#neo nazi humor

[republikkkanorcs]

Damn Trump supporters always waving banners.

[mightyflamethrower]

[godjordie]

hey remember that thing that neo-nazis posted that was basically a guidebook on recruiting others into the right-wing sphere and their top tactic is to “make jokes?” as in:

“The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not.”

or

“Packing our message inside of … humour can be viewed as a delivery method. Something like adding cherry flavour to children’s medicine.”

or

“When using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking – like a racist joke that everyone laughs at …”

it’s always interesting to me when people will say the most outrageous, disgusting stuff and try to justify it as a joke like it isn’t still a gateway to bigger bigotry. creating a safe space for bigots is bigotry. telling bigots it’s okay or funny to be racist or sexist or homophobic is bigotry.

for anyone who already understood that, don’t engage. if someone says that shit, call it out as deplorable. if they say they’re joking, block them. genuinely no point in arguing with people committing to spreading hate.

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Literally why do we need google ai when we have you. They're taking your job

Not at all, Google AI boldly goes place I never would. I could not and would not ever suggest people cook spaghetti with gasoline or eat a mushroom based on unsupervised digital assessment. If I did and someone died, I would likely go to prison. But with Google's infinite army of lawyers, they can do all these and more without any accountability whatsoever.

Also, with politicians spreading misinformation designed to turn their followers violent against election workers, commit violent treason, undermine the systems on which what little justice can be found in this country are based, and distort public knowledge even to the point of medical science denial and support for genocide, I on this blog have not done much political humor since 2016 at all. Google AI however can simply tell you that yes, Hillary Clinton does eat babies and shoot random people with Kamino saberdarts. They can even have YouTube show neo-nazi propaganda to kids without warning so they can make a few extra bucks, all without any repercussions beyond their usual legal expenditures.

Yes, it's a bold new world of AI-made pleasures beyond our comprehension. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to escape this painful line of thought to seek the comparative relief of trying to pass a kidney stone. That's not even unreality, agony and pissing blood is preferable to thinking about the world right now.

Sorry.

[floralcavern]

I’ll never forget when there was this guy I got along with really well. He was nice, funny, and very polite. He had this sarcastic sense of humor that didn’t feel rude, which I really was attracted to. Not to mention he was Christian!

What ruined this?

He one day told me, outright, that he’s a Neo-Nazi and hates Jews.

The whiplash. The pain. The genuine shock????

[hero-israel]

A piece of bitter Jewish Diaspora Humor for you that I came up with earlier this year.

~*~

A Neo-Nazi does a Google search for a "Jewish synagogue" in his area, finds the top result, gets together his guns, grenades, and mask, and prepares to go and livestream his intended massacre. Just as he arrives at his target, though, he sees that the building is on fire, with screaming coming from inside, and another man coming out from the side, looking satisfied.

The Nazi comes up to him, and says, "Did you do this?"

The second man says, "Yep. These people disgust me, pulling strings from behind the scenes, corrupting everything, hurting people everywhere they touch, hunting down innocents... I had to take a stand."

Inside, as people are begging and screaming, the Nazi claps the other man on the shoulder and says, "Good job! Hitler would be proud of you!"

The second man looks at him, surprised, and goes, "But I did it for the Palestinians! I'm part of BDS!"

Before either of them can say any more, they hear a door burst open in the back of the building, followed by more screaming and the sound of a beating.

Heading back there, they find a black man wearing an outfit proclaiming him to be a Black Hebrew Israelite standing over another man dressed in Jewish clothing on ground. The Hebrew Israelite is stabbing the one on the ground, screaming how they are not the Real Jews, his people are, and that they've stolen his people's birthright.

The man on the ground screams, "Stop! In the name of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, stop! We're Messianics!"

Meanwhile, down the street, at the actual, non-descript synagogue listed on the second page of Google results, behind bulletproof glass and two security systems, the Rabbi hands the pair of binoculars over to the synagogue president, and says, "And you were upset when they moved in."

.

[orange-orchard-system]

Got a hate ask on my other blog (funnier-as-a-system) today. I'm not gonna respond to it directly, but I'm gonna go over it fully just as an example of why I don't take anti-endos or sysmeds seriously and find them to be just bullying assholes who don't know what they're talking about. Apologies for the rare discourse post, but I felt it would be useful to have a personal example I can point to if I ever get any more asks than I already have about why I block anti-endos and sysmeds and don't want them on my blogs.

[ID: A screenshot of an anonymous ask, which reads: ""Systems" aren't real. Please stop being ableist against people with DID and our struggles. Pretending to be one of us while simultaneously mocking us makes you look like a piece of shit. Also, DID isn't fucking funny, you're just cruel and ableist. Go see a psychiatrist, get your personality disorders and Munchausens taken care of, and stop pretending to have DID when you don't. We don't need you, our community is better off without teenagers faking DID as a meme. To be honest, I wish you and literally everyone like you were more likely to kill yourself as someone with a real mental illness, because you don't deserve to be alive if this is what you're doing with your life. You're just a delusional bully and neo-nazi" ./ end ID]

Starting from the top, apparently anyone with DID who's ever described themselves as a system is faking now. Nevermind that it's been a term in psychology and the community for decades now! All systems are fake!

I have DID. I've said as much many times. Not that I think this person would consider this a counterargument, but I feel it deserves restating considering a fair amount of my posts are specifically about my DID and managing the symptoms of it.

If I want to find humor in my own disorder, I'm going to. I'm not going to resign myself to misery and self-hate just to please some randos on the Internet. I crawled my way out of the pit of self-hate and am not just gonna jump in there again just to avoid a couple asks and assholes. And I'd make a point here about systems that don't come from trauma or aren't disordered, but what's the point of that when they think literally all systems are fake?

Ohoho! Disableism towards other mental disorders! Isn't the irony sweet?

Not to toot my own horn, but I just love the lack of awareness when it comes to "we don't need you." No, I guess you don't need me... but you'll be going without the work I've done both online and offline to teach people about dissociation and plurality. Not to mention the terms I've coined that make people feel seen, the experiences I've talked about that make people feel less alone, the building of spaces to let others talk about their own problems and experiences, and the general promotion I've done of plural representation in media. No, you don't need me, but I've been doing work to assist the DID and wider plural communities for years now. And what have you been doing? Sending hate asks to people with DID for being too happy?

I'm an adult. I've mentioned before that I go to university and have a job. Seems like even online, I can't escape the assumption that I'm a teenager, smh. Also, I'm much more worried about the teenagers you might be sending this to than any kind of unquantifiable harm a couple teenagers faking DID could do, considering how clearly you wish to do harm with your words. Especially considering the next few sentences...

Oh, so we're just moving onto blatant suicide baiting and admitting you want systems to die. Got it. Totally not a bigot, right.

Wait... "Real mental illnesses"? Didn't you just accuse me of having several earlier? Or do personality disorders and Munchausen Syndrome not count? (Also, do they think being suicidal is a requirement to be mentally ill? They know not all disorders or presentations of disorders involve suicidality, right?)

Well, you got the delusional part right (which, side note, do you think it's impossible for people to have both DID and psychosis? Big yikes even if no, but that's what these asks always seem to imply), but I think this post might be the closest anyone can call "bullying", considering I'm not giving you an opportunity to respond as I tear down your argument. But maybe the definition of peer abuse changed to *checks notes* running a blog talking about plurality in a positive manner since I last checked.

These people do know what a Neo-Nazi is, right? They know what a Nazi is? Because it feels like people just use it as a stand-in for "general asshole" when it means a specific sort of ideology and bigotry. Ironic that they'd be so pissed about "mockery" and treating serious topics "as a meme", but then they go and misuse a term for a very dangerous kind of ideology and person.

Alright, I think I got that out of my system. Please be careful out there, guys! It feels like the number of hate asks I've seen people get has been going up. I'm in a stable enough place to make a demonstration out of this, but don't push yourself to have a snappy comeback or write essays responding to these assholes if you don't think you're up for it. Hell, I rarely write things like this myself, I just chose this ask to respond to because it was such a clear example of how hypocritical and foolish this particular brand of assholes is that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to break it down.

[helido24]

Well... i finished both snootgame and volcano high, i needed to talk a bit about them

First of all: I LOVE THESE CHARACTERS SOO MUCH, FANG I LOVE YOU I HOPE TO YOUR HAPINNESS

2:. . .jeez, it's so difficult talk about both games without making parallels or comparing them

SG is a very simpler visual novel with a... very questionable reason to exist to begin with, but even with that it surprises you with a very beutiful story of self development and young love in the modern times. The multiples endings all of them are EMOTIONAL DESTROYERS, even the obvious joke-shouting-super edgy ending 1, but just 'cause all the care and love you have for the characters, you feel it in a more deeply way and you suffer watching them like this, giving you strenght to do the best ending possible and. . .oof, that destroys you too, but in a different way

I love Fang an Anon soo much, i wish them nothing but hapinnes

And talking about the elephant in the room? Well... i don't think snoot game is anti-LGBT propaganda

"B-but it's about fang doing destransicion"

That's the take talking about SG in GVH wiki and i'm not with that

Yes, anon is openly an ashole about lgbt themes and always talked shit about it

And the game treat the whole fang(they/them) with humor. . .both of those things happens between the first hour and the bad ending

As the game progress and anon makes the RIGHT choises you can see him at least try to comprenhend the pronouns thing, and perhaps he makes mistakes about it,but he get that is something important to fang

And yes, there's an ending where fang simply leaves behind all that identity and becomes a generic femenine wife? That's not the true ending

The true ending actually respect that side of fang, with her still liking that style,style being like that, still being fang, the only thing she doesn't keep is the pronouns

To me at least, fang's story isn't just about being no-binary. But being a young person trying multipples sides of their persona and life to try and found itself, with the help of the ones who cares about them to grow as a person

Fang could be a She,a he or them, and i would be perfectly fine with any of those

But if at the end she found herself more happy in this new version. What's the problem? If precisely that's the goal with this theme right?

BUT.... snootgame have a very heavy sin to carry and is. . .it's a 4chan game, and is a parody made to make fun about an openly pro-LGBT+ game

Even with how good the story is, with how NG never attacks directly the community and the movement, it's very hard to believe there's no bit of bath fait in the people behind

We still have all this early shit-talking about this theme after all

But having all in mind. . .i just can't hate snootgame, with it short experience it turned those characters in a very big part of my life (at least for this month lol), and the story touched me in various levels 'cause personal reasons (let's just say i had a "trish" in my life)

And well. . .thank you cavemanon for this very beutiful experience, i'm hoping your next project can shine your talent even more without so much controversy around it

And talking about conteoversy....

*sigh*

Goodbye volcano high. . .with you i have less things to say but still they're important i think

First of all: its FUCKING UNFAIR what happened to this game. An openly pro-LGBT+ visual novel with "tumblr aesthetic" being the first fucking thing they show about the fucking ps5??

What the fuck

It was throwed to one of the most savage and closed-minded fandoms in all the internet: """hardcore gamers"""

And just when they're waiting to some assasins creed, GOW or any other super big HD IP with muscles in the muscles of the characters

I can't think about this choise as nothing but an homicide, forgive for the comparation but. . .this shit was taking your 8yo cousin of color to a place you KNOW is full of neo-nazis with guns and criminal precedents. You know what you're doing or you are extremely stupid

And then internet folks started all this controversy and harassement and hate to the game and the studio by a lot of sides and themes and. . .i feel so sorry for the studio and the people working in volcano high, as a snootgame fan i'm truly sorry for what you passed trought, im hope with all my heart this doesn't make you to give up this style of game, and i'll be waiting to see your next project with heart ^^

And now talking about the game. . .fuck

Fuck fuck fuck

I'm sorry,i know what i said but. . .volcano high is broken by so much sides

I really wanted to enjoy it, i really wanted to love this version of the characters and the story but. . .fuck, i can't

Almost all the characters are soo flat (personality i mean)

All and everyone of them talk about ona (1) thing that they like and never shut up about it, you can be talking about anything else and- OH here's comes trish to talk about her worm. . .again, or sage and their cooking, or fang and their band. . .i get it, they're character traits and you need to use them but... i don't know these people, i don't know at all these characters at all.

In the first hald of the game you need to at least try to tell me something about them, their relationships, their past and problems, give me a reason to give 2 and a half shit about them... and they try, but everytime they talk and seems to be about to give some context they start to just talk about that one and only thing they like, leaving me with nothing to work with

And that's the problem of volcano high in general to me. Is obvious there's a story, there's a background to these characters and there's real context to almost every conversation they have. . .but we don't know it, we can't see it, we don't KNOW these people and is frustrating. After the 2 hours i just shuted down my brain and every time this happend i just go "oh yeah,some cute experience we don't know about them)

The two musical montages (there's 2 right?) With photos of the group living their lives and interacting with each other. . .they're very cute and seems to be fun, but we don't live any of this. Fuck sake i WANTED TO BE SAD in the ending, i wanted to feel the characters and their lives sliping away at the end

See al these beutiful and impactful moments? Well. . .i'd love to see them, to live them with them

But we don't. They're just a bunch of PNGs passing by at the end as the music continues. And that upset me a lot...

And what upset's me the most. . .you know why i care so much about the characters? Why i need to know their lives and feel something in this story?

BECAUSE OF FUCKING SNOOT GAME

They made me to care about fang and the gang, abour nazer, about naomi, about stella and rosa, i cared about this characters soo much that. . .i feel attatched to the GVH ones too. Even if volcano high do close to nothing to make me care for them at this level

It's to sad and so unfair, volcano high obviously was made with a lot of heart and they OBVIOUSLY cares about the characters a lot more than almost anyone in both fandoms, just the "memories" from above show it. But with the game story and characters as they are right now. . .i don't want to compare them so much, but honestly without NG being so important i wouldn't finished volcano high

And about the story itself? Well... is very rushed to say at least

As i said earlier they spent too much time trying to made us meet the characters (but without letting us know them)

To sudenly introduce the meteorite plot and. . .it feels zero important. Yeah it drives the characters to the harsh decisions they're making and how they interact with each other, but for half the game the meteorite is just there in the background and just mentioned over here and there as a reminder. Just to sudenly be the most important thing in the world at the last hour and half of the game.

Before that all the plot is about fang,the band and the battle of the bands (wich i hardly care about at this point)

But. . .fang and the band? Here they made it a very good work

Yeah, fang talk almost exclusively about the band as is their (1) personality trait, but still they manage to make me feel and understand how important is this to them, and. . .wow, i really felt how fang was feeling reed and specially trish leaving them behind and not taking the band seriously (and still having fang at the edge with promises of being a team but without helping them AT ALL)

I mean, there's no problem with reed and trish don't seeing the band as something more than some fun friends time after school and wanting to make something else for their life. The problem is they seeing fang talking 24/7 aboud the band their future together and openly taking life decisions about it and never saying "hey pal, i think you should focus more in a solos career, we don't want to live with the music but we're still friends" or something like that. . .and they do

Trish says this to fang. . .in the battle night, just in the most important night in fang's life, just to say that she's leaving the band in this very important moment and taking choises she never discussed with fang (as fang did talk with trish about theirs)

And the story insist on pointing out fang as the bad person here, who makes all the bad choises and burn all the bridges with everyone. . .but they doesn't

Even at the end with everyone crying and yelling each other, is fang who talk to everyone and says they're a horrible person and you can blame everything on fang because. . .reasons? Idk because with all the choises and talking options we taked at this point, we clearly made fang a very patient and caring person, but still there's one and only way the story was made and was with fang being constantly a bitch with everyone, so it doesn't matter if you take the bad or good options to talk about 6 hours, the dialogues are all about the bad ones almost constantly. And that's fucked and unfair for my dude fang the pterodolphin, i love them so much

But. . .not everything is bad with volcano high

The background arts are beautiful and very colorful, a lot of cute dettails and i love them

The characters? Well. . .it's weird, i love them a lot and they're very unique, in the special images and animations they look soo good

But in the normal gameplay...

They look kinda derpy all the time, and the few animations they constantly use for everything get repetitive after a short while (take a shot everytime trish does the eyebrow rise grin animation, tell me how you died)

((Btw perrito tacita epic cameo))

The art style in general of the game is very cute and i love it, but for the in-game animations they needed some more time to make them. . .feel alive and les akward

And the music?

Hell yeah this is good shit, i love fang's voice and definitely i'm gonna check more of their music soon

In conclusion...

I can see where all of this came from, if that leaked script is real it just makes soo much sence about how the final product ended,i can see every original plot being planted as seeds in the final game but never having the chance to grow or even blossom, just a little sapling in the dirt, and that make me so sad. . .

Even with all of that,they managed to launch the game,and leaving out all the controversy i think the game got very descent sales and everything was kinda worth, i really hope they don't give up again with this type of story

But Ko_On and cavemanon are full of talented people and they deserve a chance to grow and shine by themselves

Both without being a perhaps-bad-faith parody, or without so massive backlash from the wrong people who's not are even interested in the quality but the politics in the games

I don't make this kinde or post so often,but i had to speak my mind about something so important to me

Thank you very much if you readed it 'til here and sorry for the mess,i was typing things as they apeared in my mind lmao

Check it out my art, i just recently made this piece of fang and i really loved the result ^^

[wildpeachfarm]

and if i say that the continued harassment campaign against dream has contributed to the reversion to 2010s "edgy" humor..

obviously not saying hes the sole reason, but the memeification of dream to dehumanize him and make him an easy target for literal neo-nazis who have been infiltrating leftist spaces and pushing their repackaged rhetoric to use against him has to have done Something . like we went from straight people thinking its funny to make homophobic comments in the 2010s to... queer people thinking its funny to call a queer man homophobic slurs?

or maybe hes just been a victim to the slow decline back into "edgy" humor idk 🤷‍♂️

Honestly yeah people abandon their morals when it comes to shitting on dream and I do think that the “popularized cruelty” wave that TikTok inspired is also a big part of just how bad the internet has gotten

[batboyblog]

hindsight I'd place the beginning of the 21st cen rise in antisemitism (and the rightwing swing of a LOT of countries) with the 2008 financial crisis and jews once again being scapegoats. I remember the how europe suddenly starting swinging right, jewish people leaving paris in droves, a massive increase in hate crimes. A lot of this was like, background news in reports on NPR and other places, too, obvious if you knew how to listen. And then the US congress swung right and we got trump.

yeah, I think there are a lot of factors, I think as we moved into the 21st century a lot of the Holocaust generation started to fade away, Simon Wiesenthal the great Nazi hunter passed away in 2005, Elie Wiesel the great author of the Shoah was a child when he was liberated and passed away in 2016.

Today all that's left is people who were very small children at the time and a few very old very frail people

past which the non-Jews who fought fascism, or lived under it are fading away as well, the 80th anniversary of D-Day was a few days ago, to have been an 18 year old on those beaches you'd have to be 98 years old today, most of the small number of Vets who were brought over on a specialized flight were over 100 years old.

I think in the 1990s and early 2000s there was a lot of button pushing, boundary pushing humor? things like South Park or Family Guy that really went in on racial humor, and people ironically or for "shock" value did stuff with Nazi imagery (Jeffery Starr comes to mind) and thing that brought into being people being "ironically racist" in unregulated spaces on-line.

I think the War in Iraq, and the lies about WMD and then the 2007-08 crisis and crash being driven in many ways by government policies, together with the internet allowing conspiracy minded people to better connect lead to a great distrust of government, and conspiracy thinking which together with economic hardship, and the old racist rival and freak out about the black President mixed with those "ironic" racist spaces online to become a meeting and mixing space for a lot of young conservatives and then...

Trump and he was everything they wanted, they busted out of their on-line caves like a Doctor Pimple Popper video and now good luck finding anyone under 35 who works in Republican politics professionally who isn't a Neo-Nazi, as see by that add with Trump "uniting the Reich" in the background, some video guy put that in to impress his pals in some racist chatroom I'd bet most of my fingers.

I think of course this hasn't been a right wing only thing. And I say this all the time, antisemitism doesn't stay in one place, if right wingers are saying it or left wingers the other side hears it, and picks it up and boosts it and its all one thing. And I think there were and are lots of young people on the left frustrated by authority, primed up to believe in a rigged system, and all that means it's easy to blame the Jews. "Why don't we have health care?" "the Jews took all the money" you're hearing that rn and not just in the US, the leader of the French far-left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has said some bonkers things about Jews, in 2020 he said "I don't know if Jesus was on a cross, but he was apparently put there by his own people" in 2020, a French socialist was calling Jews Christ Killers....

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Is This the Last Dance Before the Lights Go Out?

I hate to say it, because it’s not very solarpunk, but it feels a bit fin de siècle here right now. Like we’re in the last days of normality before we fall off the cliff. Every time we have a nice moment—in the late spring splendor of the garden, for instance, or even just when walking the dog through the fields—we stop, Spouse and I, and tell one another to enjoy it. Because feels like that in the midst of the cataclysms that are about to strike us, we’re going to look back at these little things and wonder how we could have taken them for granted.

And it’s not just us who’s feeling this way. Lately, when we have dinner with friends or chat with our neighbors, at some point, the group converges suddenly upon such thoughts. Be grateful for these moments, we murmur to each other, where we can relax together on our backyard patio, drinking cold white wine, and watch the sunset. Understand that they’re a luxury. Such days are numbered and once they’re gone, not all of us, and maybe not even any of us, will see their likes again.

Who can blame us for seeping in this bittersweet gloom? A perfect storm doesn’t just seem to be looming, it feels like it’s adding elements to itself all the time.

At first it was just the global warming we are still failing to address. But now it’s clear that this global warming is not just bringing deadly heatwaves, droughts, bigger and more frequent storms, sea level rise, and flooding, it’s also threatening to collapse patterns of ocean circulation within the next decade or two such that northern European temperatures will drop to resemble those in Anchorage, Alaska, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and Kamchatka, Russia. On top of all the other disastrous effects this would have—including sudden massive heating of lower latitude areas along the Atlantic—just imagine what would happen if farming were no longer possible in such heavily populated places like Britain, Ireland, northern Germany (where I live now!), Poland, and all of Scandinavia. Food prices soaring all over the world, anyone? Plus widespread famine (and not just in Europe) and the collapse of major economies? If we were young enough to start over again and had the money to move, I’d say we decamp back to my home state of California before climate change turns us into actual refugees. I’m sure I’ll kick myself in five, ten, or fifteen years when saying our garden full of potatoes and the neighbor’s Muscovy ducks and alpacas will be what gets us through the winter here without starving is not just a matter of gallows humor.

Meanwhile, we’re balking at getting the renewable energy revolution going fast enough soon enough to avoid environmental disaster. And why are we balking? Because it’s “too expensive” or because we just don’t want to change anything about the way we live, although these arguments are ridiculous because the cost of doing nothing is astronomically higher and the changes are coming anyway.

We’re also refusing to reverse the widening wealth gap that’s ultimately what’s driving people into voting for the far right, neo–Nazis, and other politicians with authoritarian urges and the desire to destroy democracy… even though these people and political parties will only add fuel to the fires that need to be put out.

Then there is all that misinformation and all the conspiracy theories that seem so perfectly constructed to stop us from working sensibly together to tackle the existential environmental, economic, and social problems that are making it increasingly harder for us to thrive, or often, even to survive.

On top of all that, here in Europe, we have the added issue of the political failures of the post–Cold War period that have had us sleepwalking into a dangerous situation with a resurgently imperialistically hungry Russia. After the Wall came down and the Iron Curtain opened, European politicians thought we could just be friends and trading partners with Russia. Because Russia’s interest in selling us natural gas and crude oil would weave them into our economic world and make them value our markets enough for them never to want to wage war on us ever again. Thus would we lull them into peaceful capitalist prosperity and democracy.

Cozy in that lazy thinking, Europe dropped its guard, domesticating itself rather than its enemy. Its armies grew thin and its stocks of weapons and military machinery thinner. Today, countries like Germany would need the greater part of a decade to build up enough weapons, equipment, and trained manpower to wage even a strictly defensive war. It’s not much different for any other country in Europe. Which is not the position you want to be in when one of your neighbors starts dreaming of their glorious imperialistic past.

To hear politicians and analysts tell it, unless some political miracle convinces Putin to remove crush western democracy from his bucket list, we have three to five years to prepare for war. Such a miracle might be as simple as a heart attack. More likely it involves a sudden splurge in funding to beef up European defenses ASAP plus upcoming elections handing power over neither to the far right in Europe nor to the raging danger that is Donald Trump nor to the Republicans party that has been taken over by people who’ve lost their tether to common sense, compassion, and reality. In other words, yes, we really are talking about a miracle.

I’m no professional, but from my little perch here in Northern Germany, having as long as three to five years feels optimistic. Ukraine is all that is standing between Putin and the massive expansion of his war. If Trump and the Republicans roll into the White House, that’s got to bump up the war is coming to us timeline to... sometime next year or the one thereafter. Seems to me, anyway, because Trump & Co will pull US support out from under Ukraine faster than you can say God damn the electoral college and then she will fall.

Won’t that be the start of the wider war, for the next stops will be Baltic states, like Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and Poland, plus neighboring countries like Moldova? Or maybe it won’t even wait that long. Knowing this danger for Estonia, Estonia’s current leader has already more or less said that, in order to save Estonia, they’ll give everything the country has, in terms of funding and military support, to stop Russia from taking Ukraine. And since Estonia is a member of NATO, as soon as they do more than send funding and equipment, doesn’t that drag a huge chunk of Europe straight into the war, even before Ukraine falls entirely to Russian aggression?

Again, I’m no professional on this front, I just live here. But likewise, it’s also hard to see how it will be as long as three to five years before we’re all at war, given how zealously Russia is working to undermine peace, prosperity, and political stability in the West and how feebly we’re counteracting this. Russia takes a mile for every inch we give them, spreading misinformation, causing destabilizing political problems, and committing not even terribly covert acts of sabotage. This sowing of dissent aims to weaken western countries and coalitions ahead of the overt war Russia plans to wage on us. We totally know this! But our politicians are too frightened to retaliate against this hybrid war against us , lest it trigger a real war between us. You can all but hear Putin laughing into our timid faces. Real war is coming anyway!

All of that (plus a bunch of other equally dismal stuff that I haven’t had room to mention) is why living in Europe right now feels like the last dance before the lights go out.

Is it any wonder my thoughts have also recently frequently turned to how such a war would unfold?

Will tanks speed down the little lane we live on? (Honestly, actually, I’ve seen that already, because I think back in summer of 2022, they were training Ukrainian soldiers to drive Marder armored vehicles around here. There was a week when every time I looked out the window, one was zipping by… and let me tell you, it’s amazing how fast these things can race by.)

Will bombs flatten our house?

What can I do to prepare for what is coming? I live in Germany, a couple of hours from the Polish border. So, there is somewhat of a buffer there, but not a huge one. It isn’t inconceivable that there might be fighting here, or that we’d be the target of drones.

I don’t mean to be self–centered about this. There’s a whole lot of destruction and carnage that has to happen to other people and other countries before battles happen here. But it’s not right to just shrug this looming war off by thinking oh, well, it won’t happen here.

I feel like, at my age, I’d make a terrible solider. Never mind that I’ve never been great at blindly following orders, I’m small, middle aged, out of shape, and full of asthma and allergies and chronic injuries, the battle scars from too much fun and soccer playing in my twenties, too much swilling of diet soda, and too much stress in my career. Yet, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go and fight than it would for someone in their late teens or twenties (or even thirties), who has so much more of life in front of them? Spouse says, well, it would be our jobs to do all the jobs that wouldn’t be getting done if a good chunk of the young men were off fighting. We’d be farming, or helping out in hospitals, or riding around in garbage trucks. I don’t know if that would really feel like doing enough. Part of me thinks he’d be among the first to sign up if Germany gets invaded, even the current work that he’s doing would be critical to maintaining Germany’s renewable energy infrastructure.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how we live about 100 miles from the nearest city that would likely be hit by nuclear weapons, should things get that bad. I think that means we’d be the ones to die of radiation sickness, unless we could stay in a fallout shelter for the couple of weeks it takes the most acutely dangerous radionuclides to decay away. But, of course, like everyone else here, we haven’t got one in our backyard. We don’t even have a cellar. And I don’t want to die in an old abandoned local potato cellar or in one of the dank cubbyholes that passes for a cellar under some of the neighboring houses.

So, I haven’t just started thinking, whelp, even though I finally let us work down the supplies of toilet paper and canned goods I began hoarding in February 2020, it’s time to build up the collection again. I’ve started wondering how I could maybe turn our downstairs guest bedroom into a fallout shelter. It’s already got brick walls and a concrete ceiling. They’re not thick enough, but it’s a good start. What if I bricked up the window and then lined all the walls with another layer of bricks? Would that do, so long as I solved the issue of the flimsy wooden door? Also, could we rejig our solar panels to use them as an island, isolated from the grid, so that we’d have lights and could run a pump a few hours a day to bring air in through a Hepa filter? We could pee into buckets and poop into ziploc baggies, but how would we deal with the dog? With paper, pens, pencils, and maybe even our laptops, and maybe even something as decadent as an exercise bike, at least we wouldn’t die of boredom. Oh… a radio! And batteries. I’d better add that to my mental list.

Then, the dilemma. We have our anniversary coming up. Should I buy him a Geiger counter? Or would it be better to wait until Christmas? Or his birthday early next year? Or can I put it off even longer than that? I don’t want to buy one if I don’t need to buy one, but I don’t want to wait until it’s too late and be unable to get one and then die because we left the fallout shelter too soon, or didn’t realize we had a leak that was letting in dusty radioactive fallout.

But, honestly, argh! I have never in my life been afraid of the future. I even made it through the entire 1980s without having more than the occasional flicker of anxiety about dying in a nuclear war. But now thoughts like these are tying my stomach in knots and keeping me awake deep into the night.

As much as I love solarpunk, and as much as I believe in solarpunk’s vision of a great future that doesn’t require that we go through an apocalypse first, it’s hard to be optimistic about that right now. I cannot shake this feeling that our systems have been so broken and the changes we need to make to the way we do everything are so great that the only way forward is for it all to fall apart. It is hard to shake the feeling that we truly are about to go over that cliff.

That doesn’t mean I won’t stop fighting for the changes we need to make to avoid catastrophe on our way to a sustainable future. But I’m still stuck with the melancholy of these very possibly being the last nice days I will see for either a while or the entire rest of my life.

[bedlamsbard]

I get asked occasionally if I cut scenes from Home and I do, though not that many -- I usually figure out pretty early on in that scene that it's not working. This one from Chapter 10, for example, got cut because the humor didn't work and I didn't want the scene to digress to Steve instead of the Red Room. But I still think it's funny, so:

“What do you want?” Natasha asked her, sounding tired. “Do you hate me?” Peggy asked her. It wasn’t the question she had meant to ask. Natasha shook her head. “Why would I hate you?” “Because I’d take your husband if I could.” It was the first time Peggy had said the words out loud and even she winced a little at how blunt they were. She had never wanted to be that kind of woman; she wasn’t particularly enjoying finding out that she was that kind of woman. Natasha shook her head again. “That’s not really grounds to hate someone. If I’m going to hate someone, I have better reasons for it.” She cocked an eyebrow at Peggy. “Wanting a go at Captain America is not exactly unique.  I know, I used to screen his fan mail.” “I think that was meant to be an insult,” Peggy said.  When Natasha shrugged, she added, “Fan mail?” “Love letters, marriage proposals, naked pictures, death threats, hate mail, that sort of thing.  Kids wanting autographs.” “Death threats?” Natasha shrugged again. “Neo-Nazis weren’t thrilled about having Captain America running around again.  Then there was the three week publicity disaster because Steve didn’t know that they changed the Pledge of Allegiance and left off part of it live and on camera.  Various political opinions he feels very strongly about and so do many other people, in the opposite direction.  Baseball, for some reason.” “Neo-Nazis?” Peggy repeated disbelievingly. She grimaced.

[herrlindemann]

Rockstyle - March 1998 - Interview with Paul

Ramstein, a German group, was in France on November 24 and 25 for only two dates in France. Rockstyle was there. For several reasons, first of all to follow this unavoidable phenomenon which, after two albums, has already sold more than two million records worldwide. Then their music, as well as the whole concept developed on disc, and on stage has a very strong meaning that has already seduced more than one editor. Ahh, the scene precisely, let's talk about it. Debauchery of sound, pyrotechnic effects, fire, flames, symbols, homo references, body worship... There was enough to ask a lot of questions, and enough to indulge in many digressions. By looking at this group, several elements put us, we believed, on the right direction. Indeed Rammstein, takes its name from a German city, Ramstein, a martyr city with a large Turkish population which was set on fire by some far-right group. Ah. Not only was it starting to get interesting, letting us go even more to our interpretations, just to make sense of it all, but it all had a smell of sulfur making the aura of the band even more mysterious. Our metaphysical wanderings (all these years of philosophy have to be for something, huh?) were going well: so, finally, Rammstein, it's just a group of bodybuilder neo-Nazi homos, as some press clippings suggested, or is there a simpler, rational, and less disturbing explanation? Meeting these people was going to be really important. Certain live photos, certain live images in addition to the concert reports and associated with what we already knew, namely the Manichean poetry and the lyricism of the texts, hinted at something else. On stage, wouldn't the fire be a tribute to the victims of the massacre? Would the group's answers to our questions quench our thirst for knowledge? Was fire for them a symbol of redemption? Was this simple religious Manichaeism between the angels and the demon hiding something more complex? What does this masochistic suffering represent for them? What about sex in all this?... So many questions to which we hoped to find the answer we were expecting, of course... But our hopes were far from being fulfilled, and our interview with Paul, one of the two guitarists, was going to reserve our batch of surprises.

Paul, you seem much more relaxed than yesterday, the concert tonight (Elysée-Montmarte) don't worry you too much for now?

Yes, everything is fine, and yet I only slept four hours... And I don't have stage fright. But I've been walking around Paris for four hours playing the tourist, maybe that's why I don't feel any pressure.

The romantic poetry of the texts gives us a clue to Rammstein's message?

Everyone must find their own answer. And when we translate these texts, we lose meaning and precision. 'Du hast' is a very good example, because there are two meanings to the phrase 'du hast mich', it means 'you own me', but also 'you hate me'. The whole song is based on this ambivalence of the verb 'haben' and its ambiguity. So when you translate this text it no longer makes sense, it no longer means anything. And generally in all our songs, we try to associate a necrophiliac, morbid side with another full of humor, fun...

The purpose of the texts is only that, to be funny, or is it hiding something else?

If what we are saying was funny, then yes, it would be funny, but we are not able to do that… I like texts that have an impact, that make people think. They even shock them. The effect is even greater with these comic effects, finally I think it would be more appropriate to speak of grating, very dark humor.

And where does the desire to make people think about these particular themes come from?

80% of the texts are composed by Till, the singer, and for the rest it is a group work, work which is largely inspired by the music... What is interesting is that everyone in the group listens to different things, one listens to blues, the other doesn't listen to music at all, one listens to pop, like Abba, the other industrial… We really have eclectic tastes. We just come together to make music, and we never worked to be a successful band, we have, that's good, great, but we never asked why it worked! We are all different and we complement each other, and our common goal is to make music together, that's all. We wanted to do that, we wanted there to be lots of pretty girls in the front row, and that's it! There are never pretty girls usually at metal concerts, maybe we wanted to fill this gap! Besides, it wouldn't make sense to do the same things as all these metal bands again, we're trying to move forward, to offer something else. The story is to try to stand out, it's for example to wear beige velvet pants when everyone is wearing blue jeans... There, it's you we're going to look at. Some will like it, some will hate it, but the important thing is that you got noticed. Besides, it's very easy to get hated! (Laughs)

In your videos, you develop a strong homage to films by Lynch or Tarantino, moreover you appear on the soundtrack of 'Lost Highway' with the title 'Rammstein', it's just a way to spread your passions, or you think this aesthetic is close to your vision of music?

As usual the record company didn't have a clear idea of the video we should do for 'Engel', so we decided to take a passage from the film with Tarantino, 'A Night in Hell' , and adapt it to our sauce. We had lots of ideas for special effects, morphing, and unfortunately not enough money so we made do with the means at hand. For the title 'Du hast' we chose to re-pump on 'Reservoir Dogs', and there the result turned out to be closer, 90%, let's say, to our original idea.

Between these videos and your show on stage, there are quite interesting parallels, and certain symbols keep coming back, Good, Evil, fire, explosions… All this gives a rather Biblical vision. When Till catches fire at the start of 'Rammstein', what does that mean? A rebirth?

Ah! I like it... But I don't really want to explain all these things... Too many people who aren't very smart don't understand what we're doing, and give us rather tendentious comments and desires, so... I think that to understand what we do you have to let go of your sensitivity and your intelligence… Let's say it's just provocation… The fact that Till uses pyrotechnic effects on stage is purely anecdotal. In fact he is very shy, and when he does not bite the guitarists he can even be rather diplomatic! Anyway, at first he mumbled in his corner, and since he doesn't play an instrument, he had trouble having an ease or a natural attitude when he wasn't singing, he even seemed rather stuck because he didn't didn't know what to do! So we had the idea of playing with fire. It is sure that at the beginning with just a lighter, the result was not terrible! (Laughs) Then we decided to develop all this visual aspect, with explosions, flamethrowers… Till has a diploma in fireworks, and he is the only one who knows and has the right to use all that. You really have to be careful because it's very dangerous, but with him, there's really nothing to worry about.

There seems to be a very Teutonic rigor in everything you do: the concerts are ruled like clockwork (sic), there is no dead time, everything seems to be written like a script of a movie. Do you still leave room for spontaneity and improvisation?

Yes, everything is straight, symmetrical, we like this rigor, but we are not the slaves of our machines, and everything is not done as for playback, we are organized, that's clear, but we let a certain room for freedom, even if, to be honest, we don't really like to let ourselves go to long stretches of improvisation on stage, we try sometimes, but we realize that it doesn't go with the music we make, quite simply...

Do you think Rammstein represents an evolution, or an emergence of a new metal?

We don't do metal. I don't really like metal, because I think it's a style that not only has never been able to renew itself, but also that is stuck in reverse. It's like a car, there are five gears, and if they used them, then they would see that it goes! Some are very good musicians, very good technicians, some even have the sound, have very good riffs. The problem is that they should only use one riff instead of seven, eight, because they play so fast that the music doesn't have time to settle. We, with a song of the genre we make seven! And it is much more efficient, like AC/DC, for example. It's more power pop than metal...

[goingrampant]

Alright, I should probably talk about the bat mitzvah scene in The Boys 4x02. It's... some manner of cringe, if not literally antisemitic, as, I imagine, is on a lot of people's minds. From my perspective, it's more of an issue of Amazon consumerism and badly written antifascism than straight-up antisemitism.

Okay, let's recap (spoilers): The Boys are examining a far-right wingnut convention (Truthcon, a conspiracy theory con, filled with Stormchasers: in-universe neo-Nazis) hosted by a hotel and investigating Nazi supes but are discovered by their targets, who engage them in a brawl. This brawl spills into a bat mitzvah also hosted by the hotel (great job, organizers, btw 🙄), which is themed like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, complete with cardboard cutouts of characters. Splinter, a Nazi supe who makes clones of himself, antagonizes the Jews with a militia of naked versions of himself holding guns, and the Jews run away while the Boys fight Splinter. M.M. does so by weaponizing a menorah to bludgeon Nazi clones. At the end, Nazi influencer Firecracker makes an absurd vlog about uncovering a Zionist conspiracy by virtue of stumbling into a bat mitzvah that happens to be hosted at the same site as Nazicon.

On a high level, it is not antisemitic; it is an antifascist show that uses the depiction of antisemitism as an accurate depiction of Nazi antagonism in the service of a narrative about antifascists taking them down. Butcher and M.M. especially come across as antifa types, while main villain Homelander was always meant to come across as fascist. The show has many Jewish creatives behind it; it's not literally antisemitic. *looks pointedly at performative Stormfront haters*

That said, this scene wasn't executed particularly well. The Jews are othered by the weirdness of the theme and made into props for the Boys vs. Stormchasers (gentile antifa vs. neo-Nazis) conflict. They aren't treated particularly empathetically as characters, as is bolstered by the weirdness of the theme, which is a set-up for the joke about Firecracker being absurd. Unfortunately, by creating a payoff where Firecracker looks silly for characterizing a weird party as menacing, the set-up for it makes the party itself silly and ineffectual. None of the Jewish characters, props, or set dressing actually matter that much except as set-up to the joke.

The joke itself doesn't make that much sense. So, Nazis are absurd. So what? Does this add anything? We know they're absurd; they're still dangerous. Yes, a Nazi pointing a camera at a cardboard cutout of Tony Shaloub while rambling about a Zionist conspiracy is silly... but that's not far removed from how they actually act. That's an overall problem with the Nazi jokes in the episode: an inability to exaggerate Nazi absurdity to a significant degree because they're already absurd. Antisemitism itself is absurd; it's a hate group.

It's all just flailing at trying to pull off The Producers humor, which worked there because of the specific comparison of Nazi pageantry to Broadway by someone intimately familiar with both subjects. Jojo Rabbit was similarly effective because it compared Nazi ideology to childishness with a literal indoctrinated child figure repeating propaganda in a way that draws a direct comparison. The Boys just repeating Nazi conspiracy theories but making them silly in different ways falls flat in comparison. Half the time, Nazi ideology is repeated verbatim, and it blends right in with the parodies.

The Producers and Jojo Rabbit also have overtly Jewish characters to anchor the viewers. When Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder make a Nazi play to be offensive, it's specifically in the context of them being Jewish characters. The Nazi absurdity is in relation to them as sympathetic figures. Likewise, Jojo Rabbit has the romantic and witty Jewish girl Elsa as the foil for Nazi villain protagonist Jojo, creating an empathetic anchor point for viewer sympathies in relation to all the Nazi stuff. In contrast, The Boys just has the Jewish party floating in the middle of the existing Boys vs Stormchasers conflict as mostly a joke or the set-up to a joke without any empathetic anchor points past the simplistic not wanting bad guys to hurt innocent bystanders. As a result, they're turned into props and othered for the weird theme, which is a joke that doesn't land well for me.

While Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is popular with Jewish people, in context of The Boys and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel both being Amazon shows, it's fundamentally Amazon promoting itself in a display of brash consumerism. This goes against the general anti-corporatist theme of the show. We're led to hate Vought as the stand-in for every megacorporation in America, and now we're reminded that The Boys is a product of a megacorporation and is being used to promote another property of it. For me, this makes the whole joke fall flat and have a cascade effect of jokes falling flat: the party itself (othered props of Amazon consumerism) , the use of a menorah as a weapon (an othered religious item used as a prop), and Firecracker's vlog (absurd but not that absurd).

So, when Firecracker points her camera at Tony Shaloub's image while ranting about stumbling into a menacing Zionist conspiracy... I really don't like that cardboard cutout. I don't like the cross-promotion. I'm reminded of Amazon casting Tony Shaloub to play Jewish when he's not and the controversy there. It's all just a masturbatory mess of Amazon applauding itself. My disdain for that mingles with Firecracker's commentary, and I'm ultimately feeling like I'm being asked to ignore a bunch of problematic things to keep from being on the same wavelength as the Nazi, which now makes me dislike what they're doing with her as an antagonistic figure, now being used to inversely affect viewer emotions regarding Amazon consumerism.

This scene was a mistake.

Your mileage may vary.

[kandisheek]

FIC REC WEEK 22 – MCU

this is the long haul by meidui

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: G Words: 1,357 Tags: First Dates, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining

Summary: It takes them eleven years to go on a first date.

Reasons why I love it: They're SO CUTE, oh my god, I can't! Steve, you oblivious fool, you could've had Tony ages ago! But I'm glad they got there in the end. This fic is wonderful, and I highly encourage you to read it, if you haven't already!

To Punch a Nazi by jellybeanforest

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: T Words: 767 Tags: Politics, Punching Nazis, Humor and Fluff

Summary: “I can’t believe you punched a Neo-Nazi on national television.” “You’re surprised? I can’t believe there are still Nazis left to punch.”

Reasons why I love it: This absolutely feels like something Steve would do. And Tony's response is so very Tony too, it's great. I love the characterizations in this, the dialogue is hilarious, and the ending put the biggest smile on my face. This fic is fantastic, and I hope you give it a shot!

Haven't Met You Yet by JehBeeEh

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: T Words: 1,649 Tags: No Powers AU, Domestic Fluff, In-Vitro-Fertilization

Summary: “Hey sweetheart,” Steve called out tiredly as he toed off his shoes. He heard a small sound that he thought might be hey coming from Tony. He threw his jacket on the chair nearest the door and walked towards his husband, who still hadn’t moved a muscle. He looked at the screen with an expression Steve had never quite seen on him. A mixture between the look of delight he got in the lab, when he was deep in some techy binge Steve did not understand, and a fondness that Steve usually saw directed at him. “Tony? Everything okay?” “Yeah,” he whispered, a smile creeping on his face, eyes still locked on the screen. He stretched a hand towards Steve, some slower version of a one-handed grabby hand directed at him. “Com'ere,” he mumbled, and Steve couldn’t help but smile. Steve sat next to him, Tony's arm curling around his waist to pull him as close as could be to him. He gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before leaning his head against Tony's shoulder, feeling his husband's head drop against his the moment he was settled. “Look at this,” Tony told him as he restarted the video.

Reasons why I love it: You gotta love it when a fic is both entertaining and educational. I don't know a lot about IVF, but after reading this, I definitely want to learn more! This fic just warms my heart, it's so fluffy and sweet, and I hope that Steve and Tony get the happy ending they deserve. Definitely check this one out, it's amazing!

Operation Check Yes or No by avengersandco

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: G Words: 2,797 Tags: Getting Together, Flirting, Fluff and Humor

Summary: Steve just wants Tony to notice him, but he’s not sure how. Lucky for him, his friends help him make a plan to capture the attention of the one he wants.

Reasons why I love it: Gah, they are SO CUTE! I love how the rest of the team despairs at their antics while Steve and Tony remain utterly oblivious. And Steve's methods of flirting with Tony are adorable, I love every single scene. This fic is wonderful, and you should definitely read it!

Last Call by antithestral

Pairing: Steve/Tony Rating: T Words: 1,330 Tags: Fluff and Humor, Alcohol, First Kiss

Summary: “Still,” Steve said softly. “You should let me buy you a drink, one of these days.” Tony glanced up at him, puzzled, tense, trying to figure out what that meant, what Steve meant, trying to look past the thing he… wanted it, so desperately, to mean. “Yeah?” Steve slanted a glance at him, from underneath his lashes. His mouth gleamed from the cognac, shiny and wet, and his eyes were dark, fathomless, stunning. “Yeah.”

Reasons why I love it: Oh my god, I don't know why I find Steve needing some liquid courage to make a move on Tony so goddamn adorable, but I really do. I also love Tony being the responsible adult in all of this, it's a part of his character that I think really doesn't get explored enough, and this version of him is just perfect. I love this fic, and I bet you will too, so please give it a shot!

[readingsquotes]

"..More recently, and more squarely on the minds of community members, was the neo-Nazi tiki torch rally ahead of 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally. In that case, the university made a studied case of inaction, with then-President Teresa Sullivan affirming “the public’s right to access open spaces, including the rights of the marchers who assembled on our Grounds last night,” as well as their “First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly.” The fact that the white supremacists openly threatened, harrassed, and intimidated students on the Lawn — and the fact that they were almost all outsiders to the community — didn’t prompt police to declare an “unlawful assembly.” It wasn’t until the Nazis started beating and macing a small group of antiracist counter-protesters that the relative handful of police on hand intervened; and even then, they arrested just one marcher.

..But the difference between the police and the university’s indifference to the Nazis in 2017 and their unhinged aggression toward the pro-Palestine and antiwar protesters was front of my mind on Saturday, as I know it was for others, if not the police themselves.

... there was no reason for the police to storm and dismantle the camp except under the orders of the university and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin — orders justified on the basis of the phantom rule change. (The same underhanded process, along with a similarly last-second policy change, was used to justify the raid on the encampment at Indiana University last week.) As a public university, UVA’s grounds are both public property and accessible at the pleasure of the university’s administration and police. If they had chosen to ban the Nazis from marching in 2017, they could have done so. Instead, they decided to not only raid an encampment of students protesting an ongoing genocide, but to do so with overwhelming force and performative violence.

A few reasons for the difference come to mind. One is that we are in the midst of a full-blown nationwide moral panic, a panic that is hitting hardest at the level of university presidents, who keep dropping like flies on the accusation that they “aren’t doing enough” to “stop antisemitism.” You might think that actual neo-Nazis, who literally chanted “Jews will not replace us” might have been more of an antisemitic threat. But that was 2017, when “free speech” meant humoring the far right. This is 2024, when “stopping antisemitism” means not protecting Jews but rather stopping condemnation of the State of Israel, and more to the point unblinking U.S. support for the State of Israel and its slaughter of Palestinians. (Which is how you get spectacles like the police claiming to “protect Jewish students” by slamming a 65-year-old Jewish professor of Jewish studies at Dartmouth to the ground.)

UVA’s President Ryan — who is reportedly being considered to replace the banished Claudine Gay at Harvard — saw the jackboot tactics at Columbia and the negotiations-based approach at places like Brown and Northwestern, and made his choice.

But the other thing is the specific power of both of the respective protests’ core demands. The Nazis just wanted to hurt already marginalized people. The Gaza solidarity protesters had a more threatening aim, as far as a university administration is concerned: to disclose and divest. UVA has an estimated $13.6 billion endowment. That is the fifth largest among public universities and the twentieth largest overall. Any university president’s actual job in the 21st Century is to maintain and grow that endowment. If a ragtag bunch of leftist students can, armed with nothing more than youthful energy and a handful of cheap camping tents, force the university’s investment management company to not only disclose how it makes its money but pressure them to sell off assets in “institutions materially supporting or profiting from Israel’s genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestine” — institutions that could potentially include Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and other arms manufacturers based in Virginia — then where would it end?

What if the endowment underperformed even more than it did in 2023? What if it hurt those companies’ bottom lines? What could that do to Glenn Youngkin’s political prospects or Jim Ryan’s career? If 35,000 lives in Gaza — and countless more tonight in Rafah — can be sacrificed on the altar of such profits and egos, then what chance did a small group of unarmed student and community activists have? Whether that is the message that college presidents, governors, and ultimately the president of the United States want to impart to the rising generation of Americans, it is coming through loud and clear. How that generation reacts and adjusts to that message may define life in this country for years to come."