#i.e. antisemitism)

[pinkdean]

might have to skip employment law tomorrow cause we're talking about religion and idk if i can be respectful to be honest

[luminouscanary]

apologies for my sudden extended silence there. i am still here and healthy, just been taking some time away from online spaces. i'm trying not to let myself slip into despair, especially nowadays, and part of that has been keeping myself offline more than i ever am online.

this is not me leaving my blog behind, mind you! i will still pop in from time to time. still gonna reblog things every now and then. but i'm not going to be nearly as active as i used to be.

[meguwumibear]

first words out of my boyfriend's mouth when we left nosferatu were 'i actually really liked it. reminds me of a film my high school english teacher would make me watch' like sir

[heritageposts]

Germany's leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have ordered high schools in Berlin's borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled The Myth of Israel #1948. [...] Neukolln is one of Berlin's most diverse and international boroughs with a large Palestinian community. [...] The brochure states there are five "myths" around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors. In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel's pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely "defensive" Jewish resistance movement. Under 'Myth #2: Israel was established on stolen Palestinian land', Masiyot states that the acquisition of land by Jewish immigrants to Palestine took the form of a legal exchange of capital for an official title deed. At no point in history was land illegally conquered by Jewish immigrants, the author of the text, Michael Spaney, claims. Even land conquered following the wars of 1948 and 1967 and the subsequent construction of settlements, which are internationally recognised as a violation of international law, did not occur unlawfully, it says. "Anyone who uses the accusation of land theft as an argument demonises Israel and denies its legitimacy, i.e. acts out of antisemitic motives," Spaney wrote. "Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba", includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled "the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided". In the text, Mor states that "displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual". He also labels the UN's attention to the Palestinian cause "obsessive" and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.

. . . full article on MME (23 Feb 2024)

[makingqueerhistory]

I wish that we would collectively actually engage with the problematic aspects of queer history instead of demanding they be disposed of.

I think it's a result of a carceral system that removes criminals from our communities that people think in these black-and-white terms. Either a queer person from history was perfect and can be pinned to any argument to legitimize it, or they were evil, and we aren't allowed to talk about them or acknowledge their queerness.

In general, I believe it is so much more useful to engage with the messy and uncomfortable things people from history did. I also think this engagement shouldn't start with mentioning the harm the people caused and then end with disposing of said people.

Some alternatives I like:

Educating people about the problematic nature of the person while not distancing from them

Looking into the specifics of what harm was caused and doing opposing things (i.e. an author writing antisemitic tropes can be combatted with intentionally finding and uplifting a Jewish author taking down the tropes)

Take an inner inventory of ways you may perpetuate harm to the same community that the person in question did, and learn how to stop and repair that harm

Be an active ally to the people in your life who exist within the marginalization that the person in question contributed harm to

I suppose I am just tired of having a historical figure's problematic nature being used as a "gotcha moment" in response to even mentioning their existence (often in posts that link to articles that mention and sometimes discuss in depth the exact problematic decisions said person made).

[fdelopera]

Yo Goyim! Looks like I'm going to need to give some of you a crash course on what antisemitic language looks like, because I've been seeing entirely too much of it from some of you here on Tumblr.

Now, I think it's time for a Jewish history lesson, because I've been seeing way too many Nazi-related conspiracy theories going around. If you hear contradictions to the basic information that I am about to share (i.e., if you hear someone saying that the Jewish people are "a race that originated in Europe"), it is likely that you are hearing a white supremacist, anti-Jewish conspiracy theory.

So, here's the basics of Jewish history. Jews are indigenous to the Levant have been there for thousands of years. The Levantine people that Jews descended from have been in that area of the Levant since the Bronze Age. Jews as a distinct people have been there since the Late Bronze Age. Before it was Palestine it was the Kingdom of Judah, then Judea, and then Judaea, and that is literally where we are from. The word Jew means "a person from the Kingdom of Judah." The Romans renamed the area Syria-Palaestina (which they borrowed from the Greek name Palestina) in the 2nd century CE after destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem and leading another campaign to try to eradicate the Jewish people (guess what, we're still here, motherfuckers).

And even after the Romans tried to annihilate us, even after they scattered many of us into European diaspora, many Jews came back, again and again over the ages, and there have nearly always been Jewish communities in the region throughout history.

And if you come for me or try to dispute any of this history with white supremacist bullshit, I am a Jew who has studied way more Jewish history than you. And as politely as possible, you can take your white supremacist conspiracy theories and fuck off into the sun.

Okay, with all that out of the way, let's get into it!

Gloves are coming off, because this is just a sampling of the Nazi dogwhistles I've been seeing here on Tumblr about the Jewish civilians who were tortured, murdered, and worse:

- If you say shit like, "The Jews got what they deserved"...

GUESS WHAT? You're talking like a white supremacist, and you need to fucking check yourself.

- And if, on the other hand, you say shit like, "The reports were probably overblown. I think those were paid actors. I don't think those Jews were murdered. No Jewish children were killed. No Jewish bodies were desecrated" blahblahblah...

GUESS WHAT? You get to sit with the Nazis at their table for lunch.

- If you tell Jews "go back to Europe where you came from"...

GUESS WHAT? Not only are you telling the descendants of Jewish refugees to go back to the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, and the Nazi gas chambers, as I explained in this post, but you are also repeating a white supremacist conspiracy theory about the origins of European Jews.

Jews are a Levantine people from the area of the Middle East currently called Israel (formerly called the Kingdom of Judah, and then Judea). While there was some emigration to Europe during the late Roman Republic and the early days of the Roman Empire, the first mass migration of Jews to Europe was a forced migration. Gentiles from the Roman Empire dragged us there as captives after 70 CE, the year Rome destroyed the Second Temple.

- And if you're telling yourself that there are "good Jews" and "bad Jews," and those Jewish civilians were "bad Jews," so they deserved to be tortured and killed...

GUESS WHAT? You're spouting white supremacist ideology.

Antisemitism takes a long time to deprogram.

A lot of gentiles grow up with anti-Jewish ideology that they have never questioned.

And a lot of Christians are kept ignorant about Jewish history because preachers and priests fear it would make Christians question the many inaccuracies in the Bible.

But the first step in noticing antisemitic beliefs is to notice when you start singling people out *because* they are Jewish.

And I have been seeing some of you gleefully celebrating the murder of Jewish civilians *because* they are Jewish.

And that is antisemitism.

That is one step closer to the next generation of Jews getting shoved into the gas chambers. And there are only 16 million of us left in the entire world. We're 0.2% of the world's population. And we cannot afford another Holocaust.

And if your response to me saying that is, "Well, those Jews deserve it."

Guess what. You are making it easier for Nazis and white supremacists to spread hatred and commit acts of violence against Jewish people. And you will have to live with that blood on your conscience.

So...

If you are a gentile, and you see other gentiles repeating these kinds of white supremacist dogwhistles about Jewish people, here's how you can help:

1. MOST IMPORTANTLY: Help them direct their focus away from attacking random Jewish people online and towards helping Palestinians.

Actions that people can take right now are contributing to verified charities and relief organizations that help the people of Gaza. Only donate to organizations that are verified by CharityNavigator.org and CharityWatch.org.

2. Call that shit out. Tell people that they're being antisemitic, and explain that Jew-hatred is dangerous to Jewish people. Antisemitism gets Jews attacked and it gets Jews killed. In the US, many synagogues require round the clock security to protect against white supremacists who want to murder Jews. In Pittsburgh, my old home town, a group of Nazis from north of the city planned the murder of Jewish congregants at Tree of Life Synagogue, and so far only one of them (the gunman) has been arrested and convicted of the murders. The others are still at large.

3. Explain to them that it is antisemitic to celebrate someone's death *because* they're Jewish. ALSO, it is antisemitic to blame a random Jewish person for the actions of ANY government, whether that be the Israeli Government or the US Government.

4. Explain to people that they're not going to solve this conflict by posting antisemitic statements and memes online. All they will do is alienate the Jewish people in their lives and make those Jews feel scared and unsafe. And they will contribute to this current wave of antisemitism.

Antisemitic hatred doesn't help Palestinians. All it does is put Jewish people around the world in danger.

[sayruq]

The brochure states there are five "myths" around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors.In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel's pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely "defensive" Jewish resistance movement. Under 'Myth #2: Israel was established on stolen Palestinian land', Masiyot states that the acquisition of land by Jewish immigrants to Palestine took the form of a legal exchange of capital for an official title deed.

At no point in history was land illegally conquered by Jewish immigrants, the author of the text, Michael Spaney, claims.Even land conquered following the wars of 1948 and 1967 and the subsequent construction of settlements, which are internationally recognised as a violation of international law, did not occur unlawfully, it says. "Anyone who uses the accusation of land theft as an argument demonises Israel and denies its legitimacy, i.e. acts out of antisemitic motives," Spaney wrote. "Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba", includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled "the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided". In the text, Mor states that "displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual".He also labels the UN's attention to the Palestinian cause "obsessive" and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.

[millionsofbooks]

I mean I'm not an expert but being an instinct vs a cultural phenomenon arent mutually exclusive? Like, the uncanny refers to something that's broadly familiar but off in some way - obviously, what exactly triggers that is going to be dependent on what's familiar to you (i.e., your cultural context), but that doesn't nullify the point that there might be something specific about the feeling evoked by something that's 'familiar but off' that's distinct from e.g. something totally alien.

Periodically seeing ppl debate the origin of the 'uncanny valley instinct' and every time I'm like gang are we sure this is an instinct

[neil-gaiman]

Finally came up with something to ask you:

What is your opinion on Lovecraft? Not him as a person, but his stories and themes. I.E. have you read and do you enjoy Lovecraft's works?

I have absolutely read HP Lovecraft, and even wrote an introduction to a volume of his stories (it's collected in The View from The Cheap Seats). There's also a documentary about Lovecraft in which you can find people like me and Guillermo Del Toro talking about who Lovecraft was and what racism, antisemitism and misogyny have to do with it.

[girlactionfigure]

Recently, Alana Hadid collaborated on an Instagram post that claims Palestinian identity predates Judaism. It would be one thing to try to argue that Palestinian identity as it exists today predates the State of Israel -- something not everyone would agree with -- but Judaism?

If your advocacy for Palestinians requires you to deny, revise, or rewrite Jewish history, that’s not advocacy for Palestinians. That’s antisemitism.

RELIGION IN ANTIQUITY

Let’s put a few concepts into historical context. The concept of religion as it exists today did not exist in the ancient world. In antiquity, national and religious identities were almost one in the same. Think, for example, of the Ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks. Though they both observed their own pantheon of gods and practiced their own traditional religious rituals, when we think of Ancient Egyptians or Ancient Greeks, we don’t think of them as religious groups. In the Middle East, most nations had a “national god;” for example, the Assyrians named themselves after their national god, Ashur. 

The difference between Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks and Jews today is that while the Egyptians and Greeks have long ceased practicing their ancient national religions, in favor of religions like Christianity and Islam, Jews today do continue practicing the same religious rituals and rites as our ancient ancestors did. 

Just like the Ancient Egyptians made no differentiation between their national and religious identity, Jewish national and religious identity is still deeply intertwined. In fact, there is no word for “religion” in the Hebrew Bible. The closest would be “dat,” meaning law, or “emuna,” meaning belief.

BEFORE JUDAISM: YAHWISM 

The precursor to Judaism, Yahwism, dates back to the 12th century BCE. The most significant difference between Yahwism and Judaism is that the Yahwists only followed the Hebrew God -- YHWH -- but did not necessarily reject the rest of the existence of the Canaanite pantheon. 

The cult of YHWH was the national cult of the Kingdom of Israel (1047 BCE-930 BCE), though it seems other Canaanite cultures may have worshipped YHWH as well. Interestingly, the Hebrew God as depicted in the Hebrew Bible seems to be an amalgamation of YHWH and El, the most important god in the Canaanite pantheon.

FROM YAHWISM TO JUDAISM

In 930 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: the Kingdom of Israel to the north, also known as Samaria, and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. The term “Jew” comes from “Judahite,” as in a resident or citizen of the Kingdom of Judah. In Hebrew, the word for “Judahite” and “Jew” is the same, “Yehudi.” 

In 587 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and exiled its educated class to Babylon. It was around this time that the transition between Yahwism and Judaism -- which had been happening slowly over centuries -- became complete. The Jews came to reject the very existence of the rest of the deities in the Canaanite pantheon and, due to the Babylonian Exile, Jewish practices also picked up Babylonian influences.

ETYMOLOGY OF JUDAISM

The term “Judaism” itself does not come from Hebrew. Rather, it comes from Greek, and dates to the period of the Greek occupation of Judea (i.e. around the time of the story of Hanukkah). “Judaism” comes from Ἰουδαϊσμός” [Ioudaismos], a variation of the Greek term “Hellenismos.” It’s how the Greek occupiers described Jewish culture, religious ritual, and religious belief.

"Ioudaïsmós [was not] reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather 'the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish).'"

Biblical scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen

To reiterate, for Jews themselves, there was no distinction between their national identity and their religious identity.

JUDAISM AS A RELIGION

Given that the concept of religion is a foreign one to Jewish identity, when did Jews start seeing ourselves as a religiousgroup? It all goes back to Napoleon and the French Revolution. 

For hundreds of years in Europe, Jews were denied citizenship, equal rights, and confined to living in ghettos. It was during the French Revolution that Jews were finally emancipated. Shortly after, Napoleon instituted a policy of Jewish emancipation that guaranteed Jews freedom from discrimination -- so long as we stripped the “national” elements from our Jewishness and instead reduced it merely to a religious identity. 

In 1806, Napoleon wrote: “[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.”

Napoleon’s assimilationist policies fundamentally shifted how Jews understood their identity. This set the groundwork for the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the establishment of “religious” Jewish movements, such as the Reform and Conservative movements.

JEWISH IDENTITY

A NATION

If we are looking at Jewish identity through a Jewish lens, it’s important to understand that first and foremost, Jews consider ourselves a nation, which is why we call ourselves Am Yisrael, or the Nation of Israel. 

In this context, a nation is not necessarily a nation-state but rather, a group of people whose collective identity includes shared language, history, ethnicity, territory, and/or culture. It’s a term more political in nature than “ethnicity,” as a nation sees itself as having a common political destiny.

AN ETHNORELIGIOUS GROUP

In modern terms, we’d call ourselves an “ethnoreligious group,” meaning an ethnic group with a common religious practice.

A TRIBE

Jews also often refer to ourselves as a tribe, though technically we came from a confederation of tribes. In fact, the word “tribe” comes from “tribus” in Latin, which was first used to describe the 12 tribes of Israel.

WHAT ABOUT THE PHILISTINES?

The Philistines were an ancient seafaring people of Greek origin. They settled in Gaza and parts of what is now southern Israel in 1175 BCE. They are ethnically and culturally unrelated to today’s Palestinians and were exterminated by the Babylonians in the 7th century BCE.

“Philistine” is not what the Philistines called themselves, but rather, what the Israelites and Ancient Egyptians called them. We don’t know what the Philistines called themselves. The word comes from the Hebrew word “peleshet,” meaning “invader,” “squatter,” or “foreigner.”

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

rootsmetals

stop lying about Jewish history challenge 😃 the rest of the post is debunked in my DBAPP 4 highlight but I thought I’d fully address this particularly egregious lie because WOW! on second thought I do find this topic super interesting to talk about, so thanks I guess 😅

[crapeaucrapeau]

I would love to hear any headcanons you have about Volus society!

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy ! Thanks for the wonderful ask !

Okay, so this is all reliant on canon to some extent, and then I'm improvising. I'm interpreting your ask as the volus social organizations, but tell me if you want to know more about volus lifestyle !

So, when I come up with headcanons for societies, species, etc for Mass Effect, my rules are :

can I keep it canon-compliant ? I'm linking an old post on the volus canon here.

is there any existing science-fiction I can use as the basis for an homage ? (much like the krogan are a riff on the Klingons and the Mandalorians, and the turians are based on Starship Troopers, and the quarians on Battlestar Galactica, etc)

can I make the society and species I'm working on less human and more alien ?

With the volus, there's an added consideration : since they are mostly space capitalists, it's hugely important not to end up recycling antisemitic stereotypes.

And so… My WIP at present…

Okay, so the volus. Main concern : freedom — you don't get a family name because this would suggest your family can own you. Main political unit : a tribe, a fluid polity, in dynamic configurations. This is interesting, because this is not a state, which is our go-to political structure on Earth : a tribe suggests relatively small numbers of people (but more than just various shades of relatives), with no strictly defined territory and no strict centralization of authority. A tribe is a community of citizens, and is indeed suggestive here of greater individual agency than the state. The capitalism of the volus and their eschewing of the state and stated attachment to freedom could suggest a form of anarcho-capitalism or other shades of libertarianism (see also : Rapture), but this is very cliché and therefore boring, and Bioshock kinda conclusively shows why it wouldn't last long.

At the same time, we should note that there are at least two states in the life of your average volus : the Turian Hierarchy (duh) and the Vol Protectorate itself. The Vol Protectorate is very state-like : it has diplomats acting as the exclusive representative of the volus and entitled to make decisions in their name (e.g. Din Korlack, Kwunu), it has an executive leader (i.e. the Chairman of the Vol Protectorate), it has a permanent bureaucracy (e.g. the Vol Ministry of the Frontier) and extensive patent laws. On the planetary level, Irune, at least, as a Senior Commerce Advisor (whatever that is) and police, with military titles (e.g. Major). And we have hints of state-like polities within the Protectorate in a few pieces of the canon : the "corporate nation of Binar" with a "master tradesman", Noval San, as a representative (ME3) ; or "the Nao Clan", with one Udra Nao acting as its spokesman (CDN). So obviously the volus as a whole are not pathologically adverse to the idea of a state, though the fact they prefer the small, dynamic, fluid tribe as their polity of choice means they're not fond of state restrictions either. See also : importance of freedom.

Speaking of the Nao Clan… something we don't talk about is the emphasis the volus place on clans, you Earth-clan. A "clan", in English, is a large group with a shared ancestry, actual or presumed ; this is in keeping with the fact all non-volus are addressed not by species but by homeworld, or native biosphere : Thessia-clan, Sur'Kesh-clan, Palaven-clan, etc. That suggests your species is less important than where you come from : your common ancestry is your biosphere. Since it's insulting to call quarians "clanless", then it's in some sense dishonorable to lose your homeworld (presumably not damage : humans are never disparaged for the poor state Earth is in). Your homeworld, in a sense… is your common()wealth. This is a thread that could be imagined as a strong environmentalist conscience, though it would need to be reconciled with the capitalism of the volus (SPOILERS : capitalism isn't good for your planet).

So, in the end, what we have are :

the Vol Protectorate : a supreme state-like authority

the tribes : socio-political units you willingly join and from which you can depart, the larger can engulf the smaller ones or split apart. Most of the tribes are fairly small and lack the structure of states, but we could understand "tribe" as reminiscent of the Latin tribus, which doesn't describe a polity but a component of a polity

the clans : individuals with common ancestry ; e.g. the Vol-clan : all volus ; lesser clans are people who've lived together in the same place for a long time. Tied to notions of land, place of origin, environment - hence why other species get [homeworld name]-clan, e.g. Thessia-clan, Sur'Kesh-clan, etc. In some cases (e.g. the Nao Clan), a tribe and a clan overlap ; in other cases (e.g. Binar), it clearly doesn't. You can give your clan - the unit you belong to whether you care to or not - as much or as little importance as you want, though you'll always be Vol-clan.

So how do I reconcile all of that and give you more substantial headcanons ?

I made the Vol Protectorate a panarchy.

Basically, a panarchy is the idea that you can join any nation and political system you want, and even form whichever you want, and a state structure exists only to make sure your right to do that is not suppressed. The idea is to take the liberal idea of competition in a free market is beneficial for the economy and the consumers, and expand it to politics. IRL, it has huge feasibility problems and issues which entail I find it quite unrealistic, but it just might work with non-human capitalists who have abolished violence.

So, in "my" Vol Protectorate, the volus don't have tribes because they are a pre-state society, they are in fact a post-state* society : you have a multiplicity of micro political and economic regimes - the tribes - who correspond to whatever shades of the human political spectrum you care to identify them with. You've got : Megachurches ! Corporate nations ! Anarcho-capitalist gulches ! Anarcho-communist communes ! Social liberal democracies ! Absolute monarchies ! An enclave of volus Hierarchy citizens who live by turian rules and expectations ! and so on. Among other things, the Vol Protectorate exists to make sure anyone can join or leave any of those tribes, and no one tries to impose their way of life on people outside of their tribe. That's why, in my headcanon, Gaffno Yap (from Mass Effect : Annihilation) was exiled twice from the Vol Protectorate : the problem wasn't that he was anarcho-communist, which was fine and dandy, the problem was that the people he inspired blew up "banks and treasuries and any place where there might be a lot of money or influence or money and influence all together in one spot" to abolish currency, personal property, capital and "trade itself". That being said, it's pretty clear that one of the common traits for the overwhelming majority of volus polities - the hegemony, one might say - is the legitimacy and attractiveness of capitalism.

Crucially, each tribe would have as little or as many laws as they'd like, decided through whatever process they want, as long as they didn't contravene the laws of the Protectorate, the Citadel or (as of the 8th century CE) the Turian Hierarchy.

Equally crucially, people from different tribes would share the same territories and infrastructure : you could be roommates with someone subject to an entirely different legal system than yours.

At this point, I didn't have much else, beside the idea of the Vol Protectorate being the Vol Commonwealth before they joined the Hierarchy. I had to… hit the books.

Were there any science-fiction novels out there which I could use as the basis for the structure of the panarchy in the Vol Protectorate ? I could find :

Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age

and Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series.

Of those three, I found the last one most interesting and useful. The readers of Terra Ignota will read the following and recognize what I'm talking about. For example, the following based on the Universal Free Alliance :

Prerogatives of the Vol Protectorate

The specific and exclusive prerogatives of the Vol Protectorate include :

representing the volus before non-volus : - representation of the shared and unique interests of the citizens of the Vol Protectorate, all volus and all their properties, assets and commensals for their continued prosperity and well-being before the Citadel Council - representation of the same before the Turian Hierarchy, acting as an intermediary between the Turian Hierarchy and various volus interest groups

maintaining the interconnected systems all volus depend on to live and live well : - measuring and, if necessary, issuing alerts on the state of the various ecosystems supporting volus life, in particular Irune's biosphere ; should the government of the Vol Protectorate have reasonable evidence supporting the conclusion that state intervention is preferable to no intervention whatsoever in a way that benefits an ecosystem as a whole, it is entitled to intervene and manage it, usually by stopping disruptive economic activity - measuring and, if necessary, issuing alerts on the state of the integrated volus and interstellar economies ; should the government of the Vol Protectorate have reasonable evidence supporting the conclusion that state intervention is preferable to no intervention whatsoever in a way that benefits the economy as a whole, it is entitled to intervene and manage parts of or the whole of the volus economy

ensuring the freedom of all volus to live in a tribe of their choice, essential to the panarchy of the Vol Protectorate, is respected : - registering adult volus in a tribe of their choice - handling volus switching from one tribe to another

enforcing the law : - handling litigation between different volus tribes, each with its own legal system - ensuring every tribe respects the Axioms of Vol Law (notably respecting the environment and the rights of minors) through a process known as law-auditing

The legislative branch

The Laws of Vol, that is to say the whole of volus law that applies to all citizens and residents of the Vol Protectorate regardless of political affiliation, is extremely short : beside the Founding Charter of the Vol Protectorate, there are less than ten laws, the Axioms of Vol Law (or Axioms).

To pass a new Axiom, or repeal an extant one, at least 75% of the adult citizens of the Vol Protectorate as well as at least 66.7% of the adult population in each tribe must agree to it.

In practice, the Shareholder Assembly (see below) ratifies or vetoes policies introduced by the Management Board and repeals past policies, while the judiciary makes sure the Axioms and those policies are followed. This results in a de facto complex common law system ; the extensiveness of the volus patent laws, for example, has been frequently noted.

Every group operating on a Vol Protectorate host-world (see below), including the Protectorate itself, must also abide by the directives of the local Planetary Management Directorate.

The Axioms are based on the eight (8) universal Blacklaws in Terra Ignota. The patent laws are canon.

The executive branch

Each adult citizen of the Vol Protectorate is part of the Shareholder Assembly, with a political share determined on the proportionate amount of their wealth freely given to the Protectorate as taxes, and an added bonus for the poorer volus so that they do not have to give a lot to be on relatively equal footing with the wealthiest.

The Shareholder Assembly elects the members of the Boards of Directors, or Supervisory Board, who in turn elect the head of state of the Vol Protectorate, the Chairperson. Chairman Ulra Nron is the current leader of the Vol Protectorate.

The Board of Directors appoints and fires in turn the members of the Executive Committee, or Management Board, headed by a Chief Executive (or Managing Director). As head of government, the Chief Executive is in charge of the day-to-day running of the Vol Protectorate and formulating and implementing policies, while the Board of Directors safeguards the interests of the shareholders. The separation of the two prevents the most obvious forms of conflicts of interests.

Below the Executive Committee is the massive bureaucratic apparatus of the Vol Ministries, each tasked with a specific area of activity, such as the Vol Ministry of the Frontier. Unlike the directors, the members of the ministries are career bureaucrats.

Each director of the Executive Committee heads one of the Vol Ministries ; their immediate subordinates are the Subordinate Directors, whom they appoint, as well as the Advisors of the Advisor Panel, led by a Senior Advisor. The Advisors are ministry bureaucrats who rose to their positions based on merit and experience.

For example, the Chief Finance Director in the Vol Ministry of Finance delegates much of their affairs to several Subordinate Finance Directors and can rely on the advice of the Vol Senior Finance Advisor and the other Vol Finance Advisor.

The description of the Vol Protectorate government is simply that of the government of the Republic of Venice, an explicit inspiration for the volus, with corporate terms swapped in, and with an added management board as is common practice in the corporate world.

The judiciary branch

Sorry, I haven't come up with anything yet ! I'm of the mind of there being an independent Inspectorate which investigates cases where multiple legal systems are in conflict, Arbiters to settle such cases, and Law Auditors to conduct surprise law-audits and check (say) if those children are well taken care of and your tribe isn't actually a cult.

The planetary governments

An added wrinkle is that I imagined Planetary Management Directorates to handle issues which concern everyone on a given world - a "host-world" - mostly where you have integrated systems which go beyond just one tribe. The two major issues would be the planetary ecosystem and the planetary economy. Given that territory stops to matter for tribal, panarchist polities, what we have instead are governments managing a) the environment, e.g. the commons, and b) the integration of various groups by geographical proximity. Here I'm vaguely gesturing toward the Dutch Republic (the other direct historical inspiration for the volus) with a political system for decentralization, management planet by planet — but I haven't decided how those institutions function ! That's definitely where Irune's Senior Commerce Advisor is, though.

Economy

Capitalism. That being said, the government is stable, the volus are happy and the volus planets are beautiful and clean because most of the filthy, horrific exploitative stuff takes place out of sight, in the Terminus Systems (see also : Elkoss Combine in canon). The volus have outsourced the exploitation inherent to capitalism, and (much like everyone else in the galaxy btw) capitalism remains stable because there's virtually endless growth thanks to the virtually endless resources left to exploit in the undiscovered space of the galaxy.

Okay, @unfair-water-plane, I don't know if this was what you were asking for ; if you wanted something else, tell me and I'm sure I'll have something up my sleeve !

[argumate]

thinking through the categories of people who "support Israel" in the conventional sense of the term (i.e. support the overall ideology that underpins the current state of Israel and the actions that it takes) and it seems like there are five main categories:

those who think that the Jewish people need a state devoted to the defence of their interests, generally backed by an appeal to history, which is at least a simple belief to explain and argue with

those who are specifically fixated against Islamic religion or Arab nationalism and see Israel as a bulwark against it, there was a lot of this in the early stages of the second Iraq War and the previous Israeli invasion of Lebanon and it is at least still debatable

those who look to Jewish prophecies of Israel as delivered by supernatural covenant, which is an easy belief to explain but basically impossible to argue with as it's crazy iron age shit

those who look to Christian prophecies of Israel, like book of revelations filtered through 1980s American evangelical preaching hastening the end times shit, which is a belief so crazy it makes Jewish prophecies seem restrained and rational (and also mildly paradoxical in that it seems to suggest that Israel should be protected now so that Jesus gets to trash it later, but again you can't argue with somebody uninterested in making sense)

those who buy in to QAnon-style new age antisemitic conspiracy but invert the polarity, so they believe that the world is run by a secret committee of Jewish overlords but they are okay with that as Israel protects us from the moon men invasion or the demons that lurk in the planet's core, a belief you struggle to argue with as it's not even clear where you would possibly start

[beardedmrbean]

Harvard University has admitted the ugly truth: The left’s long march through its faculty and administration has borne poisonous fruit in the form of blazing Jew-hatred and the overall ruin of its campus climate and curricula.

Don’t take our word for it: Just read the elite Ivy’s own report on the Tentifada that sprang up in support of Hamas after Oct. 7. 

The committee tasked with looking into this antisemitic conflagration detailed how over decades what began as a tense, even rancorous zone of disagreement on campus — specifically, over Israel’s efforts to defend itself from terrorist aggression and the national aims of various Palestinian political factions — changed into an “attempt by student activists to drive Israeli students (and Jewish students who feel connected to Israel) out of student life.” 

This process was in train well before Oct. 7, and results (to use the words of a faculty member the report cautiously cites) from a“general shift of power from regular faculty and to para-academic administrators” that “has played an outsized role in the politicization and radicalization of academia and its intellectual and reputational decline.”

In short, Harvard has suffered “an ideological effort underway to weaken the post-World War II social consensus that antisemitism is a form of bias” along with “politicized instruction that mainstreams and normalizes” Jew- and Israel-hate (though the school couches this in a dodge: i.e., “what many Jewish and Israeli students experience as antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias”). 

Turns out when you hand the keys to a school over to a cadre of frothy-lipped ideologues, its quality declines.

And it’s not just Jews who suffer: Everyone loses out on the diversity of thought and free exchange of ideas that should characterize life on campus.

Instead of reading the greats or mastering organic chemistry, they get crammed with gutter propaganda and crackpot theory.

That it took a mini-pogrom and months of public scrutiny to get Harvard to admit this glaring fact is beyond insane. 

Scathing Harvard reports expose ugly activist culture infecting Ivy League school with antisemitism, Islamophobia

Yet, for all the report’s circumlocutions and efforts to bend over backward for armchair terrorists and the malleable-minded children of the American elite, Harvard has admitted the truth. 

Embracing the blood libels of the left around Israel and the academic theories that undergird them and letting radicals abandon teaching for indoctrinating does foundational harm to any university. 

Harm that is likely irreparable without (to use a buzzphrase popular among Hamas fellow-travelers) systemic change. 

Whether the Trump administration’s rightful cutoff of funding will effect such change is an open question. 

But the woke-academic cat is now out of the bag. 

And there’s no shoving it back in. 

[pencopanko]

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are very similar (if not the same), actually

So I was scrolling down the #palestine tag for any updates and important information, and I came across this:

And I think we need to sit down and talk about this.

I am a Muslim. I live in Indonesia, a country that is predominantly Muslim and a lot of Muslims here also support the Palestinian cause. Hell, even our government supports it by not only allowing Palestinian goods enter the country without fee, but also by taking in Palestinian refugees and even acknowledging the status of Palestine as a state while not having any political ties with Israel. The topic of the Palestinian tragedy has been spoon-fed to us at schools, sermons, media, etc., so your average Indonesian Muslim would at the very least be aware of the conflict while non-Muslims would hear about it from their Muslim friends or through media.

However, there is a glaring problem. One that I keep seeing way too often for my liking.

A lot of them are antisemitic as hell. The sermons I would hear sometimes demonize Jewish people. Antisemitic statements are openly said out loud on social media. Some are even Nazi supporters who would literally go to anime cons and COSPLAY as members of the Nazi party. This is not just an Indonesian Muslim problem, no, but this is a glaring issue within the global Islamic community as a whole. Today, this sense of antisemitism is usually rooted in general hatred towards the Israeli government and its actions against the people of Palestine, but antisemitism amongst Muslims are also rooted in certain interpretations of verses from the Qur'an and Hadith mentioning Jewish people and Judaism (particularly the Bani Israil), but in a way that is more ridiculing instead of life-threatening when compared to how antisemitism looks like in the Western world.

As someone who prefers to become a "bridge" between two sides in most cases, I find this situation to be concerning, to say the least. While, yes, it is important for us Muslims to support Palestine and fight against injustice, we must not forget that not every Jewish people support the Israeli government. A lot of them are even anti-Zionists who actively condemn Israel and even disagree with the existence of Israel as a state as it goes against their teachings. A lot of them are also Holocaust survivors or their descendants, so it is harmful to think for one second that Hitler's actions and policies were justified. It's just like saying that Netanyahu is right for his decision to destroy Palestine and commit war crime after war crime towards the Palestinians.

As Muslims, we also need to remember that Jewish people (the Yahudi) are considered ahli kitab, i.e. People Of The Book along with Christians (the Nasrani). The Islam I have come to know and love has no mentions of Allah allowing us to persecute them or anyone collectively for the actions of a few. While, yes, there are disagreements with our respective teachings I do not see that as an excuse to even use antisemitic slurs against Jewish people during a pro-Palestine rally, let alone support a man who was known for his acts of cruelty toward the Jewish community in WW2. They are still our siblings/cousins in faith, after all. Unless they have done active harm like stealing homes from civilians or celebrating the destruction of Palestine or supporting the Israeli government and the IOF or are members of the IOF, no Jewish people (and Christians, for that matter) must be harmed in our fight against Zionism.

Contemporary antisemitism is similar to (if not straight up being the exact same thing as) contemporary Islamophobia, if you think about it; due to the actions of a select few that has caused severe harm towards innocent people, an entire community has been a target of hate. Even when you have tried to call out the ones supporting such cruelties, you are still getting bombarded by hate speech. It's doubly worse if you're also simultaneously part of a marginalized group like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc. as you also get attacked on multiple sides. This is where we all need to self-reflect, practice empathy, and unlearn all of the antisemitism and unjustified hatred that we were exposed to.

So, do call out Zionism and Nazism when you see it. Call out the US government for funding this atrocity and others before it that had ALSO triggered the rise of Islamophobia. Call your reps. Go to the streets. Punch a fascist if you feel so inclined. Support your local businesses instead of pro-Israel companies.

But not at the cost of our Jewish siblings. Not at the cost of innocent Jewish people who may also be your allies. If you do that, you are no different from a MAGA cap-wearing, gun-tooting, slur-yelling Islamophobe.

That is all for now, may your watermelons taste fresh and sweet.

🍉

Salam Semangka, Penco

[jessicalprice]

So I've spent a lot of time untangling Christian exegesis of parables and talking about how the way Christians interpret parables almost always ends up being antisemitic.

But aside from how it makes them think about Jews and Judaism and Jewishness, I also want to talk a bit about how it makes them sympathize more with abusers than with victims.

The easy-to-point-to culprit here is the trilogy of parables that culminates in what most Christians know as the Prodigal Son story.

The common interpretation of these parables is that God does (and therefore Christians should) value a repentant sinner over someone who's never sinned.

The problem here isn't the stories themselves--they're pretty enigmatic as far as their actual meanings--but Luke's gloss:

"Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance."

(Mark says, "So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost," which is very different.

So on its face, in 2023, that's a blatantly dangerous, abuser-supporting belief. What is it like to be a child sexually abused by your youth pastor and to hear that the fact that he hurt you is part of what makes him somehow spiritually "better" than you?

And we can see it play out in the way Kevin M. Young, a popular progressive pastor on Twitter (who describes himself as "post-evangelical" and was the senior pastor at a Quaker congregation) responded to being told one of his tweets was antisemitic, and then jumped in to support a woman who responded by identifying herself as a fan of John Chrysostom (the literal author of "Against the Jews" and the most antisemitic of the Church Fathers, which is saying something).

I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing, because it's not all that important for what I have to say about this, but I am going to call out a few lines:

"The American Christian approach to t'shuvah sees the victim's spirit, character, and speech as equally important to the offenders. I.e. in Christendom, the victim can exceed the sin of the offender simply by their reaction (if it be in sin or acted in a way that is not Spirit led)."

So, to be clear, if someone assaults you, and you don't meekly forgive them in a "Spirit led" way, you're somehow worse than they are.

The uniquely Christian brain rot here is in seeing every sin as an opportunity for forgiveness. After all, if being a repentant sinner gives you a higher spiritual status--if there's more "rejoicing in Heaven" over you--than that of your victim, then you have to sin to get there. It treats other people as props in your salvation journey, not as fellow humans whose suffering matters. (Combine that with the Christian idea that suffering is somehow virtuous in and of itself, and you've got a very toxic recipe. Not only, by abusing others, are you guaranteeing your own value as a repentant sinner, but you're giving your victim the opportunity to ennoble themselves through suffering.)

Of course, a key word here is repentant. Put a pin in that.

These sort of exchanges on Twitter--a Christian being outright genocidal toward Jews, and a supposedly progressive Christian figure jumping in to defend the Christian, with seemingly no ability to comprehend that the Jews in the conversation are human beings who may have their own trauma around violently antisemitic language, with boundless empathy for the Christian abuser and none for the Jewish targets of their abuse--happen frequently and just as frequently leave Jwitter baffled in addition to angry.

Why all this empathy for the abuser and none for the victims?

I think a lot of this comes out of progressive Christian exegesis of parables, which is frequently looking for the radical "twist" to the story.

E.g. in the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, the assumption is that the audience of the time would have empathized with the Pharisee, and thus the twist is to make them empathize with the tax collector. In the story of the Good Samaritan, the assumption is that they would have seen the Samaritan as a threat, and the twist is to make him the hero.

The thinking goes that the audience would have had empathy for certain groups and none for others, so the stories push them to feel that empathy for the latter, and that this was needed to balance the scales, to make sure everyone was receiving love and empathy and care.

Except that this, in modernity, has the effect of simply reversing the roles, not balancing them. The groups that are assumed to be in good social standing get no empathy, even become the implicit villains, and the groups (supposedly, since this is now a Christian-dominant society) traditionally looked down on get all of it.

That might still be a balancing act if the "looked down on" groups were actually marginalized. But in the Christian imagination, that role is filled by sinners in need of Christian grace, not necessarily demographically marginalized groups.

The idea seems to be that the victims are getting sympathy from elsewhere, so it's the Christian's job to make sure the abuser/sinner gets sympathy too.

But I'll point again to that pesky word "repentant."

Ultimately, when it comes to treatment of Jews and Muslims and anyone else who points out that a Christian has in some way harmed them, Christian sympathy goes immediately to the offender before the offender has even expressed any repentance.

The repentant sinner is so much more valuable, at this point, than their victims that they must be preemptively forgiven, that they are more valuable purely because they now have the potential to repent.

And this seems to be lurking under not just how "progressive" pastors act on Twitter, but in a lot of our cultural narratives around, say, college rapists and their futures, around white people who are publicly called out for racist acts, etc.

[evilwickedme]

I said I'd never do jumblr content again and yet here I am because this keeps coming up and it's like the only thing I can think about. That said I will not hesitate to turn off reblogs if y'all are horrible in the notes again, and be warned that I will be blocking anybody who supports any of the theories I mention immediately

There is no such thing as a conspiracy theory that isn't antisemitic. There is no such animal

Antisemitic conspiracy theories go back thousands of years. The ones that still have the most hold on culture to this day are the blood libel, and the protocols of the elders of zion

The blood libel was an accusation that would be brought against Jewish populations in Europe often but especially around Passover claiming that we were killing Christian children for ritual purposes, usually to use their blood for baking matza or other nonsense (it is important to me that you know that this is nonsense. It is horrible and damaging but also to the core a ridiculous lie that never at any point made any sense. They just didn't care). Debatably this trope is present in the merchant of Venice. Undebatably Jews were killed because people did and still do sincerely believe this

The protocols of the elders of zion is a fictitious document published in Russia at the very beginning of the 20th century, supposedly detailing the meetings of the Jewish people who secretly run the world. The protocols were almost immediately proven to be a rip off of another document - ah, plagiarism - but that hasn't stopped antisemites from embracing it wholeheartedly (special thanks fuck you to Henry Ford for publishing them in his newspaper, spreading it across the USA). It built on previous antisemitic tropes, from the greedy banker trope (Jews were forced to be money lenders in medieval Europe as it was forbidden in Christianity and Jews weren't allowed to join any guilds, preventing them from making money in any other capacity - the reason why there are so many Jews in Hollywood is identical, but in the early 20th century) to the concept of dual loyalty (i.e. Jewish are loyal to ourselves above all else and cannot be trusted to be loyal to the country where we live, see: modern trope that every Jew is probably loyal to Israel and the subsequent idea that it's okay to ask every single diaspora Jew how they feel about Israel immediately upon meeting them). It's also worth noting that the word cabal, used to denote the shadowy organizations that supposedly control the world, comes from kabbala, which is Jewish mysticism

The idea of lizard people, created by a guy literally named Icke because he is a gross human being, was designed to repackage the antisemitic shadow cabal concept to be supposedly more palatable

Most qanon theories also build on all of this, such as world leaders preying on children (remember pizzagate?)

But more importantly conspiratorial thinking always positions you as the good guy standing against a mysterious "them", an other which is influencing things behind the scenes. The Jew is the ultimate other, and specifically an other that supposedly forms a shadowy world government, controlling everything and yet somehow not managing to get rid of antisemitism (see: protocols of Zion, lizard people, we control Hollywood and the government which is of course conspiring against you). There is no way to decouple the idea of an evil shadowy organization (usually also referred to as a cabal to really hammer it in) from antisemitism and antisemitic tropes

And this means that even supposedly "harmless" conspiracy theories attract antisemites and train people who aren't necessarily rabid antisemites to confirm those kinds of biases. Obviously Qanon and lizard people are antisemitic, but what does the moon landing have to do with Jews? Well, it was Hollywood and the government that faked it, obviously. Hell, even the conspiracy that Taylor Swift is secretly a lesbian and is either still secretly dating or is exes with Karlie Kloss is riddled with antisemitism -

Okay so I need to explain my position on this because I fucking hate this conspiracy theory, and the fact that most people simply won't acknowledge that that's what it is. Firstly, Taylor Swift has stated that she is not gay or considers herself an ally at least three times off the top of my head, and specifically denied that she was dating Karlie Kloss. Secondly, outing people is wrong. Thirdly, the conspiracy theory hinges on the idea that she would be risking her career by coming out, except that she's proven that basically no controversy can come in the way of her career, she's already "come out" as an ally, donated to glaad and the equality act, promoted queer musicians & artists & designers (there was a song in the reputation tour that was dedicated to a gay designer every single night of the tour). So what's stopping her from coming out at this point? Mysterious forces, clearly. The antisemitism in that I've already explained, but also the virulent antisemitism among Kaylor shippers aimed at her husband and at the fact that she converted to Judaism is fucking disgusting

Again: even a supposedly harmless conspiracy theory leads to antisemitism and attracts antisemites

A few years ago I tried to rewatch white collar cause I remembered really enjoying that show as a preteen and after around a season I just couldn't stand it anymore, because all I wanted to do was jump into the universe and yell at Mozzie to shut the fuck up because these conspiracy theories were barely presented as a joke and never challenged even once by any of the characters. When I rewatched that 70s show it also fucking sucked, but at least it wasn't showing up in every single episode. The blacklist focuses entirely on a literal Cabal, that's what they're called

This stuff is so normalized and it's fucking everywhere and it's exhausting. Jews are to this day being murdered over this. I can't change the world by myself, unfortunately, but if you don't have a specific person to blame for your troubles, shut the fuck up. Just shut up. There is no conspiracy against you. Sometimes life just sucks. Or definitely does for the Jews who get shot at over this shit

Again, I'll be blocking anybody who parrots this bullshit in the comments but especially fucking gaylors y'all are one of the main reasons that being a fan of Taylor Swift's music is fucking unbearable. Just accept you can connect to music made by somebody different than yourself it's not that difficult of a concept