#these non-Nazis and non-imperialists

[so-hoshi-nya]

>>> should not be judged just because he did it in the past

>>> his actions should be judged by looking at the time

It's so cute not to be able to read, but to judge others and block them without letting them say a word :)

As soon as you learn to read, find out what the principle of historicism is

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

Seeing mangahood enjoyers who swear up and down that the fma manga/Brotherhood is "anti-military"/"anti-imperialist" is like seeing someone repeatedly argue that your bog standard copaganda procedural is "anti-cop"/"acab".

[nephiliam]

Keep forgetting the undertale and anime analysis spaces aren't safe for fun exploration

[mesetacadre]

apologies if this isn't really your area of interest, but how would you describe the relationship between fascism and (anti-) imperialism? (asking because my far-right father just watched a video about Kamala Harris right next to me which had very similar points to what I've seen on Tumblr; specifically how liberals/democrats will even ally with their "enemies" if it means they can keep the war machine going)

One way to understand fascism that's very common in the imperial periphery has been to conceptualize it as colonialism/imperialism turned inwards, it ramps up exploitation by any means necessary. This does two things, it curbs worker organization by exerting more violence, and it increases capitalist profits. This last thing is also related to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, since fascists in power tend to be destructive towards capital, especially to human capital, and the rate of profit can only be increased considerably through the destruction of capital. As for the more specific aspects of fascism in power; forced labor, concentration camps, the trampling of any kind of liberties, mass political repression, etc. were already established in the colonized world well before any fascist you can think of was even born.

Take a look at this map:

This is a propaganda piece [the title says "Portugal is not a small country"] from 1934 during Portugal's Salazar dictatorship, one of the forgotten fascist states of Europe during this time, along with Austria and Spain. When fascists do have colonies and would be considered an empire, they do not really differ from non-fascist imperialism. This integralist notion shown by the poster really isn't that far from the integration attempted by France on Algeria, and Italy had similar rhetoric when it came to Libya and East Africa. What I mean to say is that fascists do not have that special a relationship when it comes to "normal" imperialism (apart from that internal imperialism I mentioned), and it therefore does not have that special a relationship with anti-imperialism. Nazi-fascists did not inherit any colonies from the Weimar Republic, but their ambitions in the east (look up generalplan-ost) and for the Balkans were also extremely similar to most colonial projects you can find for Africa and Asia in the 19th and early 20th century.

Fascism is an imperialist ideology, not because of any inherent quality, but because it is the most destructive and exploitative elements of liberal democracy emphasized and expanded. It was, after all, birthed by the moribund corpse of European imperialism, as it entered a general crisis that spelled its end (in the form imperialism took at this time, of course imperialism mutated and transformed to a system that doesn't require a direct administrative control of colonies), and this crisis was only delayed by WW2.

Fascists nowadays protect imperialism insofar as they protect capitalism. Fascists are only really enemies with liberalism when it comes to parliamentarism and its socially progressive elements, but we can't forget that any liberal party, whether it's republican or democrat or third party, ultimately only serves to manage capitalism in the country they administer. I'm not really sure what's the point that that video was making, but I don't think it's this. Fascists are not the enemies of a capitalist state, imperialist or otherwise, they're the most extreme, violent and repressive expression of what's already present in liberal democracy. If usamerican fascists take the position of a "great america" and support the continuation of its interference worldwide, and the democrats or republicans also do, this is a case of fascism reflecting liberalism, not the other way around. Fascism is not an evil entity one candidate chooses to ally with or not. It always represent the most extreme needs of capital, and in every case that it has taken power, it has happened once those necessities were widespread enough and they recieved ample support from those capitalists.

[girlactionfigure]

hunting Jews: the truth about Hamas

SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

Islam is a religion.

Islamism is a political ideology.

Recently rescued Israeli hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, an Israeli Bedouin Muslim, gave the following testimony:

Farhan’s testimony, along with a plethora of other evidence, only makes what we’ve been saying all along abundantly clear: Hamas is not a “resistance” group against oppression. Hamas is a genocidal antisemitic terrorist group that targets Jews.

ISLAMISM IS AN INHERENTLY ANTISEMITIC IDEOLOGY

Hamas is an Islamist terrorist group. What does this mean? 

Islamists believe that the doctrines of Islam should be congruent with those of the state. Islamists work to implement nation-states governed under Islamic Law (Sharia), emphasize pan-Islamic unity (in most cases, hoping for an eventual worldwide Islamic Caliphate, or empire), support the creation of Islamic theocracies, and reject all non-Muslim influences. For this reason, Islamists tend to portray themselves as “anti-imperialist,” while in truth they are striving to swap western imperialism with Islamic imperialism.

Islamist ideology can be traced back to Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928. Al-Banna viewed the 1924 dissolution of the last Islamic Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, and the European colonization of the Middle East, beginning with France’s 1830 occupation of Algeria, as an affront to Islam. The early 20th century was a period of rapid secularization in the Middle East, when Arab nationalism threatened to replace pan-Islamic identity with a pan-Arab identity. Al-Banna opposed all of this, hoping to return to “authentic” Islamic practice through the (re)establishment of the Islamic Caliphate.

Islamism is an antisemitic ideology. Islamists hate Jews -- and by extension, the Jewish state -- because of the Prophet Muhammad’s conflict with the Jewish tribes of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. Islamistsbelieve that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rooted in a struggle between Muslims and their “eternal enemies,” the Jews.

Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, viewed the dissolution of the last Islamic Caliphate (empire) and the secularization of the Muslim world as an affront to Islam.

ISLAMISM, DHIMMITUDE, AND THE JEWS

Islamists seek to revive “authentic Islamic practice,” by which they mean, essentially, that they wish to go back in time. This desire to turn back the clock puts them in conflict with Jews for two reasons:

During his earliest conquests, the Prophet Muhammad and his army came into fierce conflict with a number of Jewish tribes that had settled in Arabia, some of which had refused to convert to Islam and even accused Muhammad and his followers of appropriating figures from the Torah. For Islamists, this initial conflict between Jews and the earliest Muslims is “proof” that Jews are “eternal enemies” of Islam.

Following Muhammad’s death in 632, the Arab Islamic empires conquered lands exponentially quickly. As a result of this rapid colonization, the Muslim authorities were faced with the “problem” of how to handle the conquered Indigenous peoples that resisted conversion to Islam. This “problem” was solved with a treaty known as the Pact of Umar. This so-called treaty allowed select religious and cultural minorities, known as dhimmis, or “People of the Book,” to practice their beliefs so long as they paid the “jizya” tax and abided by a set of restrictive, second-class citizenship laws.

Under Islamist regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, Jews are, to this day, still treated as dhimmis.

THE GENOCIDAL ANTISEMITISM OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Hamas emerged as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, worshipped Adolf Hitler.

Like Hitler, al-Banna sought to exterminate all Jews…in his case, from the Middle East.

According to German documents from the period, in the 1940s, the Nazis trained some 700 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nazi Germany heavily funded the Brotherhood, which contributed to its massive growth. In 1938, the Brotherhood had some 800 members. By the end of World War II, it had grown to a million members.

In 1939, Germany “transferred to al-Banna some E£1000 per month, a substantial sum at the time. In comparison, the Muslim Brotherhood fundraising for the cause of Palestine yielded E£500 for that entire year.”

Naturally, Nazism deeply influenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology. 

The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yasser Arafat, the most influential Palestinian leader of all time, began his “career” fighting for the Muslim Brotherhood. Which brings us to Hamas. Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was responsible for establishing the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. In 1987, he founded Hamas.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s hatred for Jews goes far beyond its original Nazi affiliations. During the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Mandatory Palestine, during which Palestinian Arabs revolted against Jewish immigration and carried out a number of antisemitic massacres, the Muslim Brotherhood began disseminating antisemitic rhetoric, often targeting the Egyptian Jewish community.

Al-Nadhir, the Muslim Brotherhood’s magazine, published openly antisemitic articles, peddling conspiracy theories and demonizing the Egyptian Jewish community for its success in various industries. Notably, Al-Nadhir even called for the expulsion of Jews from Egypt, accusing Jews of “corrupting” Egypt and calling Jews a “societal cancer.” Al-Nadhir made boycott lists of Jewish businesses.

Unfortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood’s antisemitism is not a relic of the past. Mohammed Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood’s present day “Supreme Guide,” believes Jews “spread corruption on earth” and calls for “holy jihad” as an antidote.

THE ORIGINAL HAMAS CHARTER: EXPLICITLY GENOCIDAL

Hamas’s founding 1988 charter is explicitly antisemitic and genocidal. Below are some excerpts:

“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” -- Introduction

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." -- Article 7

“In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” -- Aritcle 15 

“With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.” -- Article 22

“Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” -- Article 28

BUT...HAMAS CHANGED THEIR CHARTER!

Some Hamas apologists will tell you that Hamas no longer intends to exterminate all Jews, because in 2017, they “replaced their [openly genocidal] charter.” Well, lucky for you, Hamas is here to set the record straight. See, after releasing their “new” charter, Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar assured the media that the 2017 document did not replace their original 1988 charter.

The 2017 document was thus not a “new” charter from a “reformed” Hamas, but rather, a propaganda document aimed at redeeming Hamas’s image to the west.

Since 2017, Hamas has made openly genocidal calls toward Jews. For example: 

In 2018, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV media channel predicted “the cleansing of Palestine of the filth of the Jews.”

In 2019, Hamas Political Bureau member Fathi Hammad said, “You seven million Palestinians abroad, enough warming up! There are Jews everywhere! We must attack every Jew on planet Earth –- we must slaughter and kill them, with Allah’s help.” In 2021, Hammad called, via Al-Aqsa TV, for the Palestinians in Jerusalem to “cut off the heads of the Jews.”

In May of 2021, the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, led a rally in which the crowd was encouraged to chant, "We will trample on the heads of the Jews in front of everyone..."

ISLAMIST INFLUENCE ON PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM

The earliest Arab nationalists in Palestine were not necessarily Islamists. Falastin, an influential anti-Zionist, Arab nationalist newspaper, was founded by two Palestinian Christians in 1911. Khalil Beidas, who was the first Arab to identify as Palestinian, in 1898, was a Christian. Nevertheless, the Palestinian nationalist movement soon fell under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Initially, Palestinian Arab nationalists advocated for a unified Arab state in Greater Syria. In 1920, Haj Amin al-Husseini began advocating for an independent Palestinian Arab state. To draw people to his cause, which was not yet well-known to the average population, he began emphasizing the importance of Palestine to Islam, and particularly the importance of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. Soon, he began disseminating the libel that the Jews intended to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque. This libel has cost thousands of Jewish lives and is spread widely to this day.

Early on, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt adopted the Palestinian cause. After World War II, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had spent the war working as a propagandist for the Nazis in Berlin, escaped to Egypt with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood fought against the State of Israel in 1948, along with other Islamist militias, such as the Army of the Holy War. Among its fighters were Yasser Arafat. In the 1960s, Arafat came under the influence of the Soviet Union and shifted his image to that of a communist counterrevolutionary, as opposed to an Islamist, though his rhetoric in Arabic continued emphasizing the importance of jihad and Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Palestinian movement. Nevertheless, after Islamic Revolution in Iran, after which the Islamic Republic adopted the Palestinian movement, and with the establishment of Hamas and groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Palestinian nationalism has once again been undergone an Islamization.

rootsmetals

as always: this post is not an endorsement of any given Israeli policy or politician. You can be highly critical of Israel’s handling of the situation without obfuscating or whitewashing the origins and goals of this ideology. It always, always came down to antisemitism. I won’t engage with straw man arguments in the comments 😗

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[secular-jew]

PSA: Islam is NOT a benevolent ideology. Rather, Islam IS a colonial, imperialist, intolerant, subjugating, violent, murdering, and oppressive ideology. But most especially, Islam was the greatest slave taking, slave trading, and slave raping entity ever known to mankind. More than the Roman (and other European) Empires. Slavery has been a "given" from its inception, and has been a large part of its wealth and expansion since Muhammad arrived to Yathrib (now Medina), throughout its 1,414 year history, and even continues to this very day.

The sheer quantity of slaves kidnapped out of Africa, is a big differentiator. While all empires depended on slaves to one degree or another, Islam began kidnapping slaves out of Africa CENTURIES BEFORE the European slave trade began, and lasted much longer. Not for nothing, but, a big part of Islamic slavery of Africans (and Jews and others) is a sexual component, where women were kidnapped to be sexual slaves to the militant men. The women were kidnapped in order to service the sexual whims of Islamic men, and also to breed more Muslims. We've seen this in recent years as thousands of young female Africans have been kidnapped by Boko Haram, Al Shabad, and ISIS (to name a few) from Nigeria, Sudan, and Northern Iraq (ie, Yazidi girls and women).

Why do we not learn in history courses, that Islam is the greatest slave empire of all time, dramatically eclipsing any of the others?

It's estimated that Islamic jihadi armies took over 100 million slaves out of Africa, and marched them by foot, into the Middle East. It is also estimated that more than 10% of the kidnapped Africans, died on the way, from starvation, exhaustion, dehydration, and physical abuse. The number of dead slaves is more than the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. This makes Islam a bigger killer than the Nazis.

Islam, which claims to be the "last religion" and the "Religion of Peace" is not just one of the most violent and oppressive empires on the planet, it has not only taken more land and occupies vast swaths of Arabia, Africa, and Southeast Asia (and now encompasses 56 countries), but it has also been one the largest slave traders.

In fact, slave trading in Islam still exists today.

Not only that, the world in Arabic "abeed" is an interchangeable word for slave and a slur for black people.

Far from being an ethical religion, Islam is imbued with brutality and disregard towards all men and women, not to mention, in practice, racism against blacks and all non-Muslims.

[dontforgetukraine]

"I want to say a few words about the new "it's only Putin" discussion, which is not fact-based in any way. Unfortunately, the imperialistic mindset is widespread in Russian society. This is also true for large parts of the Russian opposition. There is even a faction within the "opposition" that is more radical than Putin (and no, I'm not trying to downplay Putin). They advocate for more efficient killing of Ukrainians, argue that Ukraine should be subjugated more quickly, and claim that the inefficiency of the Russian military is slowing down or even endangering the rebuilding of a Russian empire, Soviet Union 2.0, or whatever they envision.

These people are so radical that they criticize the government in ways that put them at risk of imprisonment. Igor Girkin is one of these people, but there are many others. There is also a large network of radical NGOs that fully support the Kremlin's imperialistic agenda and the war, with some even asking, "Why did it take so long?" These people act voluntarily, not because they are coerced—they genuinely believe in what they are doing.

Not resisting is one thing—we all know what happened to Nemtsov—but actively supporting the imperialistic agenda, supporting the full-scale invasion, and going the extra mile for the regime is something else entirely. Ukrainians experience this mindset daily when ordinary Russians tell them they don't exist, that they should be subjugated, or that they should all be killed. These are not troll farm accounts but real people with account histories going back 15 years. Many Ukrainian families have relatives in Russia, and what those relatives told them on the phone was also "the extra mile" of regime support: "We came to liberate you," "No, we did not attack," "There is no war," "You are Nazis," and so on. Their imperialistic, propaganda-brainwashed mindset was more important to them than their own children. How could anyone forget that? When parents don't believe their own kids, even when they are under shelling.

Ukrainians expected a lot more from ordinary Russians in February 2024 but were hugely disappointed by what they saw and heard, even from people they had known for many years.

I remember what real Russians in real life told me in 2014 and 2022 about Ukraine, about Ukrainians—how they spoke, how much hate there was, how much imperialistic mindset and conspiracy theories... what happened on Russian social networks...

Not to mention all the supporters of the regime, not just Putin’s inner circle, but the "Z civil society," calling the FSB when a neighbor is "suspicious."

I’m sorry, liberal Russian opposition, I respect every real oppositionist who resists the regime, helps stop the war, and exposes Russian imperialism, but no, no, no, it is not only "Putin's war." Saying that is nothing short of a provocation. Get rid of the imperialistic mindset, and respect that Ukraine has a right to its internationally recognized borders. Good luck getting rid of Putin, but Ukrainians will not subjugate to another Russia—whoever is president. The time of subjugation and "brotherly nations" is over.

Realize that Putin has huge support among his people. No, Russia is not like Venezuela, Belarus, or Iran, where the regime faces widespread resistance from people who think completely differently. Russian elections are manipulated, unfair, and non-democratic, but we have all the evidence that Putin has significant support. As one speaker from the Russian research center Levada once told me: "I am sorry and ashamed to say it, but our numbers are not wrong; it is what it is."

—Dietmar Pichler, disinformation analyst

[ausetkmt]

This is what white supremacy looks like in 2022

The signs in the image above hung over the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, a typically liberal and progressive city. It sent shockwaves through the country as yet another reminder that white supremacy is alive and well in pockets of the country. But it’s also a reminder to me that “white supremacy,” as an ideology, has a much longer and more complex history than the blatantly racist pageantry of hate groups would suggest.

What is white supremacy?

White supremacy is a term that tends to offend people’s sensibilities much more immediately than the word racism. That’s because white supremacy today presents itself to the American consciousness in offensive, alienating forms. The KKK, hate crimes, neo-Nazis, and now the Goyim Defense League in the photo above—these are the proud examples of white supremacy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Most people condemn them unequivocally, and they have become a sort of sinister “other,” against which non-racist people may define themselves.

The truth is, white supremacy has a much longer, much uglier history than contemporary white supremacists would suggest. As a pseudoscientific theory of race, a justification for worldwide colonialism and imperialism, and eventually an explicit call to mass genocide, white supremacy has been responsible for some of the most heinous crimes against humanity in modern history.

As a result, it leaves behind an ugly legacy that stretches across much of our society, including law, politics, economic policy, education, arts and culture, and even language. White supremacists may have diminished in number, but the historical effects of white supremacy have a much longer tail.

The origins of white supremacy

At its theoretical core, white supremacy refers to the belief that white people naturally constitute a superior race, and therefore deserve a privileged, dominant position in society. This dominance is always to the detriment of other races—historically, people of color and Jewish people, in particular. It is also typically justified by historical or pseudoscientific arguments about white people’s biological, intellectual, and even spiritual superiority, all of which we now understand to be rooted in blatantly racist stereotypes.

For centuries, pseudoscientific racism made all sorts of claims about Black bodies: that our blood was thicker, feet flatter, skulls smaller, muscles bigger, senses keener. And from the earliest days of the slave trade, these arguments  were crucial to justifying the barbaric treatment of the enslaved. Black Africans had to be dehumanized in order to justify their enslavement and torture. The physical “animalization” of Black bodies in Western culture was predicated on a belief that white bodies and brains were the standard measurefor humanity.

This racial hierarchy—before “race” was even a clear social or “biological” concept—was the seed of modern white supremacy. As Europeans and Americans became more advanced scientifically, another facet of white supremacist theory became entrenched in their psyche: intellectual superiority.

Ideas around the superiority of white people were prominently accepted in Western culture for at least 200 years, from their crystallization in the Enlightenment up to the advent of desegregation and decolonization in the 1950s. They had a massive impact on the structure of modern Western society and globalization for the entirety of that period.

The cultural ubiquity of white supremacy

White supremacy has been ideologically, visually, linguistically, and legally baked into Western society—including the many colonial regimes around the world propped up by European and American powers—for hundreds of years. But in the bygone eras of explicit, ubiquitous white supremacy, nobody referred to it as such. The constellation of beliefs and theories about white racial superiority were simply part and parcel of globalizing, imperialist Euro-American societies. Even once “white supremacy” became the go-to designation for hate groups and egregiously explicit declarations of “white superiority” (e.g. the KKK, neo-Nazis), the phrase adapted to survive. It has since morphed into new slogans and movements over time, from “White Power” in the 1950s to, less overtly, Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign.

Through it all, white supremacist ideas have been defended as natural, scientific, and moral. Even people who have not associated themselves with hate groups or white supremacist violence have often supported white supremacist ideas. One example is the advent of intelligence testing in the 20th century (e.g. IQ tests), which was used to assess intelligence across large samples of national populations. In their early history, these tests were used to justify the idea that white people from the global North were intellectually superior to people of color. Even though IQ tests have been debunked as an incomplete method of assessing intelligence, Dylann Roof tried to  justify his shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, by claiming that Black people have lower IQs.

Society changes, but ideas take a long time to die.

White supremacy today

The history of white supremacy runs long and deep. And even though the ideas behind it are no longer socially acceptable, it still guides racially biased thinking in almost every field of human experience. The strength of its influence on earlier periods in history is reflected in the ubiquity of its legacy today.

It’s worth sharing some of these examples to appreciate the slow-burn effect that white supremacy continues to exert.

Cultural white supremacy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the cultural white supremacy implicit in the backlash against a Black actress playing the live-action Little Mermaid in 2023: Halle Bailey. To me this is a subtle example of white supremacist gatekeeping when it comes to arts and culture. Even fictional characters have to adhere to our very real sense of racial hierarchy. But in this domain, you could also think about our Eurocentric approach to history, literature, and art in schools and museums, which inevitably privilege Western art. Even tokenism—the practice of symbolically adding characters of color into works of art as a superficial nod to racial equality—could be viewed as an aftereffect of white supremacy.

I’ve also written about cultural appropriation in the past—to me, the practice of borrowing or stealing from other cultures’ artistic output for profit is a perfect example of white supremacist imperialism still in action. Western (and particularly American) culture remains globally dominant: to assimilate other cultures into its systems of power without due credit or profit-sharing is a practice steeped in white supremacist ideology.

The economics of white supremacy

As an ideology that privileges whiteness and white people’s well-being, white supremacy has also had economic effects on our society. The old practice of “redlining” is a classic example: Mortgage lenders used to (literally) outline African American neighborhoods in red and mark them as higher risk. These neighborhoods did not receive comparable benefits from the various housing and mortgage programs of the New Deal in the 1930s. As a result, Black neighborhoods stayed Black, relatively poor, and unable to access good credit. Discriminatory lending of this kind was one of the major issues addressed by Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, and it originates in a white supremacist logic of economic exclusion.

I myself have experienced this as a Black founder; just this past quarter, Black founders received a paltry $187 million in funding (0.43% of the $43 billion deployed in Q3 2022). There are many reasons behind this kind of inequity, but most of them are rooted in disparities of access to capital, education, wealth, and entrepreneurship—most of which trace their roots back to white supremacist ideas as well. Perhaps the most significant of these is the continued wealth and income inequality between Black and white people, which has barely changed since the 1950s, when white supremacy supposedly came to an end.

White supremacy in politics and law

From a legal perspective, white supremacy was coded into Jim Crow laws almost as soon as the Civil War ended. These laws created a different America for Black people, in which it was far easier to be criminalized and much harder to gain wealth or access education. Segregation ended formally with the legal victories of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, but it continues in schools and housing up to the present day in more covert forms. The idea that Black and white people cannot share space is obviously a direct corollary of the white supremacist belief that white people are superior.

Politically, white supremacy has shown up more, and more overtly, since the growth of the Tea Party and its conversion into Trump’s presidential base of support. “Make America Great Again” is only the most memorable example. Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese” virus was equally white supremacist—not just because it’s a racist taunt, but because it designates Covid-19 as the creation of a foreign, hostile power rather than a globally shared public health crisis. The implication, of course, is that America—white America—was blameless in its response to COVID-19; all culpability lies with the unknown, but probably malicious, Chinese “Other.”

As you can see, white supremacy influences our society in all sorts of ways. It is deeply connected to the forms of racism that survive today. The KKK is no longer allowed to march freely in Washington, D.C., (as they did in the 1920s), but the ideas that underpin their ideology have long worked their toxicity into our economic, intellectual, and social systems.

It would probably take a lot for me to call someone a “white supremacist” outright, but it’s important we understand the origins of this ideology and the profundity of its impact on Western society. Visual and linguistic symbols of white supremacy still survive—think Confederate/Dixie flags, swastikas, the N-word, racist humor, disdain for African American vernacular, or even personal professions of “colorblindness.” These are all remnants of the historical privileging of whiteness, which literally reigned supreme in Europe and America for over 200 years.

Today, we have to recognize the many forms white supremacy and its legacy can take. We have a responsibility to call it out when we see it. We have to remain sensitive to its often subliminal effect on our own behavior and biases—whether that’s stepping up at work to defend equitable hiring practices, or calling out a friend who makes a racist joke, or ensuring racist candidates don’t make it into office.

White supremacy is the unfortunate bequest our ancestors left us—it’s up to all of us to tear it apart.

[phoenix-king-ozai]

The avatar fandom when Iroh has committed war crimes and likely was just like Ozai but less outwardly unpleasant until Lu Ten got bodied: I don't see it.

Bro if there was an Iroh prequel it'd be ugly as hell.

Crown Fire Prince Iroh systemically starved Ba Sing Se for nearly two years straight non-stop while slaughtering Earth Kingdom soldiers trying to defend and protect their wives, children, family and fellow citizens from the ruthless, brutal and cruel invading Fire Nation army to protect and defend Ba Sing Se.

I’m pretty sure Iroh during his prime years such as during his thirties and before Lu Ten was born was pretty ruthless and savagely competent as Grand General in the Fire Nation’s Army. My headcanon is that Iroh and Ozai have a fifteen year age gap difference. Meaning that in canon at the end of ATLA, Ozai is forty-five then Iroh has to be sixty. When Iroh was thirty during his prime years, Ozai was a fifteen-year-old teenager.

I think both Iroh and Ozai were viciously ruthless commanders and fighters on the battlefield during Fire Lord Azulon’s reign. However, Ozai probably was far more crueler, aggressive, and merciless than his older brother and more like their father Fire Lord Azulon instead. This ruthlessness, brutality, and aggression is what fire nation imperialism and aggressive firebending is based on and what Ozai wants Zuko to inherit and embody as his son and Crown Prince.

This is because in my headcanon Fire Lady Ilah has a much more kinder, gentler, compassionate, and sympathetic personality than her husband Fire Lord Azulon toward other nations suffering in the Hundred Year War due to her having more of a spiritual connection and having her life saved and spared by a Earth Kingdom Princess. This challenged her Fire Supremacist views of people from the Earth Kingdom and other nations made her contextualize their pain and suffering from nearly a century of nonstop war and violence.

Despite both Ilah and Iroh still being staunch imperialists. Ilah made sure to teach Iroh the values of compassion, mercy, and kindness. These values weren't taught and passed down to Azulon and Ozai in comparison. Nor have Azulon or Ozai ever had their Fire Supremacist views challenge and are heavily impacted by decades of propaganda and hatred created by Fire Lord Sozin.

Another headcanon theory of mine is that Fire Lady Ilah died in childbirth while giving birth to Fire Prince Ozai. Iroh was a fifteen-year-old teenager at the time as well. Fire Lord Azulon probably wanted a second child in case of Crown Fire Prince Iroh's possible death on the battlefield along with the return of Sozin’s comet nearly fifty years in the future. However, Ilah probably was in her forties and childbirth was more risky. My dark headcanon is that Baby Ozai burned his mother Ilah from the inside out and the Fire Sages had to perform a lethal C-section on the dying Fire Lady. Fire Lord Azulon loathes his second-born son for being the cause of his beloved wife’s death but this is a coping mechanism due to the fact that Azulon pushed and forced Ilah to have another child.

This is the main reason Ozai is more ruthless, brutal, and vicious than his older brother Iroh. Iroh had and took after Ilah's influence and parenting style whereas Ozai had and took after Azulon’s influence and parenting style. Iroh probably is brainwashed and naivete to believe that the Fire Nation truly cares about the prosperity of the other elemental nations whereas as Ozai is extremely realistic and pessimistic regarding the so-called “benevolent” plans for the other nations.

A good comparison between Iroh and Ozai would be Bjorn and Ivar from the Vikings series. Along with the immorality standards of the German Wehrmacht soldiers and SS-loyal nazi soldiers that are completely brainwashed by the ideology of nazism and imperialism.

[kafkaesquegf]

Hey, everyone. On February 24, 2022, Russia commenced their illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine following six years of conflict between Russian-backed separatist groups and Ukrainian forces in Crimea and Donbas. one year later, the Russian offensive has not stopped, and Ukraine continues to face shelling, rocket fire, and bombardments on both military and civilian infrastructure. the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people are on the line as Russia descends further and further into fascism and military dictatorship. 

Russia has continually used the excuse of “denazification” in Ukraine to justify their criminal and imperialist war in Ukraine. As a Ukrainian-American Jew whose grandparents fled a Ukrainian shtetl in Podillia during the 1920s, I say that this is a disgusting, perverse, and wholly cynical manipulation of Ukrainian-Jewish historical trauma for the gains of an imperialist power. My relationship to Ukrainian nationalism is complex, but I know one thing for sure: Russia doesn’t give a shit about Jews. If they did, they wouldn’t be using the Neo-Nazi-infested Wagner PMC, and they wouldn’t be shelling Jewish heritage sites. Hundreds of years of Jewish culture and history are in danger of destruction by Russian artillery fire. In March of 2022, the memorial at Babyn Yar ravine outside of Kyiv, which was the site of the single largest massacre of Jews during the Holocaust by the Nazis and their collaborators, was hit by Russian artillery. 

Russia does not care about Ukrainian Jews. Russia does not want Ukrainian Jews to see themselves as Ukrainian at all; it wants to undo the decades of bridge-building that have taken place between non-Jewish and Jewish communities in Ukraine. In the end, Russia wants to see the complete annihilation of both groups.

To every Ukrainian, Jewish and not, I wish you strength, hope, and courage in the beginning this second year of invasion. And to every Russian government official, vatnik and Z-fascist who supports the war, I wish you nothing more than oblivion.

If you can, please consider donating to the following charities:

Come Back Alive

United24

Ukrainian Recovery Funds

Jewish Relief Network Ukraine

World Jewish Relief

Слава Україні! Нет войне!

[vtuberconfessions]

As Uki Violeta “is racism against white people real racism” is the trending topic right now, I want to put in my two cents as a half-white person living in a predominantly non-white country.

White people receive tend to receive racism in the same way French people and English people are racist towards each other. It can be real! There can be real animosity! It can be genuinely isolating and uncomfortable to try and interact with someone who will automatically think of you as less worthy of respect and take you less seriously.

When you’re in an Asian or other non-majority white country, worse stuff can happen too. People won’t take you seriously as a candidate for job offers, possibly leaving you unemployed. When you try to date, people who thought liked you as a person may only be dating you as the “exotic option”. You’re isolated because nobody really wants to mark themselves as the first person to be a friend with the new white-adjacent guy in town.

(These all happen to black people too btw.)

That is all racism. To see the world and treat people different according to their race. Uki Violeta is in that sense racist. However, you may note, that none of the people who have ever made fun of me or excluded me in this country have ever, and this is key: been descended from someone who kept one of my ancestors in a concentration camp, or as a slave.

I am descended from Korea and Latvia. Korean women were historically kept as sex slaves by Imperial Japan during WWII. One of my great grandfathers was arrested and put in a Nazi concentration camp. Both sides experienced racially motivated, horrific war crimes. I feel very attached to both parts of my history, and if I ever saw a Neo-Nazi or Russian Imperialist say “oh, the Baltics aren’t real countries”, or a Japanese Imperialist said “those women probably liked it”, I would fucking throw hands so, so fast.

I have now listed three types of fairly serious racism, that many cultures, even white people, face:

A) Reminder of Atrocity that members of one ethnic group committed against another, with an implied threat to do it again. (Read: Anti-semitism, “Indigenous people are savage and should be Civilised”, “The confederates won/should have won the American civil war”)

B) Rejection from being part of the natural fabric of society. (Read: When you speak French in France and nobody is willing to speak to you in French and subtly belittle you for not sounding native. When people double take when you walk into a room because you don’t look like the average person. When none of your classmates are willing to take the first step to be friends with you and so you spend each lesson alone.)

C) Hostility between semi-equals. (Those annoying ass [neighboring country people], they eat [insulting food] and all talk like this [offensive accent].)

Uki Violeta is American. Unlike other places, say Ireland or Eastern Europe, White people in America have not been the victims of mass atrocities and the mass eradication of culture. Unlike China, Japan, or India, non-white people do not hold the keys to the gates of community and most social groups. The things Uki Violeta says, in the grand scheme of things, is most equivalent to those memes about how Italian people all talk like “a Mama Mia, a Pizza Pie ina my Stomacharoni!”

So yeah, Uki Violeta is racist. But because of just how much goddamn racism black people deal with in America, a lot of people seem to think that racism means “that thing when people are mean to Black People, and it’s really really bad and awful”. But like… it’s not just that. It’s just a way of being an asshole without thinking, of treating someone as a representation of the stereotypes about their race. And White Americans are pretty lucky to have their stereotypes be “kinda annoying” and “too friendly” and not “rapist”, “greedy rat”, “violent terrorist” or “inferior, disobedient slave”.

TL;DR: “Oh, what Uki Violeta is saying is racist, imagine if you replaced “White” with “Black”, then you’d see it!” I mean sure. But also, what if you replaced “White” with “The French”? It’d still be kinda racist but you can see how it’s also not that big of a deal right? Uki is an asshole and you can choose not to watch him, but if you’re not already watching him you don’t have to go on about it. Move to Japan or something and then you can complete about racist people you actually have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

.

[dailyanarchistposts]

B.1.4 Why do racism, sexism and homophobia exist?

Since racism, sexism and homophobia (hatred/fear of homosexuals) are institutionalised throughout society, sexual, racial and gay oppression are commonplace. The primary cause of these three evil attitudes is the need for ideologies that justify domination and exploitation, which are inherent in hierarchy — in other words, “theories” that “justify” and “explain” oppression and injustice. As Tacitus said, “We hate those whom we injure.” Those who oppress others always find reasons to regard their victims as “inferior” and hence deserving of their fate. Elites need some way to justify their superior social and economic positions. Since the social system is obviously unfair and elitist, attention must be distracted to other, less inconvenient, “facts,” such as alleged superiority based on biology or “nature.” Therefore, doctrines of sexual, racial, and ethnic superiority are inevitable in hierarchical, class-stratified societies.

We will take each form of bigotry in turn.

From an economic standpoint, racism is associated with the exploitation of cheap labour at home and imperialism abroad. Indeed, early capitalist development in both America and Europe was strengthened by the bondage of people, particularly those of African descent. In the Americas, Australia and other parts of the world the slaughter of the original inhabitants and the expropriation of their land was also a key aspect in the growth of capitalism. As the subordination of foreign nations proceeds by force, it appears to the dominant nation that it owes its mastery to its special natural qualities, in other words to its “racial” characteristics. Thus imperialists have frequently appealed to the Darwinian doctrine of “Survival of the Fittest” to give their racism a basis in “nature.”

In Europe, one of the first theories of racial superiority was proposed by Gobineau in the 1850s to establish the natural right of the aristocracy to rule over France. He argued that the French aristocracy was originally of Germanic origin while the “masses” were Gallic or Celtic, and that since the Germanic race was “superior”, the aristocracy had a natural right to rule. Although the French “masses” didn’t find this theory particularly persuasive, it was later taken up by proponents of German expansion and became the origin of German racial ideology, used to justify Nazi oppression of Jews and other “non-Aryan” types. Notions of the “white man’s burden” and “Manifest Destiny” developed at about the same time in England and to a lesser extent in America, and were used to rationalise Anglo-Saxon conquest and world domination on a “humanitarian” basis.

Racism and authoritarianism at home and abroad has gone hand in hand. As Rudolf Rocker argued, ”[a]ll advocates of the race doctrine have been and are the associates and defenders of every political and social reaction, advocates of the power principle in its most brutal form … He who thinks that he sees in all political and social antagonisms merely blood-determined manifestations of race, denies all conciliatory influence of ideas, all community of ethical feeling, and must at every crisis take refuge in brute force. In fact, race theory is only the cult of power.” Racism aids the consolidation of elite power for by attacking “all the achievements … in the direction of personal freedom” and the idea of equality ”[n]o better moral justification could be produced for the industrial bondage which our holders of industrial power keep before them as a picture of the future.” [Nationalism and Culture, pp. 337–8]

The idea of racial superiority was also found to have great domestic utility. As Paul Sweezy points out, ”[t]he intensification of social conflict within the advanced capitalist countries… has to be directed as far as possible into innocuous channels — innocuous, that is to say, from the standpoint of capitalist class rule. The stirring up of antagonisms along racial lines is a convenient method of directing attention away from class struggle,” which of course is dangerous to ruling-class interests. [Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 311] Indeed, employers have often deliberately fostered divisions among workers on racial lines as part of a strategy of “divide and rule” (in other contexts, like Northern Ireland or Scotland, the employers have used religion in the same way instead).

Employers and politicians have often deliberately fostered divisions among workers on racial lines as part of a strategy of “divide and rule.” In other contexts, like Tzarist Russia, Northern Ireland or Scotland, the employers have used religion in the same way. In others, immigrants and native born is the dividing line. The net effect is the same, social oppressions which range from the extreme violence anarchists like Emma Goldman denounced in the American South (“the atrocities rampant in the South, of negroes lynched, tortured and burned by infuriated crowds without a hand being raised or a word said for their protection” [Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, vol. 1, p. 386]) or the pogroms against Jews in Tsarist Russia to discrimination in where people can live, what jobs people can get, less pay and so on.

For those in power, this makes perfect sense as racism (like other forms of bigotry) can be used to split and divide the working class by getting people to blame others of their class for the conditions they all suffer. In this way, the anger people feel about the problems they face are turned away from their real causes onto scapegoats. Thus white workers are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) encouraged, for example, to blame unemployment, poverty and crime on blacks or Hispanics instead of capitalism and the (white, male) elites who run it and who directly benefit from low wages and high profits. Discrimination against racial minorities and women makes sense for capitalism, for in this way profits are enlarged directly and indirectly. As jobs and investment opportunities are denied to the disadvantaged groups, their wages can be depressed below prevailing levels and profits, correspondingly, increased. Indirectly, discrimination adds capitalist profits and power by increasing unemployment and setting workers against each other. Such factors ensure that capitalism will never “compete” discrimination way as some free-market capitalist economists argue.

In other words, capitalism has benefited and will continue to benefit from its racist heritage. Racism has provided pools of cheap labour for capitalists to draw upon and permitted a section of the population to be subjected to worse treatment, so increasing profits by reducing working conditions and other non-pay related costs. In America, blacks still get paid less than whites for the same work (around 10% less than white workers with the same education, work experience, occupation and other relevent demographic variables). This is transferred into wealth inequalities. In 1998, black incomes were 54% of white incomes while black net worth (including residential) was 12% and nonresidential net worth just 3% of white. For Hispanics, the picture was similar with incomes just 62% of whites, net worth, 4% and nonresidential net worth 0%. While just under 15% of white households had zero or negative net worth, 27% of black households and 36% Hispanic were in the same situation. Even at similar levels of income, black households were significantly less wealthy than white ones. [Doug Henwood, After the New Economy, p. 99 and pp. 125–6]

All this means that racial minorities are “subjected to oppression and exploitation on the dual grounds of race and class, and thus have to fight the extra battles against racism and discrimination.” [Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, p. 126]

Sexism only required a “justification” once women started to act for themselves and demand equal rights. Before that point, sexual oppression did not need to be “justified” — it was “natural” (saying that, of course, equality between the sexes was stronger before the rise of Christianity as a state religion and capitalism so the “place” of women in society has fallen over the last few hundred years before rising again thanks to the women’s movement).

The nature of sexual oppression can be seen from marriage. Emma Goldman pointed out that marriage “stands for the sovereignty of the man over the women,” with her “complete submission” to the husbands “whims and commands.” [Red Emma Speaks, p. 164] As Carole Pateman notes, until “the late nineteenth century the legal and civil position of a wife resembled that of a slave… A slave had no independent legal existence apart from his master, and husband and wife became ‘one person,’ the person of the husband.” Indeed, the law “was based on the assumption that a wife was (like) property” and only the marriage contract “includes the explicit commitment to obey.” [The Sexual Contract, p. 119, p. 122 and p. 181]

However, when women started to question the assumptions of male domination, numerous theories were developed to explain why women’s oppression and domination by men was “natural.” Because men enforced their rule over women by force, men’s “superiority” was argued to be a “natural” product of their gender, which is associated with greater physical strength (on the premise that “might makes right”). In the 17th century, it was argued that women were more like animals than men, thus “proving” that women had as much right to equality with men as sheep did. More recently, elites have embraced socio-biology in response to the growing women’s movement. By “explaining” women’s oppression on biological grounds, a social system run by men and for men could be ignored.

Women’s subservient role also has economic value for capitalism (we should note that Goldman considered capitalism to be another “paternal arrangement” like marriage, both of which robbed people of their “birthright,” “stunts” their growth, “poisons” their bodies and keeps people in “ignorance, in poverty and dependence.” [Op. Cit., p. 210]). Women often provide necessary (and unpaid) labour which keeps the (usually) male worker in good condition; and it is primarily women who raise the next generation of wage-slaves (again without pay) for capitalist owners to exploit. Moreover, women’s subordination gives working-class men someone to look down upon and, sometimes, a convenient target on whom they can take out their frustrations (instead of stirring up trouble at work). As Lucy Parsons pointed out, a working class woman is “a slave to a slave.”

Sexism, like all forms of bigotry, is reflected in relative incomes and wealth levels. In the US women, on average, were being paid 57% the amount men were in 2001 (an improvement than the 39% 20 years earlier). Part of this is due to fewer women working than men, but for those who do work outside the home their incomes were 66% than of men’s (up from 47% in 1980 and 38% in 1970). Those who work full time, their incomes 76% of men’s, up from the 60% average through most of the 1970s. However, as with the black-white gap, this is due in part to the stagnant income of male workers (in 1998 men’s real incomes were just 1% above 1989 levels while women’s were 14% above). So rather than the increase in income being purely the result of women entering high-paying and largely male occupations and them closing the gender gap, it has also been the result of the intense attacks on the working class since the 1980s which has de-unionised and de-industrialised America. This has resulted in a lot of high-paying male jobs have been lost and more and more women have entered the job market to make sure their families make ends. [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 91–2]

Turning away from averages, we discover that sexism results in women being paid about 12% less than men during the same job, with the same relative variables (like work experience, education and so forth). Needless to say, as with racism, such “relevant variables” are themselves shaped by discrimination. Women, like blacks, are less likely to get job interviews and jobs. Sexism even affects types of jobs, for example, “caring” professions pay less than non-caring ones because they are seen as feminine and involve the kinds of tasks which women do at home without pay. In general, female dominated industries pay less. In 1998, occupations that were over 90% male had a median wage almost 10% above average while those over 90% female, almost 25% below. One study found that a 30% increase in women in an occupation translated into a 10% decline in average pay. Needless to say, having children is bad economic news for most women (women with children earn 10 to 15% less than women without children while for men the opposite is the case). Having maternity level, incidentally, have a far smaller motherhood penalty. [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 95–7]

The oppression of lesbians, gays and bisexuals is inextricably linked with sexism. A patriarchal, capitalist society cannot see homosexual practices as the normal human variations they are because they blur that society’s rigid gender roles and sexist stereotypes. Most young gay people keep their sexuality to themselves for fear of being kicked out of home and all gays have the fear that some “straights” will try to kick their sexuality out of them if they express their sexuality freely. As with those subject to other forms of bigotry, gays are also discriminated against economically (gay men earning about 4–7% less than the average straight man [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 100]). Thus the social oppression which result in having an alternative sexuality are experienced on many different levels, from extreme violence to less pay for doing the same work.

Gays are not oppressed on a whim but because of the specific need of capitalism for the nuclear family. The nuclear family, as the primary — and inexpensive — creator of submissive people (growing up within the authoritarian family gets children used to, and “respectful” of, hierarchy and subordination — see section B.1.5) as well as provider and carer for the workforce fulfils an important need for capitalism. Alternative sexualities represent a threat to the family model because they provide a different role model for people. This means that gays are going to be in the front line of attack whenever capitalism wants to reinforce “family values” (i.e. submission to authority, “tradition”, “morality” and so on). The introduction of Clause 28 in Britain is a good example of this, with the government making it illegal for public bodies to promote gay sexuality (i.e. to present it as anything other than a perversion). In American, the right is also seeking to demonise homosexuality as part of their campaign to reinforce the values of the patriarchal family unit and submission to “traditional” authority. Therefore, the oppression of people based on their sexuality is unlikely to end until sexism is eliminated.

This is not all. As well as adversely affecting those subject to them, sexism, racism and homophobia are harmful to those who practice them (and in some way benefit from them) within the working class itself. Why this should be the case is obvious, once you think about it. All three divide the working class, which means that whites, males and heterosexuals hurt themselves by maintaining a pool of low-paid competing labour, ensuring low wages for their own wives, daughters, mothers, relatives and friends. Such divisions create inferior conditions and wages for all as capitalists gain a competitive advantage using this pool of cheap labour, forcing all capitalists to cut conditions and wages to survive in the market (in addition, such social hierarchies, by undermining solidarity against the employer on the job and the state possibly create a group of excluded workers who could become scabs during strikes). Also, “privileged” sections of the working class lose out because their wages and conditions are less than those which unity could have won them. Only the boss really wins.

This can be seen from research into this subject. The researcher Al Szymanski sought to systematically and scientifically test the proposition that white workers gain from racism [“Racial Discrimination and White Gain”, in American Sociological Review, vol. 41, no. 3, June 1976, pp. 403–414]. He compared the situation of “white” and “non-white” (i.e. black, Native American, Asian and Hispanic) workers in United States and found several key things:

(1) The narrower the gap between white and black wages in an American state, the higher white earnings were relative to white earnings elsewhere. This means that “whites do not benefit economically by economic discrimination. White workers especially appear to benefit economically from the absence of economic discrimination... both in the absolute level of their earnings and in relative equality among whites.” [p. 413] In other words, the less wage discrimination there was against black workers, the better were the wages that white workers received.

(2) The more “non-white” people in the population of a given American State, the more inequality there was between whites. In other words, the existence of a poor, oppressed group of workers reduced the wages of white workers, although it did not affect the earnings of non-working class whites very much (“the greater the discrimination against [non-white] people, the greater the inequality among whites” [p. 410]). So white workers clearly lost economically from this discrimination.

(3) He also found that “the more intense racial discrimination is, the lower are the white earnings because of ... [its effect on] working-class solidarity.” [p. 412] In other words, racism economically disadvantages white workers because it undermines the solidarity between black and white workers and weakens trade union organisation.

So overall, these white workers receive some apparent privileges from racism, but are in fact screwed by it. Thus racism and other forms of hierarchy actually works against the interests of those working class people who practice it — and, by weakening workplace and social unity, benefits the ruling class:

“As long as discrimination exists and racial or ethnic minorities are oppressed, the entire working class is weakened. This is so because the Capitalist class is able to use racism to drive down the wages of individual segments of the working class by inciting racial antagonism and forcing a fight for jobs and services. This division is a development that ultimately undercuts the living standards of all workers. Moreover, by pitting Whites against Blacks and other oppressed nationalities, the Capitalist class is able to prevent workers from uniting against their common enemy. As long as workers are fighting each other, the Capitalist class is secure.” [Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Op. Cit., pp. 12–3]

In addition, a wealth of alternative viewpoints, insights, experiences, cultures, thoughts and so on are denied the racist, sexist or homophobe. Their minds are trapped in a cage, stagnating within a mono-culture — and stagnation is death for the personality. Such forms of oppression are dehumanising for those who practice them, for the oppressor lives as a role, not as a person, and so are restricted by it and cannot express their individuality freely (and so do so in very limited ways). This warps the personality of the oppressor and impoverishes their own life and personality. Homophobia and sexism also limits the flexibility of all people, gay or straight, to choose the sexual expressions and relationships that are right for them. The sexual repression of the sexist and homophobe will hardly be good for their mental health, their relationships or general development.

From the anarchist standpoint, oppression based on race, sex or sexuality will remain forever intractable under capitalism or, indeed, under any economic or political system based on domination and exploitation. While individual members of “minorities” may prosper, racism as a justification for inequality is too useful a tool for elites to discard. By using the results of racism (e.g. poverty) as a justification for racist ideology, criticism of the status quo can, yet again, be replaced by nonsense about “nature” and “biology.” Similarly with sexism or discrimination against gays.

The long-term solution is obvious: dismantle capitalism and the hierarchical, economically class-stratified society with which it is bound up. By getting rid of capitalist oppression and exploitation and its consequent imperialism and poverty, we will also eliminate the need for ideologies of racial or sexual superiority used to justify the oppression of one group by another or to divide and weaken the working class. However, struggles against bigotry cannot be left until after a revolution. If they were two things are likely: one, such a revolution would be unlikely to happen and, two, if it were then these problems would more than likely remain in the new society created by it. Therefore the negative impacts of inequality can and must be fought in the here and now, like any form of hierarchy. Indeed, as we discuss in more detail section B.1.6 by doing so we make life a bit better in the here and now as well as bringing the time when such inequalities are finally ended nearer. Only this can ensure that we can all live as free and equal individuals in a world without the blights of sexism, racism, homophobia or religious hatred.

Needless to say, anarchists totally reject the kind of “equality” that accepts other kinds of hierarchy, that accepts the dominant priorities of capitalism and the state and accedes to the devaluation of relationships and individuality in name of power and wealth. There is a kind of “equality” in having “equal opportunities,” in having black, gay or women bosses and politicians, but one that misses the point. Saying “Me too!” instead of “What a mess!” does not suggest real liberation, just different bosses and new forms of oppression. We need to look at the way society is organised, not at the sex, colour, nationality or sexuality of who is giving the orders!

[dextixer]

Oh Dex, you don't get to pull the "I can't be bigoted, stalking, violent trash because I'm more leftist than you are" card.

I'm trans and an ancom and it's no secret that a lot of "ex" gg-ers tried to re-invent themselves.

Funny how it never works for long.

No one outside your diminishing echo chamber believes a word you say.

Actually, that is just wrong. Me being leftist has nothing to do with me not being bigoted. Im simply... Not bigoted. The reason why i point out my leftist "credentials" is to prove through my ACTIONS why you people are fake progressives.

You gave me labels. You are trans and an ancom. Okay. Why should i care? I dont care about your labels (I stopped caring about them during the invasion of Ukraine when people started using the "pacifist" and "anti-imperialist" labels to argue for Russian occupation of Ukraine). I care about actions.

So, let us all recall what YOU anti-RWDE people have done with your actions.

1 - During the RT controversies many of your people came in DEFENCE of RT, people like Lilith Fairen cursed out and attacked people on twitter for criticizing RT and afterwards your anti-RWDE crowd spread Kdins past shitty behaviour. Pointing out her past behaviour is not a problem. But you did so to protect a bigoted company.

2 - Your anti-RWDE crowd has called for people to support RT financially through merch and other such avenues. Showing that you care more for your show and a corporation than its workers.

3 - Multiple anti-RWDE people have been caught using slurs, people like Lilith using ethnic slurs while some of your other people have been caight using the word "ret*rd". One of your people, Darious uses an alt account to spread islamophobic and racist shit to Adel Aka and Vexed Viewer. I dont like their content. But the racist attacks on them come from YOUR crowd

4 - Multiple of your people have been caught faking accusations about others. Canonseeker, a person your anti-RWDE crowd is friendly with for example took issue with me slagging of NAZIS on twitter. Pretending that they were "RWBY fans". I dont know why he stated that Nazis were RWBY fans but you should ask him that.

5- Your anti-RWDE crowd constantly use language or tactics associated with the alt-right. Lilith Fairen often weaponizes an alt right tactic when people call out racism/sexism, to them accuse the accusers of these things. Some of your people freely use the word "degener*te" which is HEAVILY associated with far right ideologies.

6 - Most of your biggest attacks have been against people of colour and sexual minorities. You dont go after chuds. Your MAIN targets are specifically women, people of colour, and those of non-straight sexualities. And that is no coincidence. Hell, quite recently one of your leaders, Lilith straight up made an entire paragraph which just reeked of white saviour syndrome.

7 - It is only from YOUR anti-RWDE crowd that i have gotten shit for supporting Ukraine in their defence against a Russian invasion. No single critic of RWBY has EVER given me shit for that. Only RWBY fans. Why is that?

Need i go on? The reason why i call you fake progressives is not due to the labels you hold. But due to your behaviour. The BEST you can levy in accusations against RWDE people is making shit up.

Xel Writer/Zam/Xelianthought for example is hanging around twitter claiming that the Canonseeker expose document was made with the help of Kiwifarms knowing that its a lie. He wanted to get my Reddit account deleted through false accusations that Lilith wanted to get onto too. Your friend canonseeker is coming up with real life fanfiction about me "controling" RWBY youtubers and r/RWBY mods.

The best you can do are either lies or shouting "YOU ARE SEXIST/RACIST/HOMOPHOBE" with absolutely no proof.

While your, anti-RWDE behaviour has been recorded to be fucking horrible. And none of you ever apologized or even acknowledged the things you have done. None of you have acknowledged or apologized for using slurs. None of you have apologized for defending RT.

You doubled down on that shit.

Also, if you dont care what we say. Why in the fuck do you keep hounding us? Why do i receive nearly daily asks of harassment? Why do you keep talking about us? If nobody believes us or listens to us. Why do you care?

See? Your attacks are so transparent its funny to me. Because in your whole "Nobody cares about you spiel" you reveal just how much of a pain we are to you people. Good.

[swarm-o-hogs]

Armchair observations: Vladimir Putin is not a fascist, but an autocrat

The distinguishing features of totalitarian regimes are that their power comes entirely from the Party. Their leaders are selected through party machinations, not from the military or the civil service or any other non-party branch of government.

Autocrats may come to power through a military coup, or in Putin's case, a transfer of power to the secret services of the former Soviet Union, known as the siloviks. In the USSR, Lavrentiy Beria the head of the all powerful secret police (NKVD) failed to seize power after Stalin's death. Hannah Arendt explained the reason for his failure was that his power did not primarily come from the Communist Party. After the fall of the Party, these Siloviki from the ex-KGB had a chance to take over the state, and Putin was their champion. I'm sure Arendt wouldn't be surprised if she lived to see it.

The point is, the main source of power in the Russian state comes from the Siloviki, not anywhere else, and this makes Putin an autocrat rather than a fascist. While there is effectively only one party, United Russia, it is more of a fig leaf covering over the naked power of the Siloviki. In contrast, the main vehicle for fascists to gain power is their party.

Now, some may point to the fact that Putin is invading Ukraine, culturally assimilating and massacring Ukrainians in the regions he controls as an argument for him being a fascist. This makes him an imperialist, and possibly genocidal, but the Tsarist autocracy also committed genocides such as the destruction of the Circassians.

The reason the distinction between autocrats and fascists is important, is because the term 'fascism' is being dangerously overused, to the point it inaccurately describes those who do want to do terrible things. Hannah Arendt's (and many others) make the point that fascism arose from the many dehumanising and oppressive aspects of European societies. Many liberals and lefties fail to take her point and treat fascism as if it arose from nowhere, or as the only form oppression can take nowadays.

Fascists took the genocidal logic of colonialism, and turned it inward on their own country and continent. The Nazi variant would have been impossible without hundreds of years of anti-semitism. There would be no jobless thugs if the Capitalists were not allowed to destroy everything the workers had. The secret police that was turbocharged by totalitarians already existed within democracies, monarchies and dictatorships.

Liberals and lefties feel the need to justify opposition to tyranny by labelling it as 'fascist' even though that is only one specific flavour of tyranny. Autocrats are bad enough on their own, without inaccurately labelling them as fascist. The same goes for theocrats, imperialists, absolute monarchists and segregationists. (Ironically, Hannah Arendt became a segregationist herself)

At the same time, totalitarian commies and fascists have also refined the tools that traditional types of oppressors use. There are also still real totalitarian regimes alive and kicking, and real fascists who have infiltrated democratic parties. There are democracies with huge surveillance apparatuses that are close to being turned into police states.

The reason why I make an example out of Putin, is it's important to distinguish between the different types of tyranny. Each type has its own strengths and weaknesses. Totalatarian ideologies like fascism are only the most extreme outcome, and can only happen if other forms of tyranny are allowed to triumph.

[exosentient]

Hahahaha imagine✨ being so unimaginative and mired in your cultural blinkers that you actually think this is an Objective slam dunk against trans women. Not even grasping that lesbian is a culturally & historically specific term and lmaoooooo its meaning has been argued over and gatekept for its whole (short) history. And old Sappho would think you were very strange!

Imagine✨ getting asked decades ago what one thought the term meant and saying “sexually and romantically loving women” and being told WRRRRONG sexual attraction is just shallow, you’re not a Real Lesbian, because it is about the Political Commitment To Womyn regardless of desire, plus that’s Really Racist (somehow), said by a bunch of white women lmaooo.

Imagine✨ the pointless shitfights over The Appropriate Term, (again amongst almost exclusively middle class white women). Lesbian was controversial or distasteful or just irrelevant and clinical to many in our many disjointed loosely intersecting communities in the West! Many found it waaaay too white or genteel and didn’t feel the urge to tearing down others to insist there was Only One True Way!

Imagine✨ thinking there IS only one way of doing things, and the sheer cultural privilege and insulation being raised in the increasingly pluralistic West that this must entail to see this as natural and “reality”.

Imagine✨ thinking that the master’s tools will dismantle the master’s house, that failing to heed the warnings of George Orwell and merely switcherooing “good” and “bad” words and identities and not the actual authoritarian impulse to rigidly define and police and purge these, will actually create the “good” you believe yourself to be embodying. Imagine✨ thinking it’s cool and normal to align yourself politically with conservative Christians who lobby politicans, with literal Nazis who deny the Holocaust but have a history of pro-homosexuality as long as it’s gender correct, with the now taken offline “worst place on the internet”, and thinking you’re somehow dismantling your master’s house.

Imagine✨ travelling the world, to other countries and finding they have their own terms and own understandings of what we would probably translate as “lesbian” here. Imagine✨ realising that our Western ideas about gender are quite specific, and imagine taking history and philosophy at University and learning about how European medieval ideas of gender were totally different to now, seeing it as a continuum, eg the so called manly men “authentic” Norse/Vikings saw it as a spiritual/magic thing that could be transversed and that homo sex was situationally about social position and sexual position and gender position. Imagine✨ working with AIDS activists from across the world and learning of all the far-flung sex and gender traditions that completely disrupt your own limited colonialist linear understanding of “enlightenment” and “truth”. Imagine✨ proudly declaring yourself an atheist and getting met with confusion because only with whites is “authentic belief” a concept, an internal individualist identity marker rather than a cultural category.

Imagine✨ realising that “homosexuality” was invented in the 19thC and “heterosexuality” was invented after that, because our culture post-“Enlightenment” is obsessed with its dualistic essentialist binaries and imperialist & epistemic needs to slot people into rigid identity boxes – just as “races” of people were invented whole cloth and those who didn’t fit neatly into those boxes / characteristics became the Problem, leading to eugenic policies and genocide in my country and many others, affecting a diversity of categories (!) of people who are deemed not valid for existing, for being an existential threat to those invented rigid categories.

Imagine✨ learning that most societies have an understanding of what we have decided to call “transgender” and many (pre/non European imperialism) have specific social / spiritual roles.

Imagine✨ that most societies have an understanding of what we call “homosexual” and many have specific life stages or spiritual spaces for this and define it more as behavioural.

Imagine✨ the idea that there is something fixed and unchanging and simple rooted in the “authentic self”, which is SO Western and individualistic it’s hilarious. Other cultures see the self as relational, and even emotions and desires and personality as relational and situational, to the point where many do not even have a word for “I”. Imagine learning that specific language shapes our reality and without specific words those concepts are nebulous or absent, with different words they are completely different! Imagine✨ having the intellectual humility to realise this!

Imagine✨ coming of age in the West in a time when gender and sexuality were not sharply separated like now, only a few decades ago, and thinking of oneself as an “invert”. Imagine✨ seeing this separation increasingly performed by affluent whites who we would term “cis homosexuals” now, in order to gain social acceptance by distancing themselves from the other forms of gender deviancy and positioning themselves as model gender citizens, so very very “cis”, the default norm against the deviant Other. Imagine✨ being valleyg0th participating in this norm farming while blissfully totally unaware of any of the context in which she is playing. Imagine✨ being so insecure as to have the energetic need to convince oneself by courting conflict with other lesbians to scold them that they Aren’t Real or Actually Homophobic(tm).

But she won’t ✨imagine💫, because she is too invested in a particular form of dominance, as expressed in cowardly DMs to these other less than satisfactory lesbians. Thank you for the laugh and a flashback to some sad sacks from my separatist days. I hope you grow up soon.

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Libertarianism is awful: an incoherent rant

The more I learn about American Libertarianism (also known as AnarchoCapitalism or Individualism or so many other names...) the less I like it. Primarily because it makes people (voters and politicians) so financially anorexic (an actual psychological condition) that they willingly destroy their own infrastructure just to save money in taxes. Infrastructure that would have been high priority targets of an invading military force or terrorist organization. But there is another reason why I hate Libertarianism. Reading about real life cases of libertarians attempting to operate societies made me understand what the true principles of the ideology are:

The masses have no right to control an individual but the individual has the right to oppress the masses.

It is the ideology of a king repackaged and sold to peasants. Kings live a great life because they own a lot of stuff, can indulge in every vice, and they don't have to pay taxes. Therefore, libertarians proclaim, peasants would have a great life too if they got to live like a king. Unfortunately those damned Statists with their burdensome regulations will always prevent the formation of an all-king society and thus they must be destroyed. Never mind that the wealth of kings was only possible through the collective efforts of artisans, merchants, and peasants who staged revolts against kings in order to get lawful governments that better served the collective's interests.

Let's abandon this abstract metaphor which wasn't going anywhere important and move on to gun ownership. By owning a gun, you are giving yourself the power to easily threaten and kill non-gun owners. Unfortunately this is the definition of oppression, even if it was a necessary action to preserve your own freedom. Now If you don't own a gun and you are being threatened with one, the obvious solution is to get yourself a gun. When asked how, the typical libertarian will reply with "The Free Market" and leave it at that. Being privileged gun enthusiasts, they assume that a desperate enslaved farm/sex/factory worker would be able to seek out and purchase the best fire arms that could be used against mercenaries. But a business owners employees would never stage an armed revolt since they love working in inhumane conditions sooooooooo much! And besides, who want would sell guns to poor people? lol, they don't have any money.

When larger questions of logistics/ethics like these arise, such as how poor people can afford fire power that would put them on equal footing with a wealthy warlord and his loyal military, the average libertarian will excitedly info-dump about the American Revolutionary War. They will ignore that the revolutionaries nearly failed a few times due to lack of supplies. And they won't mention (and may not know) about the less successful anti-imperialist efforts that weren't bankrolled by wealthy patrons which ended in genocide of the scrappy guerilla freedom fighters. Which is what happened to the First Nation's of North America, the small tribes across the African continent, and all those other poor people. That because they hate multiculturalism and refuse to learn from the tragedies of others.

In conclusion, the foundation of American Libertarian doctrine was bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, inheritors of Koch Industries, in the 1970's. It is a reflection of the values held by those brothers whose father was a known Nazi sympathizer. It was designed to make the poor be incompetent revolutionaries, make them sympathize with corporate executives, and be compatible with cultural conservative values. Over the last half century this ideology has, unfortunately, been semi-successful which has resulted in greater chaos and poverty in the United States of America and beyond.