#like. slurs & holocaust denial

[badolmen]

Hey I saw some people sharing an infographic with this logo on it and, uh, I’m assuming you don’t know much about this group?

Stop Zionist Hate is a neo-nazi organization and platform. If you see the SZH logo do not spread their posts. They’re using your sympathy for Palestine to lead you into agreeing with their white supremacy. Don’t fall for it. Fuck Zionists. Fuck Nazis.

[gender-euphowrya]

days without people i thought i could trust to be at the very least decent proving me wrong 0️⃣

[nonbinarychaoticstupid]

y'all gotta stop erasing antiziganism and pretending only antisemitism exists in media and it screams whiteness

oh no i 100% agree with you it wasn't my intention to sound like i was brushing off or ignoring that at all sdjnbfdjd but assuming you're referring to this post what i'm talking abt specifically is the discourse i've seen which is surrounding antisemitic imagery in the show and goyim showing their asses whenever people criticise anything as far as i'm aware 😭 ik there's a larger debate going on abt holocaust stuff on twitter i mentioned briefly in the tags of that post (which i don't have the emotional capacity to get involved in bc i don't feel like being called an evil lizardman goblin today) but i don't know exactly what's going on with that or if romani people are actually being involved in that discussion (which. in case this isn't clear enough. they should be very much involved in that discussion lmao) and also it's not. my place to talk about that or any other anti-romani racism in toh at all dfnbdfmdf [<- white and 17] [edit: link fixed + slur mention removed]

[schraubd]

Opposing Antisemitism is Hard When You Just Assume It's a Political Stunt

The Republican Party of Texas just voted down a resolution that would have barred the state GOP from associating with persons "known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial." The internet is having a field day over this, and understandably so. Meanwhile, one of the resolution's proponents is baffled: “I just don’t understand how people who routinely refer to others as leftists, liberals, communists, socialists and RINOs (‘Republicans in Name Only’) don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is,” committee member Morgan Cisneros Graham told the Tribune after the vote. Far from raising a question, Graham has in fact answered it. The litany listed here -- "leftists, liberals, communists, socialists, RINOs" -- none of these are, in their "routine" use by Republican officials, terms that are actually meant to carry some sort of principled semantic meaning. They're slurs -- bits of rhetorical seasoning, nothing more. And it's no surprise that Republicans treat antisemitism and Nazism, like all other "-isms", in the same fashion -- as a contentless slur one opportunistically hurls at political opponents. They have genuinely drunk their own kool-aid on this. They really don't think that, when people talk about antisemitism or neo-Nazis, they might be referring to something real and objective in the world. Of course it's meaningless theater.  And if one believes that, then it absolutely makes sense why one would be worried about vagueness and unclear boundaries. The article observes that some committee members "questioned how their colleagues could find words like 'antisemitism' too vague, despite frequently lobbing it and other terms at their political opponents." Again, this bafflement disappears once one realizes that for these Republicans, the vagueness and lack of definition is a service, not a barrier, to the frequent lobbing -- it is because they studiously avoid thinking that antisemitism means anything that they can toss it out to attack everything. This is why one can never trust Republicans to tackle antisemitism. I mean yes, for the obvious reason that they can't even reliably disavow Nazis. But also for the slightly less obvious but still important reason that their entire orientation towards "antisemitism" is that it is nothing more than a gambit in a political game.* They don't take it seriously as an actual, extant phenomenon, and so they'll never be able to respond to it as one. * Somewhere -- I can't find it -- I remarked on how Republicans, shortly after Ilhan Omar's "Benjamins" controversy, tried to gin up another controversy over Omar aggressively questioning conservative foreign policy maven Elliott Abrams. There was transparently nothing there on the Abrams thing, but many conservatives seemed baffled that their antisemitism claims weren't getting traction after so much attention was paid to the "Benjamins" tweet. What was the difference? The possibility that the difference could be explained by actual substance -- the "Benjamins" tweet was plausibly antisemitic, the Abrams questioning was not -- truly, genuinely didn't seem to occur to them. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/Yj9nldL

[redditantisemitism]

There’s genuinely too much here to break down, so I’m making a list:

Pic 1:

Use of goyim as an implied slur

Idea that Jews are controlling goyim

Idea that Jews want to enslave goyim

Idea that Jews are rich and taking advantage of other people’s labor

Jews as insider traders, manipulating the economy

Accusing Jews of usury (a la church antisemitism)

Idea that Jews are “subverting culture” [via pornography and liberal ideas, etc. the “Jewish agenda”]

The idea that Jews only care about other Jews and Israel

The idea that Jews want to kill all goyim (and implied to be specifically [good, morally correct] Christians)

The exaggeration of shapiro’s facial features is reminiscent of antisemitic Nazi propaganda (as well as other antisemitic propaganda of the time)

The comparison of Shapiro to a goblin

“Clown art” is a reference to clown world/ r/frenworld, a notoriously vicious hotbed of antisemitism so bad even Reddit managed to get their heads out of their asses and ban it

Like. Come on. I genuinely despise Shapiro too, but we can criticize him without being antisemitic. Unless! Could it be! They actually don’t care at all about Shapiro and are using him as a symbol of all Jews?? No!!

Pic 2:

The title of “Jews lie”. Jews being liars is a longstanding antisemitic trope.

Conflating Jews with Israel

Denying and excusing instances of antisemitism and violence

“Ironic” use of Yiddish in order to poke fun at Jews (also it’s transliterated as chutzpah, not hutzpah)

Holocaust inversions

“The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you”

Explicit holocaust denial-saying Jews are liars so they must also be lying about the number of us killed in the shoah

Implication that Jews control the police

Implication that “criticism” (antisemitism) of Jews will get you silenced, or worse, when the existence of this comic is blatant proof of that being false

Always note the tags

[cock-holliday]

There is just constant double standards and projections in every conversation with Zionists. Signaling your support for Palestine is just ‘trying to make yourself look like a good Jew so the bad Jews get targeted’…while they target and single out antizionist Jews constantly.

Saying “hey the Holocaust is not an excuse for genocide” is Holocaust denial but denial of Palestinian genocide is fine, rewriting Israeli and European history to fit your own narrative of the Holocaust is fine.

It was 40 beheaded babies then 40 dead babies then it turns out there were no babies but hundreds of Palestinian babies doesn’t stir you? Palestinian babies crushed by bombs and burned by chemical warfare and left to suffocate and rot in their hospital beds doesn’t draw a word from you?

Calling a zionist a zionist is really a placeholder word for the slurs you actually wanna say but calling antizionist Jews ‘Kapo’ is definitely not a cover for slurs, right?

The isolation, the doxxing, the attacks, the denial—everything the pro-Palestine movement is accused of is what zionists have been doing to antizionist Jews over and over!

“Well you need to make the diaspora safe for Jews first and then we’ll talk.” YOU are part of the danger for diasporic antizionist Jews! YOU claim the only safe place for Jews is Israel and allow for defeatism on ever combatting antisemitism HERE.

Even LOOKING at the Palestinian flag under any context is a hate crime upon you, but if a Palestinian even flinches looking at the Magen David, that’s also violence towards you?

“How dare people conflate Israel with all Jews” YOU are conflating it too! If every attack on Israel is an attack on you, how are people going to ever separate the two? If Israel is the only safe place we all belong and any heritage that prides itself on being part of the diaspora is either appropriative or delusional to you about their “true” home, how are we meant to separate out the two? If you criticize the current government only because it’s a right wing colonial empire instead of a liberal colonial empire, that means you still stand with Israel fundamentally, so how is someone meant to take that as NOT support for Israel?

What are you doing? What are you DOING? The conditioning runs deep but how has this not shaken you awake?

How do you see even a fraction of what’s happening and dedicate all your time to opposing those who want to end it?

[sissa-arrows]

random question, but why do Algerians still hate the French? French Algeria hasn’t existed since 1962, so why so much hatred still?

First of all 1962 is 61 years ago. You’re saying it as if it was centuries ago and nobody was alive anymore. My grandparents who are very much alive Al hamdulilah were born under French colonialism. I’m 29 and I saw the consequences of French tortures on my great grandpa with my own eyes (they cut off some of his fingers) as I was lucky enough to meet him (he died when I was 8-9) This is not some ancient event that has no consequences anymore on people. It still has consequences on the country and on the people. Like you’re going to pretend that France didn’t have lynching against Algerians until the 90’s? You’re going to pretend anti Algerian racism is not so present in France that the French word for a racist attack/lynching (ratonnade) is not a mix between an anti Algerian slur and the word “beating”?

Now to answer your question.

We don’t hate the French they hate us that’s different. Algerians don’t give a flying fuck about France. Algerians would want few things more than pretend France doesn’t exist.

But France hate us and resent us for taking our independence. Are we supposed to stay silent when France says we should be grateful for colonialism? Are we supposed to stay silent when they say we should be apologizing not them? Are we supposed to stay silent when absolutely nobody got punished for what they did to Algerians and that they actually got rewarded? Are we supposed to stay silent when the remains of our ancestors (some of them children) are still kept and exposed in French museums despite asking to get them back? Are we supposed to stay silent when France still has our archives including the ones before they colonized Algeria and still refuse to give us those archives? Are we supposed to stay silent when they say the trauma of their colonizers grandparents leaving Algeria is worst than the trauma of our grandparents seeing their loved ones being killed, tortured, raped? Are we suddenly pretending transgenerational trauma doesn’t exist and that 132 years of colonialism and the denial of the horrors committed, worst than the denial switching the blame, has no consequences on Algerians today? My grandpa still sleeps with a shotgun because of the trauma. My father left Algeria because his mother was so traumatized by what the French did during the war of liberation (they killed one of her child, he wasn’t 2 years old yet) that when the civil war started she told my dad to leave cause she didn’t want to lose an other child.

Now do you plan on asking French people why they hate Algerians or do you keep your questioning to Algerians only? We don’t hate France but if we did we would have every single right to.

Lastly if I was a Jewish woman posting about Nazis Germany and antisemitism in present Germany as well as Neonazis would you have felt you have the right to ask me why I still have issues with it cause it happened in 1945? Unless you’re a racist scum you wouldn’t have done it cause you know how horrific the holocaust was and how fucked up it would be to question the feelings of descendants of survivors (I’m still giving you the benefit of the doubt maybe your ask was genuine and you didn’t know any better). So why do you think you have the right to question how Algerians feel about France?

[sailor-rowling]

No, JK Rowling is not a Holocaust denier

The LGBT lobby has found yet another sickening way to attack JK Rowling. Trans-activist bullies, who so often delight in sending death and rape threats to the Harry Potter author, are now suggesting she is a Holocaust denier. It should go without saying that this is an absurd and defamatory slur. It is also one that’s being increasingly employed against anyone who dares to question the trans lobby’s latest attempt to rewrite history.

Rowling was accused of Holocaust denial last week, after she wrote a post on X that doubted claims that the Nazis made trans people a specific target for genocide. This argument is part of a wider attempt by activists to place trans people at the centre of the Holocaust. But the truth is that they weren’t. At least, not in any meaningful sense.

Digging into these claims, I soon discovered that activist historians have been sewing together a patchwork story of an alleged trans ‘genocide’ that is breathtakingly misleading. In fact, their entire narrative is built on only a handful of trans victims. Crucially, most of these victims were also Jewish or homosexual.

In response to Rowling’s comments, Pink News published an article claiming that ‘the persecution of trans people by the Nazis was devastating’. The proof for this? The names of five trans victims. What Pink News fails to disclose is that three of these people actually survived the war and fortunately lived to a ripe old age. One victim – Liddy Bacroff, who was arrested as a male prostitute – did sadly die in a concentration camp. Another, Gerd R, took his own life.

Take the case of Gerd R, one of the victims mentioned by Pink News. Gerd was a married, heterosexual man who had a history of crossdressing. He was arrested multiple times for public indecency after his neighbours grew tired of finding him hiding naked in their communal bins. He was later rescued from a concentration camp by the intervention of his doctor, who pointed out that he was heterosexual. This action saved his life and he was moved to a mental institution. There, Gerd took his own life.

Gerd’s fate was tragic. But it is almost certain that he would have ended up in an asylum for this behaviour anywhere across Europe at that time. The idea that a non-Jewish, heterosexual man like Eddie Izzard would without question have been murdered when Gerd R was not is fanciful, self-serving nonsense.

Another victim, Gerd Kubbe, a woman who identified as a man, had a very close brush with the authorities. In 1938, she was arrested for wearing men’s clothes and sent to a concentration camp. But a few months later, she was released and permitted to dress as she liked and to adopt the gender-neutral name of Gerd. One ‘queer’ historian admits that ‘police at first reacted harshly but later showed surprising leniency’. Even gay transvestite Fritz Kitzing, who was repeatedly arrested for soliciting, was sent to join the army rather than killed in a concentration camp. Kitzing survived the war and ran an antique shop until the 1990s.

So far, the mixed fortunes of the handful of named trans victims suggest that it was entirely possible to be ‘trans’ and elude persecution. If you were heterosexual, considered ‘Aryan’, followed the rules on public crossdressing and avoided prostitution or public indecency, you at least had a chance of surviving the brutal regime. No such leniency was afforded to the Nazis’ key targets, like Jews or disabled people, who were ruthlessly sought out for elimination.

When trans activists describe this truth-telling as ‘Holocaust denial’, they do a disservice to all Holocaust victims – including the few trans victims who really did suffer at the hands of an evil regime for their other characteristics. We must resist this blatant rewriting of history and the trans appropriation of the Holocaust.

[morgue-xiiv]

I love how many transphobeshave the most elaborate and embarassing menal breakdowns. And trans people are just like "well being trans is difficult but I try to live my best life" and the pro trans people are like "I just think we should ttreat people with basic respect". The transphobes are like "if you give a lobster estrogen and eat nothing but red meat you too can spend twent minutes yelling at someone for using a normal expression then claim you don't understand the word 'do'!" or "I'm making up a new transphobic slur for every time I cry in public about how many restraining orders my wife needed to get for me to leave her alone", or "I did something most people wouldn't even think of as holocaust denial but if I can hire a lawyer to force a bunch of people to say I didn't do holocaust denial and then bury the posts where I did I can definitely make it seem like my holocaust denial was worse than it was" or "I'm protesting by marching onto the grounds of this school I have been explicitly banned from being near to claim that children are shitting in litter boxes". Like. It really, truly, destroys your brain to be transphobic.

[adhdnojutsu]

TW: anti-Semitic and anti-indigenous hate speech

Imagine being so evil and bigoted that you use the opportunity of an indigenous Jew of colour agreeing with you on AI, to launch a flurry of unprovoked attacks based entirely on their ethnicity and your own conscious choice of buying into historical revisionism. But oh well, white else is new? Britain didn't exactly turn left with its last elections, sooooooooooooooooooo I guess some people over there got bold.

Jews are proven indigenous to Canaan, today called Israel. That is a hard fact you can look up. I'm literally born exactly there to Mizrahim (brown Middle Eastern Jews) and forcibly entitled to calling it my rightful home. My birth certificate literally says Tel Aviv, not whatever "go back to Europe" country these neo-Nazis think we Jews originate from. Denying Jewish indigeneity in Canaan-by-any-other-name is identical to Holocaust denial, because you cannot commit genocide against people who don't exist, and nothing can come to exist without first originating somewhere. So denying our proven origin = denying our existence = denying our genocide. Rachel did that by calling me a colonizer in my own proven indigenous homeland. And a sexist slur, but...

Before you go "No you stole the land": No, Rachel's people colonized it like they did everything that wasn't bolted down, then returned it to its returning indigenous folks who were fleeing from pogroms in the Arab world and the Holocaust. We can discuss the crimes the state of Israel commits without spreading lies about Jews' relationship to that land, see. One is legitimate criticism, the other is anti-Semitic, and since we're an ethno-religion, automatically racist as well. I can retrace my personal family back to "Canaan" (Israel) to Babylonian exile. I am indigenous.

[samasmith23]

WTF?! Just… this has got to be a joke, right? Like, this just has to be some kind of deliberate troll-style bad joke!

Donald Trump is so obviously guilty and a criminal that it’s downright pathetic!

But in all seriousness, screw Jon Del Arroz! Not only is he a theocratic Christian fascist and a Comicsgater, but he is also personal best-buddies with ACTUAL Neo-Nazi Vox Day, has engaged in open Holocaust denialism, and is a domestic abuser with a restraining order from his own wife! Plus, I myself once had a nasty run-in with Arroz back when I was still on Twitter. When I dared to both call a poorly written “article” Arroz write about Watchmen “stupid,” and criticized Islamophobic comments he made towards Ms. Marvel author G. Willow Wilson, he went onto hurl a whole bunch of ableist slurs at me!

Arroz is absolute scum!

[nando161mando]

X has taken its stance. Nazis on the platform are allowed. Pro-Hitler posts are allowed. Holocaust denial is allowed.

If you stay on a platform like that, you can't escape this creeping normalization. Even if you think you can.

"Oh, there goes another Holocaust denier. Just part of being online, I guess."

"Oh, another transphobe calling people dehumanizing slurs. Well that's the Internet for you."

Creeping normalization is like advertising. Even if you think it won't influence you, it will.

[kanelia]

They are toying with the idea of outlawing holocaust denial in my country and all I can think about is how one of the most depressing consequences of extreme progressivenes/wokeism (or whatever you want to call it) eating its own children in a form of gender ideology, is that it has shown that we as a society are not mature enough for moderateness.

Five years ago I would have fully supported the proposal, but now it just makes me roll my eyes. I no longer believe we could outlaw even the most ridiculous offensive aspects of the freedom of speech without soon finding ourselves in a position where we would have to defend our right to call a man a man against similar legislation. Professionals arguing against transitioning minors, gender critical feminists and LGB organisations have already been labelled 'far-right'.

If I was told 12 years ago that any kind of legislation obstructing the freedom of speech would be a slippery slope that could eventually lead to a reality where even stating the simple truths like "only women menstruate' or "lesbians don't like penises" could be labelled as hate, I would have laughed my ass off and called the person who said it a far-right troll. But then again, I would have never guessed that in just 10 short years it would be considered peak feminism to be pro sex work and pro males in women's locker rooms, sports, rape shelters and bathrooms and that women wanting anything for themselves would be considered "transphobic", and the women now calling themselves feminists would label real feminists with slurs like SWERF and TERF - all because men convinced them that changing their pronouns actually makes them the most oppressed group ever.

[cloudsourcing]

noticed that some neo-nazi, trad-wife, transphobe follows me on here (not mutuals) and I just wanna know why the fuck someone like that would feel comfortable following my queer, brown ass on this app?? it’s actually kind of terrifying because they’re clearly reblogging from antisemitic white nationalists on here and frequently post holocaust denial memes and use racist/transphobic slurs. They never interact with my posts but it makes me uncomfortable to know that they’ve been following me for a while…it makes me wish I could set my blog to private and delete all photos of myself from here bc it feels so unsafe. and they also reblog from some of my mutuals that I know don’t interact with this blog at all but it’s so weird seeing them casually reblog neo-nazi shit alongside queer poc on here. I wanna share a screenshot of this blog but I’m too nervous of them finding any of my personal information so I won’t do that but i don’t mind sharing the url if anyone wants it

[ithisatanytime]

they updated their script. i got banned for pointing out that the shills with british/canadian/polish whatever flags any flag but american, who make threads claming jesus "is a kike" or is king of the jews, they wont deny the holocaust even when relentlessly pressed. keep in mind they are presenting themselves as far right wing europeans frequenting a far right american politics board and they themselves are far right, but they believe that christianity is just jewish subversion its a tool of the jews. a person like that ought to have no problem denying the holocaust but they literally couldnt because they werent allowed by their employers to participate in holocaust denial, they are allowed to use slurs like kike for credibility but going beyond that and producing or spreading holocaust revisionism would be counter productive, so they literally couldnt respond when i would doggedly ask them to deny the holocaust, if they said they believed it happened then their cover is blown because no far right winger believes that shit, if they deny it they are breaking their employers rules. they updated their script in the two weeks i was banned they can deny it now but they wont go into it, i asked whats your favorite fact that you use to redpill normies about the holocaust not happening and the response was verbatim: "the numbers dont add up, and the jews lie"

wow thats your fucking smoking gun bombshell you use to wakeup a normie? the numbers doing fucking add up? anyway i knew they would update their scripts and the update is to be defusive. no one who formerly believed the holocaust happened would read "the numbers dont add up" and have their mind changed, but its just enough to give them some plausible deniability.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 4 of 26

Title: Educated (2018)

Author: Tara Westover

Genre/Tags: Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography, First-Person

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 1/21/2021

Date Finished: 1/28/2021

Tara Westover was born into an isolated, fundamentalist, conservative, anti-Government family in rural Idaho. She lived a life of neglect and abuse, never going to the doctor and never receiving a formal education, while being forced into unsafe and life threatening working conditions. When one of her older brothers became violently abusive, no one stopped him.

However, things began to change when Tara self-studied the ACT and scored high enough to be admitted to college. At age seventeen, she stepped into a classroom for the first time, and soon found just how little she knew about the world at large. Westover's Educated is a deep dive into her experiences growing up, her emotional struggles with an abusive family, and her road to recovery.

To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, not someone else’s. I have often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote that night came not from anger or rage, but from doubt: I don’t know. I just don’t know. 

Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs. 

Full review and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic depictions of childhood neglect and domestic abuse. Graphic depictions of severe, traumatic injury. Derogatory use of racial slurs. Racism, misogyny, and antisemitism are discussed. Somewhat graphic animal death.  

I don't have a lot of experience with nonfiction outside an academic setting, so writing a review about a nonfiction book, even one that's basically a story, is challenging for me. I've written and rewritten my Educated review a few times and none of them have felt right. So I'm going to keep things as short and simple as I can.

I've got complicated feelings about memoirs. Autobiographical works can be fascinating to read! But since I don't care about the personal lives of celebrities or politicians, most of the genre is dead to me. Memoirs like Educated are much more interesting; stories about ordinary people living through extraordinary circumstances. But there have been enough bad actors with this type of book (like Three Cups of Tea or A Million Little Pieces) that I'm always a little skeptical. So I approached Educated with a cautious yet open mind.

Educated is a thought-provoking memoir for a number of reasons, as it explores both the dynamics of familial abuse and the importance of receiving an education. Westover clearly experienced profound trauma as a kid. Apart from multiple disturbing injuries, she also suffered physical and emotional abuse, medical neglect, and a total lack of typical social and academic education, all of which hindered her ability to function as a normal adult. Despite this, she's managed to accomplish a lot, especially in terms of formal education, which her memoir details.

However, I think most official descriptions for the book do it a disservice. Yes, Westover was born to survivalist parents, and yes, she did not enter a classroom until seventeen. On a surface level the book is about her journey through education. But as Westover states, most of that education was social and emotional. A lot of the book actually focuses on her relationship with her family, and coming to terms with the abuse and residual emotional damage from her childhood.

As a survivor, I really identified with Westover's difficult journey with the abuse she suffered. While my own story is not as extreme, I was also abused as a child by family members. My father witnessed it happen and refused to intervene, gaslighting me and my mother + sister the entire time. There is so much irrationality and manipulation in a situation like that, and reading about her parents' denial that her brother Shawn was ever abusive struck very close to home. Like Westover, it took me a long time-- well into adulthood-- to finally establish boundaries and cut my father out of my life. Her emotional struggle and recovery are especially poignant to someone who knows on some level what it's like.

The academic portion of the book is also interesting. Westover's shock, frustration, and sometimes ostracization for not knowing certain things is just fascinating. It floored me that she had no knowledge of the Holocaust or Civil Rights Movement until college. While I have plenty of criticism for the US education system, it's better than starting with absolutely nothing. Educated made me realize just how much of my accessibility to formal education I've taken for granted.

I admit I actually finished the book a little skeptical, because there were some details that seemed weird or not adequately explained. Memoirs and other works of creative nonfiction inhabit a gray area in terms of truth. On one hand, they have to be entertaining to read about. But on the other, reality isn't always entertaining-- so embellishment does happen. One also has to consider how unreliable human memory can be, which blurs the line between fact and fiction further. 

On previous versions of this review I obsessed over financials, or how people recovered from injuries, and so on. Honestly, though, I'm not sure how much the small details matter in a story like this. Westover acknowledges several times where she remembers things differently than others. Memory, and how it changes with time and context, is a central theme of the book. I'll never know Westover's full story because I'm not her. 

But even if only half her story is 100% factually true-- and I think it’s way more than that-- it's still super interesting and discusses some very important topics. Westover comes off as genuine, and she describes her struggles in a very believable way, often going into detail that I'm not sure someone would even think to make up. I think it's nice she doesn't use her achievements as a form of self-aggrandizement. And while Westover accomplished some amazing things considering her background, the book also doesn't come off as a preachy bootstraps narrative. Maybe in five years there will be a huge scandal over this book, but as of now I'm willing to believe it for the most part. 

Educated gets an 8 because while I found it fascinating, it wasn't a life changing piece of work to me. A lot of people feel more strongly about it. Nonfiction also doesn't scratch the same itch for me as, say, really good spec fic. But I'm glad I read it, and I think it's a good thing to read outside one's comfort zone sometimes.