#soviet union x nazi

[susanmeki]

Somebody help me...my Pinterest shows me this..Take this away from me😭😭😭

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

.

[zvaigzdelasas]

AUUC('s Edmonton Branch) released a statement on the Volunteer Nazi given a standing ovation in Canadian Parliament, read it

[x]

transcription after the cut

The Edmonton Branch of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC) condemns the honoring of a nazi Ukrainian World War II veteran, a member of the notorious 14th Waffen SS Division "Halychyna", in the House of Commons during the visit of Ukrainian President Zelenskiy last Friday, 22 September, 2023.

Our Association, founded in 1918 in Winnipeg as the Ukrainian Labor Temple Association, has an unblemished record of opposing fascism, in word and deed, before and after WWII, in Canada, in the Ukrainian-Canadian community, and abroad. Our members fought heroically in the Spanish Civil War, on the side of the Republican government, against fascism. They fought for Canada, allied with the Soviet Union, against nazi Germany and fascist Italy in WWII.

It is therefore unbelievable to us, as to most other Canadians, that when the individual in question, Yaroslav Hunka, was introduced in parliament as a Ukrainian veteran of WWII who fought against Russia, no one in attendance, all of whom gave him two standing ovations, realized what this meant. We know exactly what it meant.

Now this shameful spectacle has been publicized to all Canadians, and throughout the world. We welcome this publicization. We hope it will lead to a reckoning. Some steps in this direction have already been taken. The speaker of the House of Commons has resigned. An endowment in the name of Yaroslav Hunka at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, at the University of Alberta, has been returned. We welcome these steps. But they are only first steps. Much more must be done. The problem is greater than simply one nazi, one speaker, and one endowment.

It is estimated that two thousand members of the 14th Waffen SS Division "Halychyna" were allowed into Canada after WWII. Our Association, immediately at that time, publicized and opposed their entry, to our everlasting credit. This figure does not include other nazis and nazi-collaborators, of various nationalities. That means thousands of Yaroslav Hunkas. Several of them went on to occupy prominent and leading positions in certain other Ukrainian-Canadian organizations, in religious institutions, educational institutions, and state institutions. The Canadian state supports, with funding and semi-official recognition, Ukrainian-Canadian organizations that unapologetically honor these nazis. If honoring Yaroslav Hunka in the House of Commons was a shameful act that had to be corrected, then so must all these other cases be corrected.

We therefore call on the Canadian state at all three levels (federal, provincial, municipal) to halt all state funding to all Ukrainian-Canadian organizations which honor any Ukrainian nazis or nazi-collaborators, including especially veterans of the 14th Waffen SS Division "Halychyna", until such time as these organizations explicitly and unequivocally apologize for having done so, severing all connections with all these nazis and nazi-collaborators, in all forms whatsoever.

We call for the removal and dismantling of two monuments to nazi Ukrainians in Edmonton: the monument to the veterans of the 14th Waffen SS Division "Halychyna" located in St. Michael's Cemetery, and the bust of Roman Shukhevych located at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex, preferably by their respective property owners, and if not by them, then by state compulsion.

We call on the government of Canada, and on the Liberal Party of Canada which formed the government at the time, to issue official apologies to our Association (the AUUC), in consultation with our Association, for banning it (then named the Ukrainian Labor-Farmer Temple Association) by an order in council in June 1940, seizing its properties, our halls and their contents (furniture, musical instruments, dance costumes, books, etc., most of which were destroyed), and interning our leaders in internment camps, acknowledging this as a terrible miscarriage of justice and act of oppression.

We call on all Canadians, all progressive Canadians, all decent Canadians, all anti-fascist Canadians, individually and through their various organizations, to support us in these calls for justice, by publicizing this statement, and pressuring their political representatives.

[todayontumblr]

Friday, June 30.

Indiana Jones.

For Dr. Jones, every day is a good day for thumpin' Nazis. But some days it just hits particularly sweet. And would you look at that—it's only Friday, June 30, 2023, which can only mean one thing: it's the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! Yay!

*cracks knuckles, whip*

Well, it's not just thumping Nazis that's on the cards, but nostalgia. Coming 15 years after the, well, best-forgotten fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the latest film in the #indiana jones canon will in fact be the last. Or the curtain call for Harrison Ford as the iconic character, at very least. His daytime lecturer and night-time archaeologist Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. is reluctantly thrust back into the action after seeking refuge in the quiet life of academia. After, *takes deep breath* Nazis and the Ark of the Covenant, The Thuggee Cult and the holy Sankara Stones, the Holy Grail and the Nazis (again), the Soviet Union and the Crystal Skull (*shudders*), Indiana is set to take up the fedora against the Nazis once more in search of the mysterious dial of destiny. This fifth film is in 1969 and finds an elderly Indy contending with the knowledge that the US space program has former Nazis in its ranks. Well, better get thumpin', friend!

That's it, folks. Happy weekend. Enjoy #indiana jones, the occasional thumpin', and enjoy the good things while they're there x

Ba-ba-ba-baaa, ba ba baaaaaa...

[marvelstars]

I Magneto

After reading the last X-men issue, I wanted to tackle part of Charles and Magneto conversation in which Charles clearly establishes a difference between Max and Erik as two version of the same person.

He relates Erik to Magneto´s persona and Max as the person he was originally,so I wanted to explore Magneto(Erik) proper birth, because he didn´t became Magneto even when his daughter Anya died, he still tried to rebuilt a life for himself, first working on that hosital at Haifa where he meet Charles and later as a secret agent working for "control" marvel´s earlier version of CIA to help capture and bring to international justice UN former members of the Nazi Party.

At this time, Erik had started a relationship with his doctor, called Isabel, he shared with her his past story with Magda and how that made him feel as if he was not quite human and effectively the monster she called him for inspiring such fear in the people he loved most. Here he still clearly defines himself mostly as a human being. At this time his powers also gave him frequent head aches, a sign they were growing but also of the emotional and mental unstability they could give him if he made an overuse of them.

Unfortunately, at this time, control was involved in an operation called, operation paperclip, in which they were actively recruiting former Nazi offircers to help them in the fight agaisnt the soviet union and Magneto, his code name as an agent for "control" had captured one of "theirs" Nazis so they made a plan to get rid of him.

And That was how Magneto, the mutant terrorist, was born.

So I am quite happy how this is coming back in full circle, after dying and getting back, remembering the person he is and was, his journey from Max, to Erik to Magneto because he saw nobody was going to care for mutants unless he did something and now back to Max but with the added Magneto experiences is in full cricle even if he never stopped being any of those men, he is all of them but shaped by his experiences and the world so it´s nice to see him once again try to live his own path and try to make it better for everybody.

Sources:

Magneto #0 by Chris Claremont and John Bolton

Magneto resurrection #4

X-men #35(700) 2024

[caramelakaramel]

"Country-humans?"

According to the Oxford dictionary, a country is defined as "a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory." But what happens when countries are humanized by a bunch of ignorant preteens who failed world history?

Some of the countries are supposed to be the children of their colonizers. I guess that means the countryhumans reproduce with each other like real humans, which prompts too many logistical errors.

The fandom headcannons that the United States is the child of Britain and France, because those are the two countries who played the largest role in colonizing the US. New Netherland, founded by the Dutch, later became New York after the British assumed control in 1664. Spain didn't cede Florida until the Adams-Onis treaty of 1819. So, did Britian have an affair with Spain and the Netherlands or some shit? And then France discovered he was keeping side hoes and that's what started the French and Indian war, or something?

What about the territory the United States acquired from Mexico in the Mexican-American war? I guess the US just forcefully amputated one of Mexico's limbs. Russia sold his arm (Alaska) in 1867. Or maybe, since "state-humans" also exist, it was human (anthropomorphic state??) trafficking.

What's the deal with countries splitting? Czechoslovakia ripped himself (herself? itself?? No idea how they decide the genders.) in half to form Czechia and Slovakia?

What happens when one country isn't universally recognized because of land disputes? Ex. Israel considers itself a country. Some other countries consider Israel a country. Some countries don't. Does Israel just not exist to some of the countryhumans? Do they give him the silent treatment?

Why do people treat the Third Reich and Germany like two separate countries when they're just Germany in different time periods under different systems of government? Same thing with the Soviet Union and Russia. Did all the former Soviet satellite states morph into Russia during Soviet occupation?

The Red Cross is an international aid organization. Not a country. NATO is an alliance. Not a country. The European Union is a... European Union. Not a country. Why do they have sentience?

Then there are the ships. Lord God Almighty, have mercy on our souls. Ukraine x Russia. Israel x the Third Reich. The Third Reich x Poland x the Soviet Union. Enemies to lovers should not include a country who has fallen victim to crimes against humanity at the other's hands.

This is my life now. Stating things that should be obvious in Tumblr posts. Yesterday, it was "adults who engage in sexually inappropriate behavior around children are bad." Today, it is to not ship the victims of the Holocaust with Nazi Germany.

[biblioflyer]

X-Men: Trust is Cheap When You Have a Trust Fund

Personal experiences can bestow a fundamentally sunny disposition about Mutant assimilation in Human society. They can also inspire the bleakest despair and a level of skepticism about unilateral disarmament.

Previously I discussed why X-Men as a setting is fundamentally pessimistic as a necessity according to the creative choices made. It is an essay in 5 parts:

1,2,3,4,5

This is a new series analyzing how experience and social status influences Mutant outlooks on the assimilation vs separatism/supremacy question.

It should not surprise us at all that the Morlocks and Magneto have very different opinions from Xavier about who should regulate their behavior and how. Once he’s confronted with how little protection his wealth affords him, even Sunspot becomes a convert to Magneto’s way of thinking.

When you’ve had a bad experience with someone claiming to be on your side and then contradicting literally every value you thought you shared, it makes a person calloused against appeals to a shared set of values or the innate goodness of humanity. 

For a real life example, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is a repudiation of the Soviet Union under Stalin, even though Orwell was no fan of extreme inequality and the violence used by elites to protect that inequality in market driven societies. Orwell was motivated to revisit the idea of whether the USSR was a true reflection of his values due to his personal sense of betrayal when the Soviet Union declined to intervene in the Spanish civil war against the Nazi allied regime.

We ought not to be surprised when impoverished visible Mutants find it difficult to imagine having a seat at the table when they can’t even get a seat at the table masquerading as Sapiens. 

Xavier’s access to power is always depicted as somewhat tenuous and his relationships with Presidents are transactional. Regardless of their personal feelings and long term visions, the leaders Charles interacts with are primarily focused on day to day crisis management. These leaders are ultimately accountable to the overwhelming majority of the population that does not have special abilities and those who are fearful of Mutants and those who are supportive of Mutants vote and contribute to political campaigns.

Xavier isn’t even visibly mutated. The tendency for Humans to perceive Morlocks as hideously disfigured denies them any comfort in mainstream society. Their very appearance reminds Humans that something has gone amiss in the gene pool and that something may not bode well for baselines in the long run.

Magneto’s experiences as a Sapien minority on the wrong side of the boot has made him deeply skeptical of power beyond his own. A Holocaust survivor, Magneto doesn’t need to imagine what the worst case scenario is for Human - Mutant relations.

Like Orwell, he is not easily swayed by appeals to common values or shared interest. For Magneto, trust is earned and the tests to earn it are not easy. As a consequence of his experiences, Magneto has adopted an attitude that only the people that are imminently facing the same type of threats can truly understand each other and be relied upon. 

To the extent that this is a fair and accurate sentiment, taken to an extreme it can be very isolating and leave one with few allies and even fewer people whose insights might be trusted when they contradict Magneto’s own instincts. This becomes a serious problem when Cortez worms his way into Magneto’s inner circle or Magneto rationalizes the fate of Mutants trapped on an Earth incapable of using modern technology as expediting evolution.

Yet, cynic that he is, life as an island is hard and even Magneto is not immune to the occasional savvy operator figuring out how to earn and abuse his trust, like Cortez.

Next up: Power level as privilege. What happens when a cranky Omega isn’t trapped in here with you, you are trapped with them….

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Republicans Are Soft on Fascism

(I try to put my head in the sand, but I suffocate.)

Stephen Jay Morris

9/7/2023

©Scientific Morality.

Billionaire Elon Musk blames Jews for the failure of his social Media venture, “X” (formerly “Twitter). It has something to do with the ADL. I saw recent videos of neo-Nazis on a Florida bridge, waving their swastika flags left to right in view of the oncoming traffic. Hitler fan and podcaster, Nick Fuentes, tells the world he hates poor people. Anti-Semitism has come full circle, again, to being blatantly expressed in public. There used to be repercussions for talking shit about the Jews. I am watching this cadre of Jew haters unfold in front of my very eyes.  Lots of American Jews once thought that if they converted to Christianity and married a Gentile, they would be immune to being put in concentration camps or thrown into ovens. I can still hear my father pounding his fist on the dining room table, in a rage, yelling that the Jews are a religion not a race. “Why is he yelling at his family and not to real Jew haters?” I thought. That is a story for another time.

 But alas, you can’t convince a Nazi that Jews are white. They think and feel that Jews are a mogul race of mud people and should be destroyed. Once they find out that you are Jewish—bye, bye!

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published a book, “It Can’t Happen Here.” It warned about the possibility of Fascism in America. I read that book in 1969. I told my parents and they thought I was crazy. America is the strongest country in the world, they said; it would never happen here!

It is now happening here. What about the owners of massive wealth and the military industrial complex? Do they care? First, the so-called deep state couldn’t give a damn about Jews at risk for death! Second, Nazis are pro-capitalism so long as White men control it. I’ve asked this question a million times: have you ever seen a Right winger protest a Nazi? Neither have I. Conservatives are soft on fascism. They get embarrassed by Nazis because they say the quiet rhetoric out loud. They say things like, “the East elites (Rich Jews) want to run our country” or “the globalists (Rich Jews) want to run the world!” They say, “the Jews will not replace us!” to which the conservative agrees, but thinks the Nazis are giving the game away.

But when it comes to Communism? Holy fuck burgers! Bomb them! Kill them all and let God sort them out! They know that Communists would take away their property and businesses and give it all to the poor. If you ask me, I’d rather live in Stalin’s Russia than in the 1950’s America, anti-communist hysteria. Fuck anti-Communism!!! Conservatives outlawed free speech in America in the 50’s. If you slightly inferred liberal tendencies in your speech, the FBI would tap your phone and follow you to work! You think I am exaggerating? Go through some time machine and find out. During the 50’s, if you were in America and, simultaneously, in the then Soviet Union, you wouldn’t know the difference! In Russia, The KGB would follow you around and, in the USA, the FBI would follow you around.

As an anarchist, I am not surprised. As a Jew, I am highly concerned. Oh, and your gentile spouse will not be spared. During the Nazi’s regime, many Aryans were put into camps for marrying non-Aryan husbands or wives. The price for race-mixing is death.

I sure miss the Jewish Defense League, even though they were Right wing, Zionist revisionists. They were pro-active. Whenever there were Nazi rallies, they were there with baseball bats. I am not pro-violence, but I am not pro-surrender, either. I’ll tell you one thing. I will not walk into a gas chamber peacefully. Never again, motherfuckers!

[usafphantom2]

80 years ago, D-Day marked a turning point in World War II. A year later, Germany surrendered, preventing the German Nazis from winning the war. The bravery of the men involved ensured that we are not speaking German today and that evil was stopped.

The planning for D-Day was led by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower and involved coordinated naval, air, and land operations. (Eisenhower was later our President directly before President Kennedy )Deception campaigns were used to divert German attention and resources away from Normandy. British factories increased production, and approximately 9 million tonnes of supplies and equipment crossed the Atlantic from North America to Britain in preparation for the invasion. By 1944, over 1.4 million American servicemen had arrived in Britain to take part in the landings. Movies like "Darkest Hour" illustrate how close the world was to losing the war and the significant sacrifices that were made to secure freedom. The end of World War II led to the Soviet Union closing its society to avoid dominance.

The need for reconnaissance aircraft like the SR 71 and the U-2 were needed to monitor the Russian\ Soviet Union buildup of nuclear weapons.

We needed to know what weapons they were manufacturing because we could not trust them to tell us the truth. All Americans owe their gratitude to the greatest generation .

God bless America.🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

Linda Sheffield

@Habubrats71 via X

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Nazi soldiers cross the border into Ukraine during Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of the Soviet Union - in 1941.

Millions of Ukrainians died fighting against the Nazis, and millions more were abducted into slavery. The slaves were known as the Ostarbeiter. X

[chronotopes]

i do think "don't write about [x] unless you are part of [y] identity group" discourse gets stupid fast buuuut i think the sff writer's relentless fascination with producing Meaningful Resonant Allegory gets you into some thorny places. as someone who has been a star trek fan for like seven years and is now finding themself kind of unwillingly fascinated by pre-ot era star wars. SO much of the circular discourse in those fan communities can be traced back to an unwillingness to understand how inherently muddled and contradictory the inspirations for these canons are. cardassians in ds9 get read as nazi germany And the soviet union And the united states, among other things, by the audience because imagery and gets borrowed by writers evoking just about every piece of loaded imagery in 20th century history. and this kind of thing is doubly true for whatever the stupid fuck star wars has going on, especially regarding the jedi order and what that's a metaphor for. in some ways it's a tough balance to strike because if you write about any large-scale tragedy or injustice in a sff setting, you're going to draw on your own knowledge of history. however in the long term if you're going to say 'i'm basing this science fiction war on a real life war' you kind of have to commit to that metaphor on a really in-depth level. cause otherwise you can end up saying 'i'm going to make a war the center of our film trilogy and no before you ask i am not going to ever materially elaborate on what the war is really about or why it's happening. if it helps though the war is just like iraq and it's also just like vietnam and it's also –' anyway my tentative takeaway here is that if you're going to put a very obvious and deliberate geopolitical metaphor in your sff writing it had better be a) from a 'has read a multitude of sources about this conflict' type informed place and b) a consistent center point of your writing approach rather than something you pick up for Resonance Points and throw away and c) think hard about whether it imbues your greater narrative with fucked up implications about how you see the real life conflict you're drawing from.

[solarbird]

Why I keep checking back in on eX-twitter

Every so often, I still have to go back and check up on the fascist disinformation and propaganda fountain Elon Musk made out of Twitter, and it’s never good news.

I once again urge everyone who is still there to migrate their followers away from it, to… basically anywhere else, really. Literally. Anywhere in the Federation would be outstanding (Mastodon being the most famous, and where I am now), BlueSky, TikTok if you can do video, hell, even Threads – though I’m a bit hesitant these days about Threads, for reasons I’m leaving out for now.

It’s not just because continuing to use Xitter puts money in Elon Musk’s pocket. I mean, it does, but I’ve beat that drum for months and nobody cares.

It’s because if you depend on it this election, you’re making a real big mistake, because there’s a real good chance that it won’t be there when you need it – at least, not for you. It’ll be there for the fascists, but not for civil society and/or the left. It’ll be part of the problem, and most certainly not part of the solution.

I mean, you’ve got Xitler’s pet AI lying to people about the election now, you’ve got pro-Harris accounts be labelled spam and shadowbanned now, you’ve got Xitter still placing ads directly next to fascist and other neo-nazi/white supremacist accounts now, you have Elon himself spreading anti-election lies that never seem to get community labels (because he turns them off) now…

…and that doesn’t even get into what he did in the UK a few weeks ago.

But if you missed it – or just forgot about it already – did you know about the biggest race riots in the UK in over a decade, spanning across much of the country?

It was a loosely coordinated effort by fascists and spread via far-right chats on Telegram, fuelled by disinformation spread on Twitter, now X. Musk propped it up and helped spread the lies, using fash lies of a two-tier anti-white justice system, comparing the UK to the Soviet Union, pushing lies about detainment camps being set up in the Falklands, and proclaiming that a UK “Civil War,” by which he pretty clearly meant “race war,” was “inevitable.”

UK commentators are calling it his “trial balloon” for what he intends to do in the US this autumn. Some American commentators other than me are talking about it as well.

This is why he bought Twitter, team. These days, he even admits it, saying he bought it to “fight the woke mind virus,” by which at this point he means basically anything to the left of White Christofascism.

So if you’re relying on Twitter to be how you work, how you coordinate, how you get politics done when things go pear-shaped in a way they actively intend to make things go pear-shaped, I really have to ask:

How do you expect that to work when the guy who owns the tool you use is all in on the other side, and has been working out how best to use it against you for the last two years?

Make it make sense to me, ’cause I don’t see how.

Hopefully things won’t actually go south. Hopefully the results will be so overwhelming that they’ll know not to try.

But that’s in no way guaranteed. Nothing about this election is in the bag, and if it’s not – if they do try another coup… well…

From what I see, you have two months left to get your people away from the reanimated corpse of Twitter, and get re-established somewhere else.

I suggest you use that time you have now, while you can, because if they do try? If there is another coup attempt?

There won’t be time in November.

[troythecatfish]

Why do Zionist liberals like Jordan Peterson shill so much for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's narrative of the Soviet Union when he was a certified unhinged anti-Semitic lunatic who believed in the neo-Nazi Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory? Why does anybody take this guy seriously at all? He literally provides no meaningful evidence anyways, just a bunch of anecdotes. It's funny cuz Jordan

Peterson is a huge Zionist and yet he advocates for the narrative of an unhinged anti-Semite who hated all jews.

Also, the whole neo-Nazi Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy theory has already been absolutely and thoroughly debunked btw. Check this Twitter/X thread for further information as to why it's wrong:

https://x.com/rtsgtm/status/1739426154065391748?s=46&t=|XD2xGGCmX10uvPe9inWiA

[crowofclassics]

A Brief History of music in Stalinist Russia

From 1946 to his death in 1953, Stalin banned jazz and many other forms of western music in the former Soviet Union. However many found ways around this and sold copies of records on the black market that were etched into the surface of old X-rays. Recordings of artists like Elvis Presley were etched over pictures of rib cages, skulls, or thigh bones. Used X-rays were a convenient replacement for an actual for vinyl records, and due to World War II, hospitals were overflowing with them. So there was no shortage of supply or demand.

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 stunned the unready Soviet forces. Stalin's administration was forced to react quickly and devote all its resources into the war effort. As a result, Soviet music witnessed a relaxation of restrictions on expression. This period was a break from the policies of the 1930s. The Communist Party, seeing as it was allied with several Western powers, focused on patriotic propaganda rather than anti-Western rhetoric. With a restored connection to the west, Soviet music experienced a new wave of progressivism and experimentation.

Following the end of World War II, the communist party were persuaded to put an end to the patriotic propaganda and were encouraged to reinforce themes of the Russian revolution. In response to this, composers were desperate to find acceptable compositions. Some composers such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich turned to film music. Shostakovich did not publish his more expressive works until after Stalin's death.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Shostakovich was born just before the Russian revolution and grew up in the USSR. Many of Shostakovich’s pieces had to be re-composed or scrapped entirely as they did not fit with the slim criteria that the state wanted music to fit in the USSR. He had to wait until after Stalins death to compose the music he wanted. Many other Russian composers experienced this as well.

Shostakovich was known to display symptoms of anxiety, internalised stress and was said to have been a sensitive individual causing somatic symptoms. His negative relationship with the Soviet Union added to issues he faced in his life and with his mood. He spoke constantly about pain, describing his life under Stalin’s regime as “unbelievably mean and hard. Every day brought more bad news and I felt so much pain. I was so lonely and afraid.”

In 1936 he was denounced as an “enemy of the people” by the Soviet regime after Stalin attended and disliked the composer’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsenk District. Dmitri was “as white as a sheet” when he saw Stalin in the audience, an experience which increased his fears and paranoid thinking. He was known to have kept a small suitcase packed in case of arrest and slept in the stairwell out of fear. He reflected on this anxiety: “When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.”

Sources:

https://hekint.org/2020/09/22/shostakovich-shrapnel-and-chronic-poliomyelitis/

[pargolettasworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-EfWb0lHjc

My family uses a Passover haggadah that was originally written in 1947, and you can tell.  There are definitely some Feelings in there about the concept that in every generation they will rise up to destroy us.  This song has the same sort of vibe as that haggadah.  It was written by a refugee from Eastern Europe who escaped to Kazakhstan.  Kazakhstan isn’t quite Birobidzhan, but it still would have been a pretty foreign place for someone who arrived as a refugee.

The great irony, of course, is that the writer of a poem called “Yom Kippur Without Fascists” was living in what was then known as the Kazakh SSR.  Part of the Soviet Union, a country almost as murderous toward Jews as Nazi Germany was.  But in 1945, that slim difference must have looked like a golden lifeline.

[sneakymystique]

Mystique Origins

I’m doing a clear-out of some old master links on my page which were from rp days and are long redundant.

One of them is a Mystique bio I wrote for X-Men Evolution. It’s probably the closest I’d come to writing a comics origin story, as nowadays I’ve swung round to the view that Mystique’s origins are better left shrouded. Also, canon has moved on and confirmed that Mystique pre-dates the 19th century, so it’s also obsolete for that reason.

Over 200 years ago a little girl was born to a young couple in the Austrian Empire. For the first ten years of her life the girl was much like any other, although times were hard hers was a loving family and as she grew older it was obvious she was going to be a great beauty, leading her father to hope he’d be able to make an advantageous match for her and his family. But soon after her fourteenth birthday everything changed when the young girl’s skin started to turn blue. The changes didn’t stop there, soon the girl’s raven black hair had turned an unnatural blood red and her eyes began to turn yellow and glow with an ‘unholy’ light. The girl’s parents and the villagers believed the girl had been possessed by the devil and knew what they had to do. A pyre was built in the village, and the girl who needed several men to drag her kicking and screaming, was tied to a stake and set fire to. In those few desperate moments, with the fire licking at her skin, the girl wished she could fly away and her body responded.

A bird, its feathers singed from the flames, escaped the pyre unnoticed and landed in one of the mountain forests. Badly burned, traumatised and starving the girl thought she would soon die, which she indeed did, for the girl did not survive that forest, Mystique did. The first winter was the hardest, although she didn’t feel the cold, there was little to eat on the frozen slopes of the mountains and plenty of predatory animals who could smell a fearful girl from miles away. But she was slowly mastering her powers, working out that she could change into virtually any animal in the forest, become bigger and meaner than anything that stalked her and soon she was the queen of the forest.

Her revenge against her birthplace was brutal. One day a group of hunters from her home village stumbled upon her by accident, they were no match for her, but as she stared down at them she had a sudden realisation. Could she become another human, could she look like them? The villagers were dismayed when the badly wounded hunter returned, talking of an enormous bear. Nobody noticed the yellow glint in his eyes, and soon the villagers began to die one by one. People from a nearby village who eventually came to investigate found the entire village deserted with no traces left save for the remains of a giant pyre in the main square. The rescuers soon left, convinced that the place was cursed, taking with them the village’s only survivor, a stray dog.

Mystique never looked back. The road took her to Vienna, where she used her shapeshifting powers to assume the identity of a wealthy aristocrat. She travelled all over Europe, living in luxury, assuming and discarding hundreds of identities, ingratiating herself with the rich and powerful, her only goal being her own survival. Mystique drifted for most of her first century, sampling the lives of actors, soldiers, spies and politicians. When the First World War came along she sold information to the highest bidder and helped to stir up revolutionary crowds in Russia. During the twenties and thirties she worked for the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and the United States, hiring her skills as a spy to whoever would pay the most. Shortly after the war Mystique met Eric Lehnsherr and for the first time began to understand that she wasn’t alone. She soon became hooked by his ideology of mutant supremacy and put her talents to use furthering the cause.

Taking the role of Principal of Bayville High, Mystique used the position to recruit young mutants to the cause and keep an eye on the X-Men. Following Magneto’s betrayal, Mystique broke away to pursue her goals independently, creating the identity of Risty Wilde to spy on the x-men and later captured and replaced Professor Xavier and blew up the X-Mansion.

Following the revelation of mutants and the Apocalypse incident, Mystique has killed and replaced National Security Advisor Valerie Cooper whose position she’s using to further her own agenda, which includes the destruction of the X-men.