbored ties to multiple foreign actors, including (for a time) Saudi Arabia and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The formal organization was destroyed in the 1980s but survived under the guise of informal kinship and merchant networks. By 2011, this network represented the most organized, well-financed, and transnational political formation in the country. The group—in particular, its informal apparatus, which includes multiple offshoots—enjoyed close links with Turkey, Qatar, and revolutionary Libya. As a result, its characteristics made it a network well positioned, relative to other Syrian networks, to allow for high patron capacity.

The roots of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood date to religious reform movements that appeared in the late nineteenth century across the Ottoman Empire. A series of thinkers responded to the supposed backwardness of Muslim lands, which were under colonial subjugation or in a state of decline, by arguing that Islam has the potential to modernize their societies and liberate them from Western imperialism. The most important of these “modernist” reformers was Hassan Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. The Syrian branch was established in 1945 and composed of various preexisting networks of religious activists. In particular, the Hama-Aleppo network was Sufi in orientation, whereas the Damascus branch tended to reject traditional practices.

In the 1960s, the Baʿth Party seized power and expropriated major landowners, many of whom had presided over exploitative quasi-feudal estates. By distributing land to millions of peasants, the regime cultivated a popular base in rural sectors and among the working class. In reaction, the bourgeoisie and landed aristocracy increasingly threw its support behind the Muslim Brotherhood—whose worldview aligned with that of the urban merchant class. This occurred primarily in regions where landholding had been most unequal, and therefore where the old elites had the most to lose from redistributive Baʿthist policies—areas such as Hama and Idlib. These class dynamics would have important consequences for the Syrian revolution.

Generally, the Muslim Brotherhood was a reformist project, seeking to win power through peaceful means, but in 1960s Egypt a revolutionary current emerged through the writings of Sayyed Qutb. He argued that the supreme legal and governmental authority is God, and a state is only legitimate if it is administered in accordance with God’s law. Crucially, this means that Muslims do not owe obedience to a state or ruler who contravenes God’s law. Under such conditions, a revolutionary vanguard should act. Before long, Bannaist and Qutbist wings of the Brotherhood emerged around the Middle East.

In Syria, the Qutbist wing took the form of the Fighting Vanguard, which launched an insurgency against the Baʿthist state in the late 1970s. However, because the Brotherhood’s social base was limited to a narrow section of the population—the urban merchant class and the landowning elite—the regime was able to isolate and crush the uprising. Afterward, many Brotherhood cadres fled the country, establishing businesses in the Gulf and Europe. Over the years, this developed into a network of merchants and traders, who commanded significant capital and hailed from former Brotherhood hotbeds like Jebel al-Zawiya, Mareʿ, and ʿAnadan. Most of these merchants were no longer formal members of the organization, but they constituted a network of trust based on their former affiliation. They were broadly Bannaist in political perspective, and Sufi in religious orientation. In the revolution, this Brotherhood network became one of the earliest funding conduits to penetrate the country. The most prominent rebel faction representing this trend was Liwa al-Tawhid, under the command of two merchants from Mareʿ and ʿAnadan.

Activist Salafism

The movement that some scholars call activist Salafism actually consists of a few disparate lineages, all linked by their merger of Brotherhood-style concern with worldly politics and Wahhabi theology, as well as their independence from the Saudi regime. Qatar is the world’s premier backer of activist Salafism, while significant currents that function without state support are found in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. In Syria before the war, activist Salafis constituted a small, tight-knit network that could be found in most major cities and in many small towns, and they tended to come from the same upper-middle-class background as the Muslim Brotherhood; indeed, the activists are in some sense one of the descendants of the Brotherhood. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the activist Salafist network’s cohesiveness and access to capital contributed to the development of high patron capacity to influence it. Moreover, the activists harbored many pre-2011 ties to Qatar, making for a successful proxy relationship when the war started.

The activist Salafist trend ultimately traces its origins to Wahhabism, a doctrine associated with the eighteenth century religious reformer Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, a theologian from Najd, the central region of modern-day Saudi Arabia. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s teachings articulate how a Muslim’s practice should relate to the most fundamental aspect of the faith: monotheism. Contrary to prevailing theology, he argued that affirming belief in one God is insufficient to qualify as monotheistic practice—one must also deny all other forms of worship. Under this expansive conception of worship, everything from seeking saintly intercession at tombs to representing a living being on paper was a form of shirk, the association of another being with God. “Ibn Abd al-Wahhab noted that the unbelievers may well profess God’s oneness as the creator and the sustainer,” writes scholar of Wahhabism David Commins. “But if they call on the angels, or Jesus, or the saints to get closer to God, then they are unbelievers. Even if they pray night and day, live an austere life and donate all their wealth, they are still unbelievers and God’s enemy because of their belief in Jesus or some saint.” Those guilty of such a sin were effectively committing a form of disbelief in the unitary power of God himself—and in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s view, such disbelief rendered their life and property subject to attack. In his eyes, the world around him was mired in shirk, especially in the form of Sufism and Shiism. In 1744, he allied with the tribal leader Muhammad ibn Saʿud, legitimizing the latter’s conquest over what Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab considered the idolatrous lands of the Najd.

By then, Wahhabism had developed a distinctive feature that would have important consequences in the twentieth century. Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab had managed to weave his iconoclastic notions into a broader, preexisting system of creed (ʿaqida) known variously as traditionalism or the Hanbali school. The Hanbali creed (as distinct from the Hanbali fiqh or jurisprudence) rejected theological schools that included reason alongside the Qur’an and the hadith as legitimate sources of religious knowledge. As a consequence, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab maintained that a literal reading of the Qur’an is the only way to guard against unbelief. Though he championed the notion that jurists should not blindly imitate previous scholars in rendering legal decisions, he did not offer any advances in the field of Islamic law. In other words, Wahhabism is a theological doctrine, and its followers conceptualize their differences with other religious schools primarily on questions of creed—not on questions of politics in the modern sense. Wahhabi religious practice is primarily focused on the correct rituals and rules for personal conduct. Second, by allying with the house of al-Saʿud, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab effectively created distinct spheres of responsibility; politics fell entirely under the emir’s domain, and questions of belief and practice under the purview of the ʿulema. Only the emir could call for jihad, and his rule was considered legitimate so long as this alliance held.

By the mid-twentieth century, Wahhabism remained clustered in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, based on an ʿulema hailing from the Najd and allied to the House of al-Saud. The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, had chapters in many countries—and, despite surface similarities, their brand of Islamic modernism differed sharply with the Wahhabi belief system. The core distinction is that the Wahhabi movement is oriented primarily toward creed, in particular to the question of which forms of personal conduct qualify as a legitimate religious belief, whereas the modernists emphasized the political nature of religious reform. Because the state and the market had radically transformed social life, it was impossible for the modernists to conceive of religion independent of such forces. Banna argued that Islam was a not merely a question of ritual or theological orientation, but rather a “complete system” that implied a total reordering of society through such reforms as constitutionalism and wealth redistribution. Such a notion would be unthinkable in classical Wahhabi doctrine. In fact, the very existence of the Brotherhood as a political party was an abomination to Wahhabi sensibilities, which viewed any form of hizbiyya (factionalism) as a threat to monotheism. Even surface similarities reveal, on closer inspection, a world of difference: like the Wahhabis, Banna and the modernists decried religious practices that they considered “innovations,” such as various Sufi traditions, but for entirely different reasons. Whereas Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab critiqued Sufism on theological grounds, the modernists did so on political grounds—that “backwards” superstitions hampered progress in Muslim lands. In general, Banna paid little attention to creed, instead tailoring Islam to the anti-colonial struggle. The Brotherhood did not declare Muslims apostates simply based on differences in ritualistic practice—as we saw above, Sufis filled the ranks of the Hama-Aleppo branch of the Syrian Brotherhood. Banna, in fact, advocated a big tent approach. “Let us cooperate in those things on which we can agree,” he said, “and be lenient in those on which we cannot.”

It was in 1960s Saudi Arabia that these two disparate traditions merged, a novel synthesis out of which the modern Salafi movement appeared. Muslim reformers from the late nineteenth century have been described as “Salafis” but, as Henri Lauzière has shown, this term was misapplied by foreigners to thinkers who were far from what we now know as modern Salafism.

In the 1960s, Gemal ʿAbd al-Nasser inspired millions across the Middle East with his secular message of Pan-Arab nationalism, while at the same time communist movements were spreading throughout the region, even within the Kingdom itself. In his groundbreaking study of the period, Stéphane Lacroix writes:

[Saudi Crown Prince] Faysal understood the necessity of not surrendering the ideological arena to a master of propaganda like Nasser. To confront Nasser’s pan-Arab socialism, he had to make Islam, the kingdom’s chief symbolic resource, into a counterideology, but the very traditional Wahhabi ulema were quite incapable of engaging in a political debate of this magnitude. Thus the members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia were increasingly brought into the anti-Nasser propaganda apparatus and became its core by 1962.

One of the émigrés was Mohammed Qutb, professor in the faculty of Shariʿa in Mecca, and younger brother of Sayed, who issued a series of books and lectures in the 1970s that attempted to reconcile the Qutbist strand of Brotherhood ideology with the Wahhabi doctrine. He grafted a Wahhabi conception of creed onto the Brotherhood’s political vision, while carefully downplaying elements of his brother’s revolutionary program that might make the authorities bristle. This fusion proved popular among Brotherhood expatriates who, with the regime’s encouragement, had filled the ranks of the university system. This fusion of Brotherhood and Wahhabi doctrines came to be known as the Sahwa (awakening). Over the decades, tens of thousands of young Saudis were influenced by Sahwi ideas, either by attending university or clubs organized by Sahwa luminaries. At first, these activities steered clear of criticizing the regime. But by the late 1980s, in the shadow of declining oil revenues, recent graduates faced dim career prospects and a religious establishment that remained impenetrable to outsiders. In 1991, the Sahwa movement erupted in protest following the regime’s decision to allow American soldiers on Saudi soil. The movement went on to call for wide-ranging reforms, including tentative steps towards democratization; however, by the mid-1990s the regime managed to crush the uprising and arrest most of its leaders.

Still, the Sahwa made a lasting contribution by helping give rise to the modern Salafi movement. By politicizing Wahhabi doctrines, the Sahwa produced a version of Wahhabi-inspired ideology that could engage with modern questions like political reform and social justice. One of the key Sahwa networks representing this synthesis sprung from the followers of a Syrian named Muhammad Surur bin Nayef Zayn al-ʿAbadeen. His acolytes, known as Sururis, perhaps most clearly exemplify the “brotherization” of Wahhabi belief; key Sahwi leaders Salman al-ʿAwda and Safar al-Hawwali were Sururis, and were imprisoned for four years for their roles in the protest movement. As Sahwi ideas expanded beyond Saudi borders, the Sururis became an important component of a network that we call “activist Salafism.” Activist Salafis typically seek to reform existing Muslim governments—and potentially support the overthrow of non-Muslim ones. Some prominent activist Salafis argue that there is no contradiction between democracy and Islam, while all agree with Qutb’s injunction that a state is only legitimate if it administers religious law. On matters of creed, most are similar to Wahhabis and share with them an intense sectarianism towards Shias.

In Syria, activist Salafism first took root in the 1990s. One of the movement’s founders was a schoolteacher named Abu Anas, from Saraqib. He recalls:

We had a secret group in Aleppo, we used to meet each other in creative ways to avoid the security grip. We were five in our secret group; this was the core of the Salafi movement, and it started to spread and to expand in other areas. In Raqqa for example, because I was a teacher there, and in Idlib. There was no name for this group; the others were also university students. Our activities were mostly to distribute books, and to call people to Islam, to reawaken them. Usually we would organize against communism, or to support the Muslim cause. For example, during the Bosnia conflict, we started to raise awareness because the people didn't know anything about what was happening. We were interested in raising awareness about Shariʿa. In 1994, we began to warn people about the Shia.

By the mid-1990s, there were nearly two dozen people in Abu Anas’ group.

Our main interest was in giving a response to communism [which was then popular on university campuses] and liberalism, and then later on to respond to the Iranians and the Sufi orders. We read al-Albani and the Sahwi Sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, such as Salman al ʿAwda, Safar al-Hawwali, Naser al-ʿUmar. The sheikhs of Sahwa were in the middle between the Brotherhood and Wahhabism. So they used to care about Muslims around the world, the jihad in Afghanistan, and Chechnya and Bosnia.

In 2011, Abu Anas became a key founder of Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most important rebel organizations, and arguably the largest recipient of funds accrued through the worldwide activist Salafist network.

Loyalist Salafism

Within Saudi Arabia, anti-Sahwa views emanated not only from the regime but from another major religious trend that took root there in the 1960s. Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, an Albanian scholar who grew up in Damascus, arrived in the kingdom in the sixties and began to arraign both the Brotherhood-influenced Sahwa generation and the official Wahhabi tradition. Against the former, he made familiar Wahhabi-style critiques of the politicization of religious practice. Jacob Olidort writes, “Albani summarized [his] attack on the Muslim Brotherhood [as]: ‘the ends do not justify the means.’” The Sahwa-style Salafis seek to tailor religious teachings to political ends, whereas Albani maintained that the “priority is to correct the means that Muslims use to achieve their ends; their method.” In other words, Albani believed that Muslims must purify their creed before engaging in political activity. Against the Wahhabi tradition, on the other hand, he criticized the Wahhabi ʿulema’s adherence to the Hanbali school of jurisprudence, arguing that the Qur’an and the hadith are the only legitimate sources of religious knowledge. He espoused a renewed science of the hadith, through a process of historical investigation and moral reasoning that was, in theory, open to anyone who committed themselves to the task. This removed the mastery of religious knowledge from the grip of the Wahhabi ʿulema, a closed religious aristocracy limited to a few families from the Najd. “Thus,” writes Stéphane Lacroix, “the science of hadith can be measured according to objective criteria unrelated to family, tribe, or regional descent, allowing for a previously absent measure of meritocracy.”

However, like the Wahhabi ʿulema, Albani harbored a hostility toward political activity, so his thinking represented a quietist form of Salafism. Nonetheless, in practice, his followers often adopted de facto political positions: during the 1990s, for example, one current, led by Rabiʿ al-Madkhali, were staunch defenders of the Saudi state against the Sahwa protest movement. Other currents even engaged in de jure political activity, such as Kuwaiti Salafis, who participated in parliament. What unites these strands, ultimately, is not quietism but the fact that they do not oppose the Saudi regime. For this reason, we denote this trend as “loyalist Salafism.” With respect to the Syrian conflict, key loyalist Salafis include, in addition to al-Madkhali, Hayef al-Mutairi (Kuwaiti), and ʿAdnan ʿArour (Syrian, but based in Saudi Arabia), both of whom were among the most prominent fundraisers for the Syrian opposition.

In Syria, loyalist Salafi networks emerged in the 1990s, like their Activist counterpart. An early hotbed of Loyalist activity was in the Damascus suburb of Douma, from where local religious scholars had traveled to Saudi Arabia, where they became exposed to Salafi ideas. One of the leading Salafis in Douma was Sheikh Abdullah Alloush, imam of the Tawhid mosque, who moved to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s. After 2011, his son Zahran Alloush became the leader of the rebel faction Liwa al-Islam, which ruled the Damascus suburbs like a fiefdom, and which benefited primarily from funds drawn from loyalist Salafi networks backed by Saudi Arabia.

Loyalist Salafist networks were not as pervasive in Syria as the Brotherhood networks, though they began to grow after the 1990s. One factor in this growth was globalization and migration to the Gulf, particularly in areas along the Euphrates river basin where local clans maintained historic kinship ties to tribes living within Saudi borders. Unlike Brotherhood or activist networks however, loyalists did not form a cohesive national network and came from a diverse class background. As a result, during the war the patrons backing loyalist networks did not enjoy high capacity in areas of northern Syria where the revolution was strongest, such as Idlib and the northern Aleppo provinces.

Even in cases where factions had longstanding ties to Saudi Arabia, the capacity of Riyadh to control these proxies proved limited in the long run due to the nature of the loyalist networks. In a stretch of the Middle Euphrates Valley encompassing the region of Tabqa, Maskana, Deir Hafer and al-Khafsa, a unique brand of Saudi-backed opposition emerged early in 2012. These factions were founded by the descendants of several of Syria’s former landowning tribal elite who were marginalized by the land reform policies of the Baʿth party.

The sheikhs of the Nasser, Khafaja, Hadidiyyin, and Ghanem clans in Tabqa, Maskana, Deir Hafer, and Khafsa, respectively, had owned tens of thousands of hectares land along the Euphrates, much of which was seized as part of state land redistribution policies. By the 1980s, many of these tribesmen relocated to Saudi Arabia, where they maintained kinship ties and used their remaining capital to launch businesses. This migration introduced Middle Euphrates Valley tribesmen to loyalist Salafism and helped them establish ties with the Saudi elite that proved useful after 2011. The founders of armed Syrian opposition factions in all four of these cities managed to secure significant Saudi funding in early 2012 and establish a loyalist Salafist belt along the Euphrates that was distinct from the Qatari-Brotherhood-backed belt in Idlib and the northern Aleppo countryside. Despite their initial backing from Riyadh, however, the majority of these factions ended up joining Ahrar al-Sham, and in rarer cases, Jabhat al-Nusra. One reason for this switch is that these factions contained individuals who had fought in Iraq, and had preexisting ties to donors in the activist and (occasionally) jihadi circuit.

Nonetheless, Saudi aid continued to flow to these groups throughout the first half of 2013. Like Riyadh’s willingness to work with certain elements of the Brotherhood in early 2012, Saudi Arabia’s preexisting ties to the tribes in these areas enabled Riyadh to justify compromising on the issue of activist Salafism and continue supporting these groups. By mid-2013, however, Saudi aid to these groups had largely ceased.

Jihadi Salafism

Jihadi Salafism reflects a merger of various strands of political Islam. Its roots lie in a faction of the Qutbist wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that turned violent and sought to overthrow the Egyptian state (of which Ayman Zawahiri is a prominent example). This trend merged with two others: one stemming from the Sahwa generation in Saudi Arabia (Osama bin Laden passed through a Sahwa network in the Hejaz), and another originating in a wing of Albani’s followers who radicalized and turned against the Saudi state (for whom the Jordanian Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi played an important role as a theorist reconciling Qutbist ideas with Albani’s theology). Jihadi Salafi doctrine further developed through exigencies of the battlefield, which was a crucible of their worldview.

In Syria, the first Salafi jihadi network materialized around the firebrand preacher Abu al-Qaʿqaʿ, whom Syrian intelligence supported as a means to apply pressure on the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Many Syrians were moved by U.S. atrocities to cross the border and join the resistance in Iraq; a minority went through al-Qaʿqaʿs network and fell into al-Qaʿeda in Iraq (AQI) circles. In this way, AQI began to develop networks in Deir ez-Zour and the Damascus countryside, aided by porous borders and the regime’s blind eye. The regime also likely harbored links to Fateh al-Islam, a Jihadi Salafi group based in the Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon, as a means to help manage its occupation there. Eventually, Damascus faced blowback: splinter elements from this group linked up with returnees from Iraq to form Jund al-Sham, which waged a low-level insurgency against the Syrian state during the mid 2000s. Key leaders of Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS emerged from these networks.

In Syria, jihadi Salafi networks were much smaller than the others, but nonetheless quite cohesive due to the time individuals spent together in prison or in underground cells. Compared to the others, these networks harbored few links to foreign state actors. One reason was due to regional powers’ restrictions, which made donations a risky endeavor. Another, and more important, was due to a strategic orientation, first outlined by Abu Musʿab al-Zarqawi during the Iraq war, to avoid reliance on outside funding in order to maintain independence. Despite the cohesion, jihadi Salafi networks interests’ rarely overlapped with foreign states, making the question of patron capacity irrelevant; jihadi Salafis were the actors least implicated in Syria’s proxy war.

A Deeper Look at Patron Interests: The Logic of Gulf State Interventions

Patron capacity depends, in part, on the nature of client social networks. But capacity is only one element to the proxy-client relationship; the other is the objectives and goals of the patron. If the patron’s and client’s interests are fundamentally at odds, factors like client cohesion matter little. However, patron goals are themselves influenced by the character of solidarity networks and their transnational ties.

This section describes the logic underlying the interventions of the Gulf states, who were the most important backers of the armed opposition. The respective logics of intervention were strikingly divergent, leading eventually to the development of the two main axes of support: a U.S.-Saudi-Jordanian axis and a Turkish-Qatari axis. This division in turn led to battlefield incoherence that undermined the opposition’s ability to withstand the regime’s onslaught. The logic of intervention was rooted in the intervening power’s geopolitical interests, its domestic concerns, and its prewar ties with Syrian networks.

This section does not discuss Turkey and Jordan, the other key regional backers, but they followed lines similar to the Gulf states: Turkey was closely aligned with Qatar, while Jordan pursued a strategy similar to Saudi Arabia’s. The United States operated within the Saudi-Jordanian axis.

Saudi Arabia

In the beginning, Saudi Arabia adopted an anti-democratic, counter-revolutionary stance toward the Arab Spring in order to prevent the winds of political change from blowing across its borders. The threat to Riyadh came in two forms. The first stemmed from Saudi Arabia’s experience confronting jihadi Salafi networks that emerged from the ashes of the failed 1990s Sahwa movement. In the late 1990’s, a splinter group of ex-Sahwi activists merged with a strand of Albani followers and those from Bin Laden’s network to form a local al-Qaʿeda franchise. Between 2002 and 2006, this outfit waged a low-level insurgency in the kingdom that left more than 200 dead and 500 wounded. Though the group lacked a popular base, it managed to strike vital targets such as U.S. interests and petroleum infrastructure. At the same time, the rise of al-Qaʿeda in Iraq across the border raised the prospect of a multi-pronged threat to Saudi interests.

The second and more serious threat came from the potential of the pro-democracy movement in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere spreading to Saudi Arabia and challenging the monarchy’s grip on power. After stamping out the Sahwa in the 1990s, the regime did its best to prevent the movement’s resurgence by rehabilitating key Sahwi leaders on the condition that they limit their critiques to the social arena (such as opposing women’s right to drive) and remain silent on political questions. At the same time, the palace undertook a rapprochement with foreign branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, who were allowed to return to the kingdom or intensify their activities so long as they were directed internationally. These policies bore fruit in the early days of the Arab Spring, as Sahwa and Muslim Brotherhood figures in country almost unanimously boycotted calls by local activists to hold a March 11, 2011 “Day of Anger” protest in solidarity with the revolutions around the region. 

Upon the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, Riyadh was faced with a delicate predicament. On the one hand, the regime welcomed any development that might weaken an ally of Iran, its regional rival. On the other, the palace recognized that the rise of al-Qaʿeda was in part blowback from Riyadh’s earlier policy of nurturing the Muslim Brotherhood at home and supporting the jihad in Afghanistan. Moreover, it viewed the pro-democracy sentiments of the uprising with grave concern. For these reasons, Saudi Arabia avoided intervening in Syria during the first year of the conflict. In 2012, it slowly waded into the foray, primarily supporting secular groups and some Brotherhood factions as a means of limiting the strength of Activist Salafist groups. During 2012, though, the Brotherhood began to pull closer to Qatar, and the Saudis started to lose their influence over the group. The election of the Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi as president of Egypt raised the specter of a reinvigorated Sahwa movement within Saudi borders, pushing Riyadh to sharply alter course. By the end of 2012, Saudi Arabia had largely excluded Brotherhood and activist Salafi networks from its patronage—bringing it into direct competition with Qatar.

Qatar

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Qatar has never faced a strong grassroots opposition movement, nor does it share borders with fragile states, reducing the threat of jihadist spillover. On the contrary, Qatar’s foreign policy is driven by splits and rivalries within Doha’s ruling class—divisions that have been exacerbated by Saudi rulers. The Saudi royal family is tied by kinship to Qatar’s second most powerful tribe, the al-Attiya clan; historically, Riyadh used these links to wield influence over Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, Qatar’s emir from 1972 to 1995, who had married into the al-Attiya family. But Khalifa’s son, Hamid bin Khalifa, was an opponent of Saudi influence and refused to marry into the al-Attiya. In 1995, he led a coup against his father, signaling Doha’s attempt to steer a course independent of Saudi domination. Riyadh in turn retaliated by sponsoring a number of failed coup attempts.

Hamid bin Khalifa also drifted closer to the U.S. orbit, as epitomized by the official opening of al-Udeid air base in March 2002. In October 2002, reports claimed that domestic opposition to Doha’s growing alliance with the U.S. led to a botched coup attempt led by factions within the royal family. Later in 2009, conservatives led by the Chief of Staff of Qatar’s Armed Forces General Hamid bin ali al-Attiya purportedly launched another failed coup attempt. There are indications that these oppositional ruling class factions were linked to Salafist networks in the country. Rather than risk confrontation with factions in the ruling elite, Hamid bin Khalifa attempted to placate these groups by making support for the Brotherhood and activist Salafis a core plank of his regime’s foreign policy, while awarding top government posts to figures with Activist sympathies. The strategy served the additional purpose of agitating Saudi Arabia by supporting its enemies abroad—forcing Riyadh to confront Qatar’s actions on foreign fronts rather than exert pressure on Doha at home.

There was an additional domestic benefit to the al-Thani regime’s support of the Brotherhood: While most Qataris practice Wahhabism, and the ruling al-Thani clan hails from the same Najd region as the Saudi elite, Doha’s embrace of the Brotherhood was in part an attempt to build an alternative form of religious legitimacy that could not be manipulated by Riyadh.

For these reasons, during the Syrian revolution, Qatar was the principal supporter of Brotherhood and activist networks—and occasionally, even Salafist jihadis like Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaʿeda's official branch in Syria. During the first six months of 2012, Qatar and Saudi Arabia attempted to cooperate and channel funds to some of the same groups; however, by the summer of that year Doha’s largesse and historic ties with Islamist actors enabled it to wrest control of Brotherhood and activist networks. By 2013 the countries were in open competition. While Riyadh sought primarily to manage the uprising, hoping (along with the United States) for a Yemen-style solution where Assad would step down via a negotiated settlement that preserved the country’s institutions and key power brokers, Doha carelessly pumped funds to its favored networks.

Kuwait

While the Saudi and Qatari states directly intervened in Syria, the Kuwaiti state took a hands-off approach, ceding the ground to civil society, which quickly became a key fundraising circuit during the revolution. Kuwait’s tradition of parliamentary democracy and freedom of assembly, dating to 1962, created a thriving civil society with robust protections against state surveillance, allowing charities and political parties to channel aid without interference from law enforcement.

A key fault line in Kuwaiti society is between the Sunni and Shia urban elite on the one hand, and newly urbanized Sunni tribespeople from the desert regions on the other. These recent tribal arrivals have faced stigmatization—a subset of this population, known as bidun (those without) have yet to be granted citizenship. This divide has led many tribespeople to gravitate toward the Muslim Brotherhood and activist Salafist movements. The urban elite, on the other hand, tend to support loyalist Salafist discourse backed by the ruling Sabah monarchy and Riyadh.

The Kuwaiti Salafist scene is split into activist and loyalist currents. The most important loyalist group is the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society (RIHS), which enjoys ties to the Kuwaiti and Saudi states. On the activist side are groups like the Salafist Movement and the al-Umma party. Leading activists include Hakim al-Mutairi, an important Sururi thinker, as well as Shafi al-ʿAjmi and Hajaj al-ʿAjmi; all three would become major fundraising conduits for groups like Ahrar al-Sham during the Syrian revolution. RIHS and other loyalist groups, meanwhile, would largely fall in line with Riyadh and back Saudi-sponsored groups such as the Authenticity and Development Front and Liwa al-Islam.

The Syrian Proxy War: 2011–2016

The four solidarity networks—Brotherhood, activist, loyalist, and jihadi—were the raw “social” material out of which revolutionaries on the ground and powers in the region and beyond fashioned networks of patronage. This process passed through four stages, with the nature of these networks playing a key role in how the stages shifted from one to the next.

From the start of the protests until late 2011, the uprising witnessed diaspora mobilization, in which funds trickled in through family networks, usually comprised wealthy individuals acting in an individual capacity. Because of their prior political orientation, class position, and embeddedness in transnational networks, ex-Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members dominated this phase of funding.

From late 2011 until late 2012, the uprising went through a period of open competition, when various non-Syrian individuals and entities began to channel funds into the country, and foreign states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia began to intervene. Funding in this stage was distributed widely, driven by revolutionary actors’ ability to traverse various solidarity networks to attract cash and weapons from all possible sources.

By late 2012, the uprising entered a period of structured competition, by which point a sharp distinction had arisen between Qatari and Saudi-backed funding networks, and most factions were forced to orient to this divide.

After 2015, global priorities shifted with the rise of ISIS, while the Russian intervention tilted the balance decisively in the regime’s favor. Gulf funding dried up, leaving Turkey as the main patron, inaugurating an exploitative phase in which the client rebel factions had little room for independent action.

April 2011–December 2011: Diaspora Mobilization

The first protests to oust Bashar al-Assad erupted in the spring of 2011, and by that summer, debates were simmering in activist circles about whether the revolutionary movement should arm itself. Syrian Muslim Brotherhood networks were a major instigator in the pro-arms camp, particularly in expatriate circles in the Gulf and in Europe. Most of these individuals were no longer members of the organization, but their experience in the 1980s convinced them that the regime could not be reformed, while their class position put them in command of revenue that could be transferred through business ties into Syria. An activist from Saraqib, Idlib, recalls:

Someone from Saudi called me, in the beginning of August [2011], and said ‘We’ll raise money to get you weapons.’ He was a former Muslim Brotherhood member, but he had fled Syria in the 1980s. He said, ‘My friends and I are ready to support you if you want to create an armed group to protect the country… we don’t want you to join our party, we just want to support you because we want to return to our country.’ 

In some cases, direct descendants of the 1980s Brotherhood uprising joined the revolution and exploited their family links to collect start-up funds for their own brigades. In Saraqib, the ex-Brotherhood member Assad Hilal, who’d served eighteen years in detention, helped form the town’s first Free Syrian Army battalion. In the Idlib town of Taftanaz, members of the Brotherhood-linked Ghazal family did the same. Despite their Brotherhood origins, both FSA groups were liberal in political orientation. In the Jebel al-Zawiya region of southeast Idlib, on the other hand, the Brotherhood heritage bequeathed a prominent faction with Salafi ideology. In November of 2011, a merchant from the Jebel al-Zawiya town of Sarjeh named Abu ʿIssa al-Sheikh announced the formation of Suqur al-Sham. Al-Sheikh came from a Brotherhood family; his father was involved in the 1980s insurgency, and he himself was imprisoned in Sednaya in 2004. After his release in the summer of 2011, he was able to launch Suqur al-Sham with aid he’d procured through his family’s Brotherhood connections.

December 2011–December 2012: Open Competition

By autumn 2011, the Syrian cause was stirring hearts across the region. For activist Salafis, the revolution represented more than a struggle for democracy: it was a defense of Sunnis facing extermination at the hands of a sectarian Shiʿa regime. In Kuwait, activist Salafis began to organize donation campaigns, bringing together Syrian expatriate communities with local charities. A leading light in this scene was Shafi al-ʿAjmi, a lecturer at the College of Shariʿa and Islamic Studies at Kuwait University and host of a popular television show. ʿAjmi took his soapbox demagoguery to Twitter, where his denunciations of Assad’s crimes were laced with vicious sectarianism, and where the screen flashed with bank account information for viewers to donate. Before long, RIHS and other loyalist Salafi groups also began raising funds. By December, the first donations trickled into Syria. Researcher Elizabeth Dickinson writes:

Each nascent rebel brigade would designate a Syrian representative in Kuwait, who was then responsible for dealing with the individual backers. Sitting for tea at Kuwait’s diwaniyas (home spaces used for public gatherings), the representatives would make their cases for support: ‘The representatives were Syrian, imagine they were from one village or another and creating their armed group. They received monthly payments, which at that time were small, maybe 20,000KD per month [$70,630], just according to the donations we received. ... From RIHS, it was 80,000KD per month [$282,540]. At that time, in the creation stage, they didn’t need much money.’ 

With Salafi patrons now intervening in the Syrian conflict, those rebel groups that could tap these networks—while simultaneously drawing from the Brotherhood diaspora—were able to leapfrog other FSA factions. Abu ʿIssa al-Sheikh, for example, could lean on his family’s Brotherhood ties and his own Salafi links cultivated in Sednaya prison to maneuver Suqur al-Sham into becoming a dominant faction in Idlib. Even more successful was Ahrar al-Sham. Founded in Saraqib, Ahrar al-Sham merged Brotherhood, activist, and jihadi lineages to become the largest Salafi rebel group in the country. Some Ahrar founders, like the aforementioned Abu Anas, were Sahwa-inspired activist Salafis, whereas others, like Hassan ʿAboud, were descended from a Brotherhood family. ʿAboud once said that he belonged to “a generation that grew up in circumstances of oppression, who sought revenge for what happened [in the 1970s and 1980s], and who became proud of their identity, which many of their fathers had struggled to forge.” A later Ahrar leader, Abu ʿAmmar from Taftanaz, descended from a Brotherhood family but then joined AQAP in Yemen, before returning to Syria sometime before 2011.

By early 2012, Ahrar al-Sham became a favored recipient of aid from Shafi al-ʿAjmi and other Kuwaiti activist Salafis. At the same time, the group worked its Brotherhood networks to reach Qatari donors. In this way, the Qatari state itself began contributing to the Syrian cause—the first foreign country outside of Turkey to do so. On January 3, 2012, a Qatari Emiri Air Force C-130 touched down in Istanbul, the first arms shipment that had not reached the rebels through the black market. The growth of Ahrar al-Sham coincided with an even more ominous development. In late December 2011, twin car bombings killed 44 people and wounded more than 160 in Damascus’s Kafr Sousa neighborhood. The following week, a suicide car bomb ripped through a bus carrying the regime’s riot police—an attack that was later claimed by a shadowy new Salafi-jihadi group calling itself Jabhat al-Nusra.

Riyadh watched these events with concern. Having previously kept its distance, Saudi Arabia began to wade into the conflict to control the flow of weapons and thwart the growth of Activist and Jihadi Salafi groups. In February 2012, Riyadh began supporting Mustafa al-Sheikh, a defected officer who was attempting to launch an umbrella rebel formation as a secular alternative to Islamist brigades. As private Saudi citizens began to donate to the uprising, loyalist Salafis like the popular satellite television host ʿAdnan ʿArour urged supporters to direct their aid toward al-Sheikh’s group and similar formations.

However, Riyadh also began to cautiously and indirectly support Brotherhood formations during this period, both by allowing diaspora networks to fundraise on Saudi soil, and by exploring joint initiatives with Qatar. In March 2012, for example, the two powers launched the so-called Istanbul Room, headed by Lebanese Shia politician Oqab Sakr, a leading figure in Lebanese Prime Minister Saʿad al-Hariri’s Future Movement and a close ally of Saudi Arabia. The goal of the Istanbul Room was to organize rebels across Syria into 16 military councils, representing the country’s regions, which would channel weapons purchased in Libya to rebels on the ground.

The key conduit in this distribution network was the Faruq Brigades, a Free Syrian Army faction from Homs that had earned acclaim for fending off the regime assault on the Baba Amru neighborhood. Under the terms of the Istanbul Room arrangement, the Faruq Brigades were tasked with overseeing distribution, and in exchange were allowed to keep one-third of all weapons passing through the network. While the aim of this arrangement was to streamline distribution, it inadvertently transformed the Faruq Brigades into a corrupt powerbroker, and marked the beginning of the Saudi-Qatari split. The group was accused of hoarding weapons meant for other factions. In some instances, they even clashed with Brotherhood-linked militias. 

In response, the Brotherhood leveraged its dominant position within the Syrian National Council (SNC), the Syrian opposition’s official government in exile. Since the SNC’s August 2011 founding, the Brotherhood had steadily taken over the body; in leaked emails from March 2012, SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun claimed that, by that point, the Brotherhood had “seized control” of the SNC’s Relief Committee, which was allegedly transferring $1 million every three days from its Qatari bank account into Turkey. Then, the Brotherhood used the SNC to wrest control of the Istanbul Group’s Libya weapons pipeline. Like the SNC, Libya’s interim National Transitional Council (NTC) government contained groupings close to the Libyan Brotherhood. In May 2012, SNC and Brotherhood members led by Haitham al-Rahma and ʿAimad al-Din al-Rashid made several visits to Libya, inking agreements to secure a $20 million grant for the SNC.

Before long, activists on the ground began to complain that weapons shipments from Libya were being seized by the Turkish IHH charity and then transported to FSA groups exclusively affiliated with the Brotherhood.84 ʿAimad al-Din al-Rashid, founder of a Brotherhood splinter organization known as the Syrian National Movement, soon became one of the most prominent arms dealers in Syria, selling weapons to FSA groups in the Damascus suburbs, Aleppo province, and to Abu ʿIssa’s Suqur al-Sham.

The Brotherhood’s marginalization of the Faruq Brigades—Saudi Arabia’s preferred proxy—was the first step in unraveling of the Saudi-Qatari alliance. The next blow came in late May, when the Assad regime slaughtered 108 civilians in the town of Taldou. The killings, which came to be known as the “Houla Massacre,” awakened many of Saudi Arabia’s leading activist Salafis, who launched a fundraising campaign for Syrian rebels. Fearing a revitalized Sahwa movement, Saudi authorities swiftly cracked down, arresting most of the campaign’s leaders. One of the targeted clerics, Muhammad al-ʿArifi, tweeted:

I have just returned from the building of the Emirate of Riyadh after spending two hours there and signing a pledge not to collect funds for Syria. I ask those who intended to come to the al-Bawardi mosque to donate not to tire themselves.

Then, in early June 2012, Saudi Arabia’s Senior ʿUlema Council issued a decree outlawing all calls for citizens to “perform jihad” in Syria. But the unintended consequence of the Kingdom tightening the reins was that activists began to flock to the Qatari sphere of influence, even making regular fundraising trips to Doha.

A few weeks later, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi was elected president of Egypt—again potentially stirring Sahwa passions inside Saudi borders. Riyadh saw the region careening out of its control. Morsi soon compounded these fears by visiting Iran, Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival. Saudi proxies like Okab Saqr began to funnel funding to those factions Riyadh perceived as best able to counterbalance Brotherhood and activist networks, such as secular groups (e.g., Jamaal Maʿrouf’s Syria Martyrs Brigade), loyalist Salafis (e.g., Zahran ‘Aloush’s Liwa al-Islam), and tribal factions with historic ties to the kingdom. Before long, loyalist Salafis in Kuwait helped fund the creation of another Saudi-backed collection of rebel groups, the Authenticity and Development Front. Riyadh also worked with the U.S. Treasury Department to secure a license for the Syrian Support Group to fundraise for factions outside the influence of the SNC, the Brotherhood, and Qatar. It was during this period, early summer 2012, that the CIA established a regular presence in southern Turkey to better monitor weapons flows.

Qatar responded by redoubling support for Brotherhood and Activist networks. A key point man in this effort was Ahmed Ramadan, the leader of the National Action Group, an organization that had emerged as a split from the Brotherhood’s Aleppo wing. In early July, Ramadan marshalled funds from the Kuwaiti activist scene in an attempt to catalyze the merger of various factions, such as those close to Ahrar al-Sham. His principal success, however, was in bankrolling the unification of Brotherhood-linked groups in the northern Aleppo countryside. On July 9, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Salama (“Hajji ʿAnadan”) and ʿAbd al-Qadr Saleh (“Hajji Mareʿa”) convened an eight-hour meeting with fifteen other rebel leaders that resulted in the formation of Liwa al-Tawhid, which soon became one of the most important rebel factions in northern Syria. Flush with Ramadan’s funds, Hajja Mareʿ transformed his hometown into a critical hub for dispensing Qatari patronage—so much so that, locally, the town of Mareʿ was dubbed the “Qurdaha” of the north, in reference to the way in which Assad’s hometown had been the ultimate source of all power and resources under the regime. A week after its formation, Liwa al-Tawhid led an assault on Aleppo, a city that was only partially with the revolution; some rebels argued that the attack would be seen by city-dwellers as an invasion by countryside rebels, but Ahmed Ramadan and Turkish intelligence allegedly forced the issue.

In summary, the events of June and July 2012—Morsi’s election in Egypt, Riyadh’s exclusion of Brotherhood and activist networks, and Qatar’s opening of the floodgates in response—radically transformed the battlefield. Towns and cities across northern Syria fell to rebels, including key border crossings like Jarablus and major urban centers like Manbij. A bomb wiped out Assad confidante Asef Shawkat and three other senior officials, and fighting was raging in the Damascus suburbs. The regime seemed on the brink of collapse. The Turkish government eased restrictions on materiel-bearing flights, and before long Qatari Air Force cargo jets were touching down three times a week.

The United States grew increasingly concerned with the Qatari intervention—by autumn, Doha’s networks were even supplying small quantities of shoulder-fire anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian battlefield. In fact, by most estimates, Qatari-sourced weapons made up the bulk of the arms pouring into the country, and they were exclusively reinforcing Activist and Brotherhood groups at the expense of secular formations. After Obama’s re-election, the United States finally decided to intervene by throwing its weight behind Saudi Arabia’s efforts. In early December, with American backing, Saudi Arabia organized the Conference for Change in Syria in the coastal Turkish city of Antalya, where 550 Syrian opposition leaders gathered to inaugurate a new mechanism to channel foreign patronage. The conference authorized the creation of the Supreme Military Council, under the command Salim Idris, which would oversee action on five military fronts across the country. At the same time, the United States authorized increased Saudi and Jordanian intervention, assisting both countries in sourcing weapons (usually from Croatia), which would then, in theory, be shipped to the SMC. The conference marked the first concerted attempt by the United States and Saudi Arabia to sideline Qatar, keep weapons out of the hands of Doha-linked Islamists, and cohere the rebel movement around a single source of patronage.

Unsurprisingly, Qatar soon retaliated by sponsoring a rival formation around Ahrar al-Sham that called itself the Syrian Islamic Front. Unlike liberal rebel groups, the cadre of Ahrar al-Sham had decades of political experience garnered through their associations in prison or from their families’ Muslim Brotherhood background. Together with Ahrar’s ability to tap into complementary networks—Brotherhood and activist—as well as the sheer scale of material support flooding in from Qatari and Kuwaiti donors, SIF quickly became the most important rebel alliance in the country. The Syrian battlefield was now split between an U.S.-Saudi-Jordanian axis on the one hand, and a Qatari-Turkish axis on the other. Nearly every faction was forced to orient to this divide, inaugurating a period of structured competition within the rebel movement.

December 2012–June 2014: Structured Competition

In the opening months of 2013, it was Saudi Arabia that enjoyed the advantage over Qatar in the battlefield. The United States was supplying the SMC with non-lethal aid, including armor and night vision equipment, and even provided intelligence to select rebel groups. At President Obama’s request, senior Saudi figures like Prince Salman bin Sultan and his brother, intelligence chief Prince Bandar, began to personally oversee the arms network. For example, in March, Salman provided SMC rebels with 120 tons of explosives, directing them to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the airport

Then, on April 9, Jabhat al-Nusra officially split from its parent organization in Iraq. Thousands of fighters, including many foreigners, decided to stay with the parent organization, which was now called ISIS. Overnight, ISIS found itself in control of vast swathes of territory in eastern Syria. Qatar’s reckless policy of flooding Syria with weapons now took on an even more dangerous edge, as some of these weapons may have inadvertently wound up—through rebel realignments, theft, and transfers—first in the arsenal of Nusra and now ISIS. On April 23, two weeks after the Nusra-ISIS split, Obama met with Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and allegedly warned Doha that its weapons were falling into the wrong hands. 

The United States also supported Saudi efforts to purge the Syrian National Council of its Brotherhood influence, especially with respect to the president, Ghassan Hitto, who was close to Doha. By July, the Saudis had politicked and cajoled their way to influence within the SNC, resulting in the election of Ahmed al-Jarba, a Shammar tribal leader with close ties to the kingdom. This would be Riyadh’s crowning move; prominent Brotherhood figures who had been critical nodes in the Qatari patronage network, like Nazir al-Hakim and Ahmed Ramadan, began to realign themselves with Saudi Arabia. Even Liwa al-Tawhid, the powerful Brotherhood faction from northern Aleppo, would momentarily drift into the Saudi orbit.

But it was a pyrrhic victory. Though the United States and United Kingdom pledged to provide the SMC with $500 million as part of the shift towards Saudi networks, only small amounts were actually released, as receiving aid required a long vetting process that had not been in place for factions under Qatari stewardship. SMC commander Salim Idriss regularly complained that he had a hard time integrating the largest factions, such as Liwa al-Tawhid, Ahrar al-Sham and Suqur al-Sham, into his fighting structure.

For the moment, the battlefield hung in the balance between the Saudi and Qatari axes. When the turning point came in May 2013, it was neither Qatar nor Saudi that seized the advantage—it was the Assad regime. Assad’s forces attacked Qusayr, a strategic rebel-held town linking Damascus and Homs. This was the first significant military engagement overseen and financed almost entirely by Saudi Arabia and the SMC. For weeks, the rebels held off the regime advance, but—also a first—Assad relied heavily on Hizbullah from Lebanon, and managed to seize the town. The Battle of Qusayr marked the most significant inflection point on the battlefield since the war began; now, with Hizbullah’s forces by its side and willing to die in large numbers, the regime had halted the rebels’ momentum—and the rebels would never regain it.

By late summer 2013, Qatar began to sharply reduce its aid. Meanwhile, ISIS was steadily expanding. Despite this, the release of the remainder of the U.S.-Saudi package to the opposition was not forthcoming, as Saudi officials demanded that Syrian opposition groups provide pledges to fight ISIS before aid could be dispersed. Intimidated by ISIS’s aggressive behavior and unwilling to open a second front that could detract from the fight against the regime, most factions were hesitant to agree. It was not until after the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attack in Douma in the Damascus suburbs, which killed 1,300 people, that the Obama administration released the remainder of its aid package.

The attack also allegedly prompted the United States to finally arm rebels directly. Under a covert CIA program codenamed Timber Sycamore, the first shipments of light arms began arriving in September to select rebel groups in the Saudi-Jordanian axis. The CIA provided training, while Riyadh supplied the funds to purchase weapons. But it was not enough. The U.S.-Saudi-backed forces failed to cohere into a potent battlefield force, or offer a viable alternative to the Qatar-backed Islamists. Unlike the Qatari factions, which were built on longstanding Brotherhood networks, most leaders of the U.S.-Saudi factions lacked preexisting ties. They tended to originate from poorer or more tribal backgrounds than their Qatari-backed counterparts, and they lacked access to merchant networks that could supplement the irregular flow of U.S.-Saudi aid. As a result, groups in this axis, like Jamal Maʿrouf’s Syria Revolutionaries Front, were roundly accused of criminality. Often, these groups were liberal or secular, which opened the door to criticism from Islamists, for whom the criminality was inherently linked to secularism’s supposed lack of values. In reality, these groups did not belong to longstanding cohesive networks like the Brotherhood, so there were few accountability mechanisms to stop rank-and-file members from engaging in predatory behavior. Regardless, by late 2013, these Saudi-backed forces were rapidly losing popular support to more radical factions like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

July 2014–Present: Exploitative Phase

In the spring of 2014, the United States authorized anti-tank weapons shipments to certain factions, but it was too little too late. The radicals were now dominating the battlefield; ISIS had captured most of the eastern half of the country. When ISIS seized Mosul and began to threaten Erbil and Baghdad, the United States shifted course and launched an anti-ISIS intervention. The interests of the U.S.-Saudi coalition were never aligned with those of the rebels; Washington preferred a negotiated settlement that removed Assad but preserved the state, whereas most rebels were fighting and dying for the sake of overthrowing the regime. Nonetheless, the two sides had partnered in a marriage of convenience. Now, however, U.S. and rebel aims were directly opposed; the United States began to pressure its proxies to prioritize fighting ISIS to Assad, whereas the rebels insisted on continuing to battle the regime, viewing Assad as the root cause of the Islamic State phenomenon. In the end, the United States not only lacked the capacity to direct rebel behavior, it also had divergent interests. Though it would not be officially shut down for a few more years, by 2015 Timber Sycamore was a dead letter. With it, the Saudi intervention wound down as well. Key Saudi proxies were cut off, leaving them to be routed by al-Nusra or ISIS.

Qatari proxies were suffering major battlefield losses as well. In late 2013, Liwa al-Tawhid’s leader Hajji Marʿe was killed, and the group whittled away until it was a shell of its former self. A half year later, most of the leadership of Ahrar al-Sham was wiped out in a bombing. In one town after the next, rank-and-file Ahrar al-Sham members were defecting to al-Nusra and ISIS. Meanwhile, Washington was tightening the pressure on Doha to crack down on funding networks. In December 2013, for example, the U.S. Treasury Department accused the Qatari professor ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Nuʿami of supporting terrorist groups (a charge he denies). Similar accusations appeared throughout 2014, and were amplified by right wing think tanks like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The combination of external pressure from the U.S. and internal pressure from al-Nusra and ISIS meant that Qatar-backed groups found it ever harder to secure funding lines.

Remaining factions gradually fell under sole Turkish sponsorship. Bereft of grassroots support, and severed from other revenue streams, these groups had little scope for independent action. Turkey’s high capacity also stemmed from its control of the border and the fact that it hosted rebel leaders and millions of refugees on its soil. The Turkish-backed rebels (eventually rechristened as the Syrian National Army) were repurposed into an anti-SDF force, and the fight against Assad was abandoned.

The Story of Jeish al-Fatah

One important exception to the trends described in this report is the rise of Jeish al-Fateh, an Idlib-based coalition led by Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. The story of Jeish al-Fateh illustrates foreign intervention’s second-order effects, and how regional integration shapes proxy war. In the spring of 2015, the United States and other powers were making significant progress on an agreement with Iran to devote its nuclear activities for peaceful purposes in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The so-called Iran deal signaled a historic détente between the United States and Iran—a terrifying prospect for allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The new Saudi monarch King Salman, who’d taken the throne just months earlier, abruptly veered course and decided to punish Iran in Syria. Riyadh and Doha engineered a temporary rapprochement to support Jeish al-Fateh’s attempt to capture the capital of Idlib province. The newly-formed rebel group was headed by Abdullah al-Muhaysini, a Saudi cleric close to al-Nusra, which was the dominant force in the alliance. Another key member group was Jund al-Aqsa, which was allied to ISIS. Together with Turkey, Saudi and Qatar opened the floodgates, sending massive amounts of materials and funding to Jeish al-Fatah, allowing the group to capture Idlib’s capital in just four days. A month later, they swept through western Idlib, seizing the strategic mountain town of Jisr al-Shugur. As an Ahrar al-Sham fighter explained at the time, “Jisr al-Shughur is more important than Idlib itself, [as] it is very close to the coastal area which is a regime area, [and] the coast now is within our fire reach.” By July, even Assad’s home region of Qurdaha was within range. The regime’s core constituency was now under threat. This ultimately triggered the Russian intervention into Syria. The first Russian bombs hit Jeish al-Fateh positions in northwestern Syria in September. Before long, it was clear that the Russian intervention had completely halted rebel momentum. Saudi and Qatar reverted to their previous postures of drawing down involvement, and the rebel defeat was sealed.

Case Study: The Proxy War in Manbij

Background: The Provincial Bourgeoisie of Manbij

The city of Manbij was liberated from Assad rule in July 2012; for the next 18 months, Manbij operated as a quasi-independent city-state. By early 2013, the local political scene was split between a Brotherhood-linked faction comprised of the city’s economic elite, who were ultimately backed by Qatar, and a poor and working-class movement, some elements of which had no foreign backing and other elements of which received Saudi support. These two wings of the revolutionary movement were rivals, leading to a standoff which Salafis, a third force, exploited. Ultimately, this divide laid the grounds for the city’s takeover by the Islamic State in early 2014. Manbij thus offers a case study that illustrates how class structure and social networks intersected with the Saudi-Qatari rivalry to produce patterns of mobilization that were repeated, mutatis mutandis, across Syria.

Lying about 60 miles northeast of Aleppo, Manbij before the war was home to about 100,000 people, most of them Arab, though the city had sizable Kurdish and Circassian minorities. Historically, Manbij was dominated by a wealthy Sunni merchant class engaged in trade with Aleppo, Turkey, and the interior desert regions of Syria. These trading families, who formed close ties with each other through intermarriage and business partnerships, much like the bazaari of Iran, were cut from a different cloth than the tribal, rural-minded folks who made up the majority of Manbij. Locally, this merchant class is known as Hadhrani, a term meaning “civilized,” denoting their deracinated, elite status. The traditional ruling class also included landowners from certain tribes like the Albu Sultan. Through the 1950s, Hadhrani families dominated retail, trade, and construction, while Albu Sultan members monopolized political posts like the mayorship.

With the rise of leftist parties in the 1950s, some Hadhrani families gravitated to the anti-socialist, conservative message of the Muslim Brotherhood. When the Baʿthists seized power the following decade, Brotherhood ideas gained even greater currency among elite circles. The new regime carried out land reform, through which they cultivated a rural constituency and antagonized the wealthy. In Manbij, the party attacked the power of oppressive landowners and recruited from impoverished rural tribal communities such as the Hosh confederation and the Albu Banna. The Hadhrani bourgeoisie saw their fortunes fade as the Baʿth imposed price controls and monopolized foreign trade, while government posts were no longer the birthright of Albu Sultan elite. In the early 1970s, for example, the Hafez al-Assad regime replaced the Albu Sultan mayor with a Hosh figure—and the position, along with the leadership of the local Baʿth Party chapter, would largely remain with the Hosh for the next 40 years.

By the late 1970s, Hadhrani families such as the Sheikh Weiss and Salal households formed the core of Manbij’s Muslim Brotherhood movement. When the insurrection was smashed in 1982, these families formally left the movement, but retained close ties with the Brotherhood through marriage and trading partnerships. When Bashar al-Assad assumed power in 2000, he ushered in a series of neoliberal reforms that reintroduced the market to Syrian life far beyond what his father had envisioned—but the gains of this economic opening largely accrued to Assad’s relatives and leading Sunni bourgeois families in Damascus and Aleppo. The merchants and traders of small towns like Manbij—the “provincial bourgeoisie”—were left in the lurch. Although wealthy by Manbij standards, merchants were second- and third-class citizens next to the Damascus-Aleppo bourgeoisie and the security services. They became leaders of the city’s revolution.

Qatar and the Manbij Revolutionary Council

Late one night in the winter of 2011, under the cover of darkness, a few dozen activists gathered in an old farmhouse outside Manbij. The city was roiling with almost nightly protests, and the men gathered there voted to form a body to take power should the local regime fall. Though the protest movement comprised all walks of life, the Revolutionary Council, as the body came to be called, was dominated by ex-Brotherhood Hadhrani and Albu Sultan liberals—the two elite groups marginalized by the dictatorship. The liberals lacked strong ties with their counterparts in other cities, but the Hadhrani were able to tap into national and international Brotherhood networks, thereby transforming the Revolutionary Council into the most important entity on the city’s revolutionary scene. A key Revolutionary Council financier was its director of external relations, Ahmed al-Taʿan, a professor in Damascus University’s faculty of Shariʿa and one of the founding members of the Syrian National Movement headed by Aimad al-Din al-Rashid. The council also forged links with merchants from northern Aleppo that belonged to ex-Brotherhood families—a network that would become the powerful Qatari-backed faction Liwa al-Tawhid.

With such support, in early 2012, the Revolutionary Council created an armed wing, the first rebel group in the city. In this period of “open competition” (see section IV), activists sought to cultivate ties with anyone willing to furnish aid. So along with procuring weapons from Liwa al-Tawhid headquarters in Mareʿ, for example, Ahmed al-Taʿan regularly traveled to Jordan and Saudi Arabia to solicit donations for the Revolutionary Council’s field hospitals. By mid-2012, however, Saudi and Qatari policy began to veer apart. In July, the Qatari-Turkish push, as described in Section IV, allowed rebels flush with Libyan weapons to sweep across Idlib and Aleppo provinces. In the face of this onslaught, the regime fled Manbij on July 18, and the Revolutionary Council assumed power with hardly a shot fired.

For the next 18 months, the council presided over a remarkable experiment in participatory democracy. The council established an upper house, which functioned like a parliament, issuing laws for the city. For the first time in 60 years, this corner of Syria experienced freedom of assembly and press—where there had been one state-run newspaper before, now nearly a dozen independent newspapers were in circulation. Ex-Muslim Brothers and liberals made up the majority of the Council, but even leftists, like the longtime political dissident Hassan Nefi, played a prominent role. Ultimately, though, it was the council’s links to Brotherhood networks—and Liwa al-Tawhid, in particular—that proved kingmaker. The Brotherhood sponsored projects throughout the city: the establishment of a court system, a police force, and, in an effort to unify Manbij’s rebel groups, a Military Council. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Council used largesse from Liwa al-Tawhid to reorganize its armed wing, which now consisted of three battalions. Manbij therefore presents one of the few examples anywhere in Syria where armed factions were subordinate to a civilian body.

Despite the Brotherhood and Qatari influence, the council’s democratic nature meant that its patrons were unable to exert full authority over the body. In September 2012, for instance, the Brotherhood sent a delegation led by the wealthy businessman Yasser al-Zakiri to assume direct control over the council’s day-to-day operations, but some council members—led by the leftist Nefi—blocked the efforts. Still, Brotherhood/Qatari patronage played a pivotal role in rebel strength and behavior. For example, Thuwwar Manbij, one of the battalions comprising the Council’s armed wing, was the city’s most well-equipped faction. This owed in large part to its commander, Anas Sheikh Weiss, a founding Council member, who belonged to one of the city’s leading Hadhrani Brotherhood households. Thuwwar Manbij was so well-stocked that, at one point, their arsenal included a few coveted Soviet-era 14.5mm anti-aircraft DShK weapons.

This stood in contrast to Manbij’s other factions. Nearly 70 armed groups had appeared following liberation, most outside the Turkey-Qatar-Brotherhood pipeline and desperately in search of support (Table 2). Arms dealers and middlemen proliferated, price gouging and extorting their clients. Looking back, one rebel commander in Manbij recalled,

The first thing I would have done was imprison every arms dealer and take their weapons. It was just ridiculous. The revolution was begging the world for weapons, and in Manbij alone, I recall six arms dealers… Once, we drove to al-Atarib to buy weapons. I remember walking into the guy’s shop, which was basically the size of a living room, and it was full of every type of weapon you could imagine. Of course, no anti-aircraft weapons or the types we really needed, but definitely small arms. He had Uzis, and even a bathtub full of diesel to remove the lubricant they came in. There were a lot of weapons, but they were inaccessible to us. A Kalashnikov, a real one, was $2,500. [We used to buy the fake ones] made in Saudi Arabia. It was horrible. It literally turned red when you fired it. If you fired it long enough then set it down by the wall, it would actually bend. This happened to me.

Factions without Qatari patronage had to find other means of financing. Moreover, the Qatar factions were built on networks of businessmen—the provincial bourgeoisie—whereas the leadership of other factions tended to be of working class or rural origin. To fund their efforts, these other factions were forced to turn to banditry.

The Rise of the “Bread Factions”

From the beginning, the Revolutionary Council had found it difficult to control its armed wing. Before liberation, some fighters were conducting freelance raids on police stations and refusing to share the spoils with the group. By the July 2012 liberation, the council’s armed wing effectively split; one group remained under the council’s authority, while the other became an independent faction called Jund al-Haramein (“The army of the two holy mosques,” in a bid to attract Saudi funding). Unlike the Revolutionary Council factions, Jund al-Haramein did not belong to Hadhrani Brotherhood networks and recruited primarily from the poor and working class (see Table 3). Table 4 compares the tribal and class compositions of Jund al-Haramein and the Revolutionary Council; while 60 percent of the council were businessmen, 64 percent of Jund al-Haramein leaders were of poor and working class backgrounds. They lacked preexisting ties with key council members, which made them difficult to control and encouraged an independent streak. This also placed them outside the Liwa al-Tawhid funding stream.

Other factions soon appeared with similar sociological compositions. Bereft of external support or links to the merchant class, they turned to other means to sustain themselves. Within weeks of liberation, Jund al-Haramein and allied factions unleashed a massive crime wave on Manbij. Reports of looting and kidnapping became commonplace. Al-Masar al-Horr, one of the revolutionary weeklies, denounced the chaos:

Are we really living in a wild forest where the strong can rule and do whatever he wants?... Where is the freedom that the young and old cheered for with their hearts and their throats? We’ve lost safety and now live in the dark, where houses have been looted and the rich are kidnapped off the streets.

These factions refused to subordinate themselves to the city’s ruling authority, the Revolutionary Council. While the council controlled the city’s central furnace, producing 60,000 loaves of bread daily at full capacity, Jund al-Haramein seized control of Manbij’s reserve furnace and refused to surrender it. At times, the group would hoard supplies, or sell bread directly to private bakeries at lower prices to undercut the Revolutionary Council. The faction used these revenues to expand its footprint to Raqqa and the Aleppo countryside, where it took part in battles against the regime.

Members of the Revolutionary Council would derisively term Jund al-Haramein and allies as the “bread factions,” and repeatedly attempt to clamp down. They critiqued the bread factions on moral terms, calling them corrupt or of poor character, but in truth Jund al-Haramein’s behavior can be explained by class position and lack of access to external support. Paradoxically, the bread factions even developed a popular following, especially in poor neighborhoods, where they were seen as an authentic—if flawed—representation of class grievances. Over the course of late 2012, as prices of basic living necessities climbed, popular anger toward the Revolutionary Council mounted. One figure who rode this wave was an enigmatic commander named The Prince, who headed the local chapter of the Faruq Brigades, which recruited almost exclusively from the Hosh tribal confederation. The Prince would kidnap the rich and pro-regime figures, while undertaking extraordinary exploits of bravery on the frontlines, to become something of a folk hero—and a sworn enemy of the Revolutionary Council.

Ultimately, though, banditry and working-class sympathy were not enough. To fend off the regime—and to position themselves against the Revolutionary Council—the bread factions would need to find a patron of their own.

The Bread Factions Turn to Saudi Arabia

In September 2012, a bread faction belonging to a rebel leader named Abu Khalid al-Baggari kidnapped nine employees of Lafarge, a French company that owned a cement factory not far from Manbij. Al-Baggari ransomed the employees for hundreds of thousands of dollars; with the windfall, he acquired new weapons stockpiles and merged a number of factions into Fursan al-Furat (The Knights of the Euphrates). The previous month, the powerful Idlib faction Suqur al-Sham (see Section IV) had broken with the Muslim Brotherhood, after its commander Abu ʿIssa al-Sheikh accused his former patrons of “politicizing” aid and demanding excessive control over clients. The sudden appearance on the rebel scene of a well-financed rebel outfit free of Brotherhood control had immediate appeal to the Bread Factions of Manbij, who were looking to insulate themselves from Liwa al-Tawhid and the Revolutionary Council’s oversight. Flush with funds and fresh off a major military success, Baggari reached out to Suqur al-Sham, and an alliance was born. As one of Fursan al-Furat’s founders explained:

When choosing a patron, we wanted to make sure to go with someone with whom we could secure material support while still maintaining our own internal independence. Liwa al-Tawhid’s Sufi ideology, along with that of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Liwa al-Tawhid was tied to, is known for its emphasis on rigid hierarchies and obedience…Lower ranking members aren’t allowed to question their sheikhs…Furthermore, Abu ʿIssa al-Sheikh was known for having a calm personality, and being a leader who would encourage debate amongst his deputies and allow sub-factions a certain level of autonomy. Plus, by that point, he had rejected the Brotherhood.

Suqur al-Sham’s prowess was due to its ability to tap multiple funding sources, including ʿAimad al-Din Rashid’s Brotherhood splinter, but it was their access to loyalist Salafist networks that proved most lucrative—and that linked them indirectly to Saudi Arabia. In the resulting proxy cascade, Saudi Arabia supported Kuwaiti Loyalist Salafis, who aided Suqur al-Sham in Idlib, who in turn funded Fursan al-Furat in Manbij. As a result, Fursan al-Furat became a major player locally, and other bread factions looked to follow suit.

By early 2013, Jund al-Haramein was heavily involved in battles against the regime in rural Raqqa, which enabled them to forge ties with the al-Nasser, an important clan in the area. For generations, sheikhs of this clan, which belongs to the Weldeh tribe, had presided over massive plantations—where they kept slaves and indentured servants—until the Baʿth land reforms of the 1960s stripped them of property. After 2011, eager to reclaim their land, Nasser sheikhs were quick to support the revolution, founding a string of influential FSA factions. The rough-and-tumble Jund al-Haramein and the elite sheikhs of the Nasser clan might seem like odd bedfellows, but Jund al-Haramein were capable fighters, while the sheikhs had something Jund craved: access to outside donors. Beginning in the 1970s, many Weldeh tribespeople had moved to Saudi Arabia for work, and a wealthy minority forged business and political ties with Saudi elites. These alliances paid off after the revolution; the Weldeh tribesman ʿAbd al-Jalil al-Saʿidi, for example, became a top advisor to Okab Saqr, the Lebanese Shia politician who was the Saudi point man for weapons distribution through the “Istanbul Room” (see Section IV). Al-Saʿidi would become instrumental in helping Jund al-Haramein access Istanbul Room weapons. Finally, through al-Nasser links, Jund al-Haramein also managed to ally with Hamud al-Faraj, a close associate of Saqr’s brother who regularly visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate the transfer of funds to al-Nasser-run FSA groups. In December 2012, when the United States and Saudi Arabia created the Supreme Military Council, the effort to create a unified, Saudi-friendly rebel command, Faraj was one of thirty opposition leaders appointed to coordinate aid on five separate fronts, with Faraj himself tasked to oversee Raqqa. As a result, Jund al-Haramein became one of Saudi’s top aid recipients in the greater Manbij-Raqqa corridor.

Qatar versus Saudi Arabia in Manbij: Structured Competition

By late 2012, a tenuous balance hung over the revolutionary scene in Manbij. The Revolutionary Council, with its patrons in the Doha-backed Liwa al-Tawhid, remained the main authority in the city. However, against them stood a rival grouping, led by the Saudi-backed bread factions Jund al-Haramein, Fursan al-Furat, The Prince, and smaller formations. This grouping even supported its own rival council, called the Local Council, headed by an engineer named Muhammad al-Bishir. The same class divide marking the factions also reflected the rival Councils: while many upper- and middle-class activists supported the Revolutionary Council, the Bishir Council had a greater following among poorer segments of society. (Nonetheless, for the time being, it was the Revolutionary Council that successfully carried out state-like activities, such as social services).

However, the Saudi-led creation of the Supreme Military Council in December 2012 upset this balance. Seeing this Saudi move, correctly, as an attempt to sideline its clients, Doha retaliated by opening the spigot—primarily to Ahrar al-Sham. The group formally announced its presence in Manbij in early 2013, launching a populist program that won them admirers across the city’s political divide. On the one hand, they targeted the Revolutionary Council’s economic policies—especially the handling of bread, the prices of which continued to rise—by attending protests outside the city’s main bakery. On the other, they pledged to clean the streets of the criminal bread factions. At the top of this list was the Prince and his Faruq Brigades. As described in Section IV, the Faruq Brigades were a powerful anti-Brotherhood faction in Homs that was responsible for distributing Saudi-donated weapons nationwide. However, this actually fostered corruption, as commanders began skimming weapons to sell on the black market. They also entered into lucrative partnerships with Turkish smuggling networks. As a result, they eventually fell out of Saudi Arabia’s favor—and in this weakened state, Ahrar al-Sham moved in for the kill. In April 2013, the group attacked the Prince. The Revolutionary Council, sensing an opportunity to rid the city of a hated rival, requested back-up from Liwa al-Tawhid, which sent a contingent from Aleppo. The battle lasted a few intense hours and then, in a stunning dénouement, the Ahrar al-Sham-led forces captured the Prince.

The rout changed the city’s power balance almost overnight. To the masses, Ahrar al-Sham proved that it was serious about cleaning up crime. The bread factions, meanwhile, felt they could not compete with Ahrar’s lavish Qatari funds or its ironclad organizational discipline, and they began disintegrating or switching sides. Jund al-Haramein gravitated toward its erstwhile enemy, the Revolutionary Council, and the Faruq Battalions dissolved. Fursan al-Furat, the Saudi-backed group, whose commanders had chafed at what they viewed as the rigid organizational and ideological control of the Brotherhood, eventually allied themselves with a small group of men who had recently appeared in the city. Occupying the cultural center downtown, these men were foreigners, and they were calling themselves The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Network Structure in Manbij’s Proxy War

By the summer of 2013, the Saudi-Qatari competition in Manbij was effectively over—with Qatar the clear winner. Although the United States and Saudi Arabia organized its proxies into the Supreme Military Council, they were unable to mold this entity into a cohesive force. By magnifying the case of Manbij, it becomes clear why this was the case. First, the Saudi-backed groups—the Bread factions—simply lacked the firepower to defeat Ahrar al-Sham and its allies militarily, even though they outnumbered them in personnel. This was due, in part, to the fact that Ahrar al-Sham was a direct beneficiary of Qatari funding, whereas the bread factions received aid through a cascade of intermediaries, such as Suqur al-Sham or tribal sheikhs. It was also because Ahrar al-Sham was able to access multiple networks for revenue: Brotherhood, Activist Salafist, and Jihadi Salafist. Second, the bread factions lacked cohesive preexisting ties and organizational structure. Even in the face of Ahrar al-Sham’s superior firepower, the Prince may have stood a chance had the other bread factions rallied to his support and presented a united front. But the bread factions did not constitute a cohesive network; in fact, there was little to unify them except having gone through the experience of revolution, as compared to the Qatari clients, who benefited from years or even decades of close interaction through business ties and political activity. Finally, but for a vague opposition to dictatorship, the bread factions expressed little in the way of ideology. The Qatari-backed factions, on the other hand, benefited from expansive, elaborate ideological frameworks that could respond to changing circumstances and help dictate strategic action.

Without strong social ties and ideological norms, there was little to constrain the bread factions from corruption and war profiteering. Therefore, patrons had few means to exert command and control. An example of how this worked in practice is the case of al-Shaʿr Gas Field, near Palmyra. In early 2013, a coalition of Idlib factions and Fursan al-Furat, the Manbij-based bread faction, planned to launch a campaign to capture the field from the regime. Fearing that flat desert terrain would provide little cover, Suqur al-Sham leader Abu ʿIssa al-Sheikh ordered his client Fursan al-Furat to abstain from participation. There was little linking Fursan al-Furat and Suqur al-Sham apart from the alliance they’d forged during the revolution; they did not share preexisting social networks, nor did Fursan have a well-thought-out ideological framework beyond a hazy, individualistic liberalism, to match Suqur’s Islamism. So Fursan leaders ignored the order, waited for a sandstorm for cover, and managed to seize the field. The ensuing revenue windfall allowed Fursan even greater independence from its patrons. A year later, as ISIS was advancing upon Manbij, Suqur al-Sham ordered Fursan to defend the city—which they also ignored. They had undertaken several joint ventures with the Islamic State, including a smuggling ring that trafficked organs harvested from prisoners’ bodies.

The rich social ties among Qatar and its proxies, on the other hand, gave Doha the capacity to influence client behavior. So long as interests aligned, Doha’s support could make the difference between battlefield success and failure. But when interests diverged, clients found themselves constrained by Doha or its subsidiary patrons. In the summer of 2013, for example, two different Qatari proxies were the dominant forces in Manbij: Ahrar al-Sham and the Liwa al-Tawhid-linked Revolutionary Council. Ahrar al-Sham began attacking the latter’s laissez-faire economic policies, especially around the question of bread prices. As Ahrar gained popular support, seizing buildings around the city, Liwa al-Tawhid warned the Revolutionary Council not to escalate the situation by resisting. It was in the interests of Liwa al-Tawhid to preserve the peace between their clients in Manbij and Ahrar al-Sham, even if, locally, that was not in the Council’s interests. The council was forced to follow Liwa al-Tawhid’s orders, though the consequences would be tragic.

In July, Ahrar al-Sham and ISIS, who were controlling key granaries in Maskana and Raqqa, respectively, halted all grain shipments to Manbij. This siege temporarily forced the price of bread in the city to skyrocket, and ISIS seized the advantage, organizing protests that nearly brought down the Revolutionary Council and allowed them to assume control of the main bakery. By the time Liwa al-Tawhid recognized the calamity unfolding in Manbij, it was too late. Crucially, the group did not have the support of the other Qatar proxy, Ahrar al-Sham, who insisted on remaining neutral in the growing tensions between revolutionaries and ISIS—and they faced no sanction for doing so, because Qatar appeared uninterested in halting ISIS or even treating the group differently from any other faction. By January 2014, in the face of mounting economic crisis, the Revolutionary Council had lost the street. That month, the city’s beleaguered factions banded together in a final push to expel ISIS, but without Ahrar al-Sham or popular support, they proved no match for the Islamic State. Within days, ISIS seized complete control of the city, expelled all factions, and Manbij’s revolution was finished.

Manbij Today: Exploitative Phase

The ISIS takeover of Manbij and other parts of eastern Syria in 2014 marked a turning point in proxy relations countrywide. The United States shifted to anti-ISIS efforts, while Qatar gradually tempered its patronage, and ultimately ceased it altogether. Liwa al-Tawhid soon began to splinter and was no longer a patron in northern Syria. The former members of Manbij’s Revolutionary Council migrated to the patronage of Turkey. Due to the historic Brotherhood ties, as well as the council’s embeddedness in cohesive networks, Turkey wields significant capacity as patron. However, Turkey’s primary interest is in defeating the PKK, whereas the council’s core interest is in overthrowing Assad, meaning the two sides do not share a common goal. This combination of high patron capacity and divergent interests means that the remnants of the council are forced to do Ankara’s bidding. Today, these former council figures comprise the core component of the forces that Turkey hopes to employ to capture Manbij from the PKK-linked Syrian Democratic Forces.

The SDF liberated Manbij from ISIS rule in 2016, and the city is now under the control of the SDF-aligned Manbij Military Council. Remarkably, the MMC.-Turkish divide is actually the latest iteration of the same divide that has plagued the city since the 1960s—a division built on class and networks of patronage. To recap, recall that before the 1960s, urban-based Albu Sultan and Hadhrani elites controlled the city’s wealth and politics, until the Baʿthist coups and land reforms usurped their privileges. During the Assad years, power shifted to rural tribal sheikhs, particularly those from the Albu Banna and the Hosh tribal confederation. In response, some Hadhrani families gravitated toward the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, Hadhrani and Albu Sultan figures became the revolutionary leadership in Manbij, which took the shape of the Revolutionary Council, and allied themselves with a faction descendant from the Brotherhood, Liwa al-Tawhid. Meanwhile, though Albu Banna and Hosh sheikhs supported the regime, poorer members of these tribes also joined the revolution—but were not allied with the council. Instead, many joined the so-called bread factions, Free Syrian Army groups known for criminality. By 2013, the Revolutionary Council-bread faction split was the key divide in Manbij.

When Salafis like Ahrar al-Sham entered the scene, they represented a third force. In April 2013, they routed the bread factions, who dissolved or joined other, stronger groups. A pivotal moment then came in August, when many Hosh tribesmen, who had previously belonged to bread factions like the Prince’s Faruq Brigades, banded together with a Kurdish FSA group called Jabhat al-Akrad. This group, which had formed a year prior and had chapters in Manbij, Raqqa and elsewhere, was secretly a PKK proxy. The new Jabhat al-Akrad-bread faction alliance joined a rebel group called Ahrar al-Suriya, an anti-Liwa al-Tawhid faction headquartered in ʿAnadan. In other words, both the PKK and the Hosh tribespeople formed an alliance in the face of a common enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Liwa al-Tawhid.

In 2016, the Jabhat al-Akrad-Hosh alliance became the core of the newly formed Manbij Military Council. Before long, Jund al-Haramein also joined SDF, and the reiteration of Manbij’s classic divide was complete. Almost all the key Arab figures in the Manbij SDF and local administration today were once linked to the bread factions, or to tribal communities that had opposed the Hadhrani- and Albu Sultan-dominated Revolutionary Council. In this way, issues of class and patronage continue to run through the heart of the Syrian conflict today.

[progressivejudaism]

Salam, I'm a Muslim who is interested in understanding how Muslims can mend relationships with Jews and also how to approach conversation about Israel without being antisemitic. As a Muslim I can definitely understand to an extent the frustration Jews must feel being painted with a broad brush, and I would love to establish friendships that transcend these differences. But how do I approach a conversation about what I view is as obvious human rights violations without being insensitive?

Salam Alaikum! 

What an excellent question.  I find that interfaith dialogue is so important, especially in the current political and social climate around the world.  I commend you for asking this question.  I have found that as I learn more about other religions, I become even more humbly grounded in my own theology and grounded in peace and love with new friends.

The Isreal conversation can be divisive among Jews and Muslims, and sadly between Jewish people and between Muslim people, but it doesn’t have to be. Although it is scarily easy to paint all Jews or all Muslims as ______, as people of faith, of people of peace, and of people of love we must stand against divisiveness and work towards making a stronger tomorrow.

As a Progressive Jew, my Zionism is grounded in lovingkindness, peace, and acceptance- and not in fascism, bigotry, or the hatred often perceived as the viewpoint of the right-wing Prime Minister and his cronies.   In the same token, I am sure that your commitment to peace and support of a sovereign Palestine does not include the fascism, bigotry, or hatred often developed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.  Terrorism, Occupation, antisemitic propaganda, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, and other ills should have no place in this world: especially in this little strip of land that I love so much.

Before approaching a conversation on the topic, I’d like you to think about something that we learned in some of my rabbinical school classes while living in Jerusalem.  We often would talk about looking at the Conflict through different lenses and not through broad strokes.  The lens of the Jewish settlers in the West Bank who does not understand the pain of Occupation and is completely ignorant of the situation, the lens of a Palestinian child living in Gaza who is taught that murdering Jews is the right thing to do, the lens of a Christian-Arab Jerusalemite who has Israeli citizenship but lives in East Jerusalem who must go through checkpoints to get to work, the lens of a Jewish family living in a moshav near Gaza who has to run into bomb shelters multiple times each day to avoid a possible missile attack… etc etc etc.

Another lens to look through (especially from the perspective of an individual not living in Israel or Palestine) is the failure of our leadership.  I personally cannot trust a

Prime Minister of Israel who used anti-Palestinian racism to get elected in the last election, or a President of the Palestinian Authority who pays terrorists for their work, or a  Prime Minister of Hamas who said the following:  “This is a generation which knows no fear. It is the generation of the missile, the tunnel and suicide operations.”  Can we trust someone to create peace if they believe that the only peace will be one State where all the Jews are dead? Can we really trust anyone that flip-flops on peace (Netanyahu and Abbas)?

No, no we cannot.  But there are so many things that you can do- and you have already taken the first step!  Being critical of policies of the Israeli government, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority is not only important but crucial to the survival of the Jewish State and for the future of a sovereign, occupation-free Palestinian state.

Just like I will never use racist or islamophobic stereotypes to portray Palestinians (I have seen so many horrible and gross examples of this online), I would hope that activists who support Palestine avoid antisemitic stereotypes.  Additionally, we must maintain the importance of both sovereign entities and eliminate the notion that Zionism is a dirty word.  Zionism is the notion that the Jews deserve the same sovereignty in their homeland that all other nations have the privilege of having.  The most effective Palestinian activists from a Jewish perspective are those who maintain the importance of maintaining a Jewish state without using antisemitism to help their cause.

How do you criticize Israel without being antisemitic? x x

You can also support organizations which seek peace in Israel and Palestine: Roots/Shoreshim, Israel Religious Action Center, Association of Reform Zionists of America,  Breaking the Silence etc!

You can join virtual communities online as well such as the “Jews and Muslims for Peace” Facebook Group and if your Mosque has not already formed a relationship with your local Synagogue, you can be an incredible force for good in working on developing that partnership!If you would like ANYMORE advice, answers to questions, support, help locating a liberal shul near you- please let me know!

Have a great day friend!

PJ

[lupine-publishers-rrhoaj]

Lupine Publishers|China, Aging and Health

      Lupine Publishers | Journal of Health Research and Reviews

Abstract

Academics from across the world are increasingly concerned about the rising numbers of older people in their society. There are worries about the inadequacy of pension funds, of growing pressures on health systems, and on the inability of shrinking numbers of younger people to carry the burden of their elders. This article focuses on such health issues in China, where the older people have become a rapidly expanding proportion of the population. While resources do need to be targeted on the vulnerable older people, the presumption that older people as a whole are an economic and health burden must be questioned. This is an agist view that needs to be combated by locating how bio-medical views on aging seep into health policy spaces in China that position negative perceptions of aging as both individual and populational problems. The article then moves to observe the implications of bio-medicine for older people in China in terms of “vulnerable” aging but deconstruct such “fixed” explanations by juxtaposing active aging as key narrative that epitomizes “declining to decline” as espoused by health sciences.

Keywords: Aging; Health; Biomedicalization; China; Policy

Introduction

There is no doubt that in many societies around the globe older people are a growing proportion of the global population Krug [1]. The age structure of the global population is changing from one in which younger people predominated to a society in which people in later life constitute a substantial proportion of the total population. While the biological and psychological models of aging inscribe it as an “inevitable” and “universal” process, an aging population is neither Phillipson [2]. Transformations in the age profile of a population are a response to political and health structures. A major concern for organizations such as the United Nations and World Bank focuses on the number of such “dependent” older people in world society Krug [1]. Indeed, older people in particular constitute a large section of populations in global aging. In relation to public services that have to be paid for by “younger” working people, the percentage of the population has been used to signify such “burdensome” numbers. Not only are older people seen as dependent but also children under school leaving age and people over the retirement age. Dependency rates-that is, the number of dependants related to those of working age-altered little over the twentieth century and yet the notion of “burden” group retains its legitimacy. The reason there has been so little change during a period of so-called rapid aging populations is that there has been a fall in the total fertility rate (the average number of children that would be born to each woman if the current age-specific birth rates persisted throughout her child-bearing life) Phillipson [2].

Changes in the age structures of all societies also affect total levels of labor force participation in society, because the likelihood that an individual will be in the labor force varies systematically by age. Concurrently, global population aging is projected to lead to lower proportions of the population in the labor force in highly industrialized nations, threatening both productivity and the ability to support an aging population Powell [3]. Coupled with rapid growth in the young adult population in Third World countries, the World Bank [4] foresees growing “threats” to international stability, pitting different demographic-economic regions against one another. That the United Nations (2002) views the relationship between aging populations and labor force participation with panic recognizes important policy challenges, including the need to reverse recent trends toward decreasing labor force participation of workers in late-middle and old age despite mandatory retirement in both Western and Eastern countries such as the UK Jackson and Powell [5] and China Chen and Powell, 2011. Notwithstanding this, in China there is also an ongoing huge increase in the aging population that replicates global trends. It can be seen that the percentage of the aging population has increased from just over 4.4 percent to just under 7 percent from 1953 to 2000 Cook and Murray [6]. Note that the increase has not been constant, reflecting the negative impact of the Great Leap Forward and the successive famines upon the demographic profile, shown in the results of the 1964 Census.

Since that latter date, the percentage of the elderly has nearly doubled, while the actual numbers have more than tripled, being approximately 3.6 times that of 1964 by the year 2000. By 2000, there were 88 million Chinese aged 65 or over, compared to just under 25 million in 1964, an increase of 63 million plus in 36 years.

As is well known, China’s population policy, most usually referred to as the Single Child Family Program (although some Chinese commentators regard the phrase as a misnomer, given that more than one child is possible within a number of situations), has led to a rapid deceleration in the birth rate, which was only 13.38 per thousand in 2001, compared to 21.06 in 1990 and 18.25 in 1978 Cook and Murray [6]. This controversial policy, lambasted and praised in equal measure depending on perspective, has meant a rapid expansion in the number of single children only households at the very same time that the proportion of the elderly has also increased as a new era of prosperity has reached many households in China. Estimates suggest that up to 300 million less people have been born as a result of this process of state intervention, but Murray [7] has built on the earlier work of D.G. Johnson and others to suggest that improved living standards via modernization would have led to the same outcome voluntarily as growing numbers of urban dwellers in particular chose to reduce their family size. This last point hints at the important spatial dimension of demographic change in China. There is on the one hand a marked contrast between urban and rural life in China and, closely related to this, a marked contrast between Eastern China and Western China (Cook and Powell, 2007). It is in the heavily urbanized “Gold Coast” of the Eastern Seaboard in which China’s spatial transformation is most dramatic, with fast-expanding cities being especially concentrated in the Pearl River delta of the Southeast and the Yangtse Delta in Central East China Cook and Murray [6].

Hence, it is not simply that the Chinese government has belatedly recognized “the greying” of populational constructions and policy implications, it is that they continue to look for knowledge of aging as the power to define old age as a social problem in terms of dualistic distinctions between deviancy and normality. An aging population, like that of an individual being studied by bio-medical models, is seen as a “burden” problem in terms of economic management of Eastern (and Western) economies. It could be argued when looking at the effects of a so-called “demographic time bomb” across US, Europe, and Asia, it may have been grossly exaggerated. Such old age, therefore, has been perceived negatively via a process of “ageism”—stereotyping older people simply because of their chronological age. Agist stereotypes such as “aging populations” act to stigmatize and consequently marginalize older people and differentiate them from groups across the life-course who are not labeled “old” (Bytheway, 1993). One of the ways to interpret social aging such as being a categorization whether it be in individual or populational terms is through use of theorizing on what it means to age in society; that is, concerns and social issues associated with aging and the ways in which these themes are influenced and at the same time influence the society in which people live. Thus, to understand the process of aging, looking through the lens of the “sociological imagination” is not to see it as an individualized problem rather as a societal issue that is faced by both First World and Third World nations as a whole. In supporting this latter view, there is a need to focus on how populational discourses of aging in China are influenced and reinforced by bio-medical models of aging that help drive perceptions of older people as a burdensome group.

There are important implications for how aging is viewed by not only in terms of global aging but more specifically to China and the arrangement of political and economic structures that create, and sanction social policies grounded in knowledge bases of “burdensome” populations cf Powell [5]. Such knowledge bases are focused on: one, “biological aging” which refers to the internal and external physiological changes that take place in the individual body; two, psychological aging is understood as the developmental changes in mental functioning-emotional and cognitive capacities. Bio-medical theories of aging can be distinguished from social construction of aging: (1) focusing on the bio-psychological constituent of aging, and (2) on how aging has been socially constructed. One perspective is driven from “within” and privileges the expression from inner to outer worlds. The other is much more concerned with the power of external structures that shape individuality. In essence, this social constructionism poses the problem from the perspective of an observer looking in, whilst the biomedical model takes the stance of inside the individual looking out Powell and Biggs [8]. There has long been a tendency in matters of aging and old age to reduce the social experience of aging to its biological dimension from which are derived a set of normative “stages” which over-determine the experience of aging. Accordingly, being “old,” for example, would primarily be an individualized experience of adaptation to inevitable physical and mental decline and of preparation for death. The paradox of course is that the homogenizing of the experience of old age which the reliance on the biological dimension of old age entails is in fact one of the key elements of the dominant discourse on aging and old age. It is interesting that comparative historical research on aging in Eastern culture highlights an alternative perception of aging; in 18th Century China has highlighted a rather different path as to the conceptualization of aging as a scientific process developed by western rationality. For example, Cook and Powell (2003) observe that traditional Chinese society placed older people on a pedestal. They were valued for their accumulated knowledge, their position within the extended family, and the sense of history and identity that they helped the family to develop Murray [9]. Respect for elderly people was an integral part of Confucian doctrine, especially for the family patriarch.

This was a view that was also prevalent in Ancient Greece with the notions of “respect” for older people especially regarding gendered issues of patriarchy (cf Bytheway, 1993). Prior to industrialization, in India, there was a bestowment that older people had responsible leadership roles and powerful decisionmaking positions because of their vast “experience,” “wisdom” and “knowledge” Katz [10]. It seems with the instigation of Western science and rationality, aging began to be viewed in a different more problematic context than to the Confucian doctrine of aging epitomized in China and issues of respect for aging in India. Martin Heidegger [11] makes the similar point when he spoke of the Westernization of the World through the principles of Western science and language. Indeed, the technological developments due to industrialization, Westernization, and urbanization-under the purview of distorted form of modernity-have neglected these statuses of aging by downgrading its conceptualization. Part of understanding individuality in Western culture, the birth of “science” gave legitimate credibility to a range of bio-medical disciplines of whom were part of its umbrella. In particular, the bio-medical model has become one of the most controversial yet powerful of both disciplines and practice with regard to aging Powell and Biggs [8]. The bio-medical model represents the contested terrain of decisions reflecting both normative claims and technological possibilities. Bio-medicine refers to medical techniques that privilege a biological and psychological understanding of the human condition and rely upon “scientific assumptions” that position attitudes to aging in society for their existence and practice. Hence, scientific medicine is based on the biological and psychological sciences. Some doctrines of the biomedical model more closely reflect the basic sciences while others refer to the primary concern of medicine, namely diseases located in the human body. Most important is that these beliefs hold together, thereby reinforcing one another and forming a coherent orientation toward the mind and body. Indeed, the mind-body dualism had become the location of regimen and control for emergence of scientific in a positivist methodological search for objective “truth.” The end product of this process in the West is the “biomedical model.”

In this sense, bio-medicine is based on the biological and psychological sciences. Some doctrines of the biomedical model more closely reflect the basic sciences while others refer to the primary concern of medicine, namely diseases located in the human body. Most important is that these beliefs hold together, thereby reinforcing one another and forming a coherent whole Powell [5]. By developping an all-encompassing range of bio-medical discourses, many forms of social injustice could be justified as “natural,” inevitable and necessary for the successful equilibrium of the social whole such as mandatory retirement and allocation of pensions Phillipson [2]. Bio-medical gerontology is a fundamental domain where medical discourses on aging have become located and this is very powerful in articulating “truths” about aging. Under the guise of science and its perceived tenets of value-freedom, objectivity and precision (Biggs, 1993), bio-medical gerontology has a cloth of legitimacy. Biological and psychological characteristics associated with aging have been used to construct scientific representations of aging in modern society. The characteristics of biological aging as associated with loss of skin elasticity, wrinkled skin, hair loss or physical frailty perpetuates powerful assumptions that help facilitate attitudes and perceptions of aging. It may be argued that rather than provide a scientific explanation of aging, such an approach homogenizes the experiences of aging by suggesting these characteristics are universal, natural and inevitable. These assumptions are powerful in creating a knowledge base for health and social welfare professionals who work with older people in particular medical settings such as a hospital or general doctors’ surgery and also for social workers Powell [3].

These new forms of social regulation were also reflected in the family and the community. Hence, modern systems of social regulation have become increasingly blurred and wide-ranging Powell [3]. Increasingly, modern society regulated the populational construct by sanctioning the knowledge and practices of the new human sciences-particularly psychology and biology. These are called gerontological “epistemes” which are “the total set of relations that unite at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences and possibly formalized systems” Foucault [12]. The “psy” complex or biomedical epistemes refers to the network of ideas about the “nature” of individuals, their perfectability, the reasons for their behavior and the way they may be classified, selected and controlled. It aims to manage and improve individuals by the manipulation of their qualities and attributes and is dependent upon scientific knowledge and professional interventions and expertise. Human qualities are seen as measurable and calculable and thereby can be changed and improved. The new human sciences had as their central aim the prediction of future behavior Powell [3]. Powell and Biggs [8] suggest that a prevailing ideology of ageism manifests itself in the bio-medical model via its suggestion that persons with such biological traits have entered a spiral of decay, decline and deterioration. Along with this goes certain assumptions about the ways in which people with outward signs of aging are likely to think and behave. For example, there are assumptions that “older people are poor drivers” or that older people have little interest in relationships that involve sexual pleasure that are all explained away by “decline” and “deterioration” master narratives that comprise an aging culture. The effects of the “decline” and “decay” analogies can be most clearly seen in the dominance of medicotechnical solutions to the problems that aging and even an “aging population” Phillipson [2] is thought to pose. Here, the bio-medical model has both come to colonize notions of age and reinforce ageist social prejudices to the extent that “decline” has come to stand for the process of aging itself Powell [5]. Estes and Binney 1989 cited in Powell [5] have used the expression “biomedicalization of aging” which has two closely related narratives: (1) the social construction of aging as a medical problem, and (2) ageist practices and policies growing out of thinking of aging as a medical problem. They suggest: “Equating old age with illness has encouraged society to think about aging as pathological or abnormal. The undesirability of conditions labeled as sickness or illness transfer to those who have these conditions, shaping the attitudes of the persons themselves and those of others towards them. Sick role expectations may result in such behaviors as social withdrawal, reduction in activity, increased dependency and the loss of effectiveness and personal control-all of which may result in the social control of the elderly through medical definition, management and treatment” Estes and Binney, 1989, quoted in Powell [5].

These authors highlight how individual lives and physical and mental capacities that were thought to be determined solely by biological and psychological factors, are, in fact, heavily influenced by social environments in which people live. This remains invisible to the bio-medical approach because they stem from the societal interaction before becoming embedded and recognizable as an “illness” in the aging body of the person. For example, in the “sociology of emotions” the excursion of inquiry has proposed that “stress” is not only rooted in individualistic emotional responses but also regulated, classified, and shaped by social norms of western culture Powell and Biggs [8]. This type of research enables the scope of aging to be broadened beyond biomedical individualistic accounts of the body. On this basis alone, sociology invites us to recognize that aging is not only a socially constructed problem by bio-medical sciences but also the symptomatic deep manifestation of underlying relations of power and inequality that cuts across and through age, class, gender, disability and sexuality Powell and Biggs [8]; Powell [5]. At this level of analysis, sociology addresses biomedicine as one of the elements of social control and domination legitimated through power/knowledge of “experts” Powell and Biggs [8]. Such expert formation has also been labeled as agist (Bytheway, 1993). Ageism is where the assumptions made about old age are negative, which treats older people not as individuals but as a homogenous group, which can be discriminated against (Bytheway, 1993). Chinese society uses age categories to divide this ongoing process into stages or segments of life. These life stages are socially constructed rather than inevitable. Aging, too, is a production of social category. At any point of life span, age simultaneously denotes a set of social constructs, defined by the norms specific to a given society at a specific point in history. Thus, a specific period of life: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age or old age is influenced by the structural entities of a given society. Therefore, aging is not to be considered the mere product of biological-psychological function rather a consequence of sociocultural factors and subsequent life-chances. Indeed, society has a number of culturally and socially defined notions of what Phillipson [2] calls the “stages of life.” However, a fundamental question is how bio-medical gerontology has stabilized itself with a positivist discourse that not only reflects history but also the total preoccupation with the “problems” of aging that have important implications for older people and health lifestyles in China.

Bio-Medicine, Family Care, and Aging: Implications for China

The dominant bio-medical discourse of aging in China dwells on the processes of physical deterioration associated with becoming older. In this perspective, the aging body has to deal with increased levels of incapacity, both physical and mental, and becomes increasingly dependent on younger others for sustenance and survival; it is the family through informal care that has to provide care of older people who may have illnesses, according to the Law on the Rights and Interests of the Elderly, introduced by the PRC in 1996. The bio-medical problematization of aging has secreted wider questions of power and inequality; especially influential is occidental modernity. A powerful discourse is thus developed which follows that of the West, via notions of “social inclusion” and “family care,” and the all-important role of the consumer in buying products for the elderly, from disability aids through to private pensions (Powell and Cook, 2001). The latter suggest that this process constructs the aging body as a site of surveillance by the Chinese state, constructing them as, following Foucault, objects of power and knowledge in which “it’s your age” is the prevailing authority response to the elderly “customer.”

Powell and Cook (2001) have further noted that older people will be increasingly probed for social, psychological and economic factors such as “frailty” or “expected level of supervision.” “There are indications, for example, that where care homes are provided, these are for the more active elderly, rather than those in greatest need” (Powell and Cook, 2001: 7). This Foucauldian point has been borne out via an article on Shanghai China Daily [13] with “most nursing homes in Shanghai have entry criteria that target a narrow minority of elderly people. Some admit only those who are capable of independent living while others accept only bedridden patients. While dementia is a common condition among the elderly, those afflicted by it are generally excluded by the criteria.” Even more seriously, if a patient’s condition changes according to these criteria, he or she is forced to leave the home. “The lack of a continuum of care creates devastating situations for the patients and their families.” Further, nursing homes have only minimal level of medical support available, and patients are transferred to hospitals too readily if they have an ailment much beyond the common cold. The patient can then lose their place in the nursing home if their bed is transferred and thus be subject to further stress. “Preventive care, physical therapy, and spiritual care, which are crucial components of care for the elderly, are generally overlooked. Many nursing homes do not provide such services out of concerns for cost or accident liabilities.” The Shanghai article also notes, damningly, that: “The financial burden of long-term care accumulates on an elderly population already enduring tighter budget constraints because of retirement and unemployment. In the absence of government subsidy, the higher fees charged by selfsustained nursing homes deprive elderly people with limited financial means of their access to care” China Daily [13].

In the light of these and other issues the PRC government is attempting to change the ways in which the elderly are perceived, via campaign slogans such as “respect the elderly” and “people first.” The former campaign seeks to encourage younger people to visit the elderly on a regular basis in order to reduce the sense of isolation that the elderly can feel, to look out for their needs out on the streets and to generally raise awareness of the situation of older people. There is a resonance here with ancient Confucian tradition in which the elderly were venerated. There have also been attempts to encourage younger people to think about “healthy aging,” but this is meant in terms of ensuring that they themselves have adequate financial provision as they age. “People first” is the attempt to recognize that “aging is an individual-specific process” and that “a functional healthcare system for the elderly should integrate all aspects of care … emphasizing and fulfilling individual needs and preferences” CD [13]. Older people in rural areas are more likely to have to face emigration of their children to the cities as China’s urbanization proceeds apace. This can leave them physically and socially isolated in a remote rural area, no longer able to rely upon their family to look after them in their old age, as was once the tradition. Indeed, as social norms and values change, younger people may no longer be willing, even when they are able, to support elderly parents, and in recent years the law has been used to take children to court in order to force them to support their parents.

For example, a new law came into force on October 1, 1996 on “The Rights and Interests of the Elderly” that explicitly states that: “the elderly shall be provided for mainly by their families, and their family members shall care for and look after them” Du and Tu [14]. Notwithstanding the legal process, at its most extreme, the concerns of elderly people are expressed via suicide-gerontocide. The elderly can struggle in the face of the massive social changes that China is facing, and the abandonment of the tradition in which they themselves would have looked after their own parents and grandparents. They may feel so stressed and alienated that suicide seems the preferred option. For example, a 76-year-old man blew himself up in a courtroom in protest during a case against his family, who had offered only 350 Yuan a month to support him when 600 Yuan was required (8 Yuan = 1 USD) Cook and Murray [6]. In a society of rapid transformation, older people in particular may be vulnerable to the sense of abandonment within a more materialistic and selfish new world epitomized by the forces of global capitalism and seeping impingement into day to day living of older people in China.

Declining to Decline-Active Aging?

At the other end of the scale is the active elderly, probably the ideal state for all elderly people. Briefly, older people traditionally were more likely to be active within rural areas of China, in part because they had to be in order to maintain their livelihood. This particular tradition continues today; official data for the 1990s showed that 26 percent of people in rural areas still depended on their own labor earnings compared to only 7 percent in urban areas. This is not about advocating that elderly people should have to work to continue to earn a living, but we are suggesting that an active lifestyle be promoted where possible. In the cities of China today, it is heartening to see the colonization of open space throughout the hours of daylight and even into the evening by the elderly who are engaged in a wide variety of activities, from the traditional (such as taijiquan and qigong), walking one’s pet bird, traditional dance or poetry writing using brushes dipped in water only, illustrating the ephemeral and passing nature of life itself). Hopefully, the increased pollution which China’s cities face will not erode the potential gains from these and other activities for older people. An alternative discourse on aging can point to ways in which the elderly can be deproblematized as a negative medical, economic, political and social category. This must begin with appreciation of older people first of all as people rather than as a category (Powell 2006). Older people share, however, apart from their longevity, a wide and deep experience of life itself, and thus of life situations. In China, older people used to be venerated because they were, almost literally, the founts of wisdom, the holders of accumulated knowledge far in advance of the younger members of the family and community. Today, knowledge is far less likely to be oral, and far less dependent on accumulation by the individual. Instead, it is increasingly available at the touch of a button via an Internet search engine, even if there are some restrictions on web provision in the PRC. But, it can be suggested, there should still be a major role for the accumulated wisdom of older people’s experiences as carriers of historical wisdom.

In China, there is a growing awareness of the need to have a sophisticated, multidimensional policy to respond to the needs of older people. But there is still a strong bio-medical emphasis on surveillance and control. It could be suggested that policy needs to be driven by the elderly themselves wherever possible. They should be encouraged to define and state their own needs, provided with support when this is required, but the overriding emphasis should be on providing support that fosters active lifestyle and independent living wherever and whenever possible. This means encouragement to the elderly to share their accumulated experience, to provide their oral histories and their views on the momentous changes that they, along with China itself, have lived through. Older people should be valued and involved in wider society on terms that they themselves desire, recognizing that a wish for privacy and seclusion might be their preference.

Concluding Comments

Finally, it is worth noting that cases exist where narratives and micro-histories coexist and play a role in producing and strengthening social exclusion. The medical “gaze” refers here to discourses, languages, and ways of seeing that shape the understanding of aging into questions that center on, and increase the power of, the State, and restrict or de-legitimize other possibilities. A consequence is that areas of policy may at first seem tangential to the medical project come to be reflected in its particular distorting mirror. The Chinese “Duomin”-a subcategory of a wider population officially catalogued as fallen people, beggars or ruined households-were seen as inferior and condemned to bear low status on account of a number of beliefs prevailing among mainstream society. The narrative concerns a creational myth that asserts that the Doumin were closely related to Chinese ethnic minorities like the She and Yao and that all these groups shared the belief in Pan-hu, a common dog ancestor. As to micro-histories, we run into different stories which state that the Doumin were either:

a. Descendants of Song Dynasty traitors, deserters or prisoners;

b. Remnants of antique non-Chinese ethnic groups;

c. Foreigners who adopted the customs of Chinese lower social strata; and

d. Descendants of domestic slaves. Yet in all cases the Doumins excluded and outcaste status came about as a punishment society bestowed upon them. They were reduced to performing polluting occupations (ox head lanterns making, ironwork, barbers, caretakers, frog-catching, entertaining, among others) and limited to live in segregated quarters outside town.

Furthermore, the Doumin were not allowed to study or take public office, nor serve as officers and were obliged to marry among themselves. This suggests that their social identity was a result of the legal status imposed on them and not the other way around. As Hansson [15]: 87expresses it: “Once fallen people had been labeled as beggars, they had little choice but to conform to the behavior expected from people who had the social identity associated with their legal status.” For older people if they are regarded as an inferior category then their behavior will begin to mimic this categorization. “Dependent is as dependent does” is a major danger in the continuation of the dominance of the bio-medical model of aging.

A key point here is that the notion of the “bio-medical gaze,” not only draws our attention to the ways that aging has become “medicalized” as a social issue in China, it also highlights the way in which older people are encouraged for as long as possible to “work on themselves” as active subjects. Thus, as Blaikie (1999) has pointed out, older citizens are encouraged to take greater personal responsibility for their health and for extending this period of their active aging. Those who are defined in relation to their health then discover themselves transformed into passive objects of medical power in China. How do we go beyond this in managing old age? We could suggest macro-social practices have become translated into particular ways of growing old that not only shape what it is to age successfully, but are also adopted by older adults, modified to fit their own life circumstances and then fed back into wider narratives of aging well. Harry R. Moody (1998) coins this as the “Illderly” and “Wellderly” and managing aging experiences is about resistance to dominant discourses of bio-medicine.

According to Frank [16], the personal experience of illness is mediated by bio-medical procedures that shape and contribute to how the older people recognizes their own process of ill health and recover. Katz [17] notes that the maxim of “activity for its own sake” as a means of managing later life not only reflects wider social values concerning work and non-work, it also provides personal means of control and acts as grounds for resistance [18-20]. In addition, Phillipson [2] argues that changes in westernized policies has occurred from seeing old age as a burden to seeing it as an opportunity to promote productive aging. This reflects an attempt to shape acceptable forms of aging whilst encouraging older adults to self-monitor their own success at conforming to the challenging paradigm to hegemony of bio-medicine and its neglect of the agency of older people [21-24].

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