#ww2 only lasts a year

[applesandpavenders]

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[owlgoddess24]

so, ultrakill's violence layer is unbelievably cool. like, i was not prepared for any level of it. but on top of obscenely awesome gameplay and setpieces, it also delivers some REALLY juicy lore, especially about the war that we've been hearing about for so long.

and it's just occurred to me that one figure of time given in a lore entry has revealed so much more context surrounding it than i could ever dream of.

in a terminal entry that i won't be specific about to avoid spoilers, it's stated that the war lasted roughly 200 years. this would be useless if we didn't know when the war ended...

but we do.

in the opening of the game, we see this.

i've always assumed this was the current date, but i only now realize that it's not. it's the last time V1's firmware got an update, which would have to be during the war, since the V1 project was scrapped when it ended. and since we know V1 was made around the end of the war, we can assume the war ended around 2112. 200 years earlier would be somewhere around the 1910s.

all of this makes it extremely likely that this isn't just some fictional war. it's World War 1. this is a world where WW2 never happened, because WW1 never ended. it kept going and going and building and getting more and more horrific until eventually literally becoming the war to end all wars.

this also recontextualizes machines being fueled by blood, as its now clear that the invention of the machines happened in the middle of the war, and its likely that battle was their sole purpose. it always seemed weird to me before, but i had always assumed that machines existed before the war broke out. if their goal has always been to kill, it seems reasonable that the killing should be able to fuel them. only makes it more horrific, though.

[bet-on-me-13]

Danny as a Historical Badass

So, I'm sure you have all heard at least one story about those Badasses in History, the ones who are basically Legends at this point, right?

Like Simo Hayha, the White Death. The legendary Finish Sniper who managed to get 505 Confirmed Kills in less than 100 days, and an additional 200 kills with a Sub Machine Gun.

Or Mad Jack Churchill, the Craziest Commando. The guy who went to War with a Bow and a Broadsword, inflicting the last Archery Fatality in British Military History. He and his single partner also managed to raid a Village and capture 44 unsuspecting Soliders.

I want Danny to be seen in history in the same way they were.

If we go with the AU where the events of the Show happened in the Early 1900's, Danny would reach Eligibility just in time for both World Wars.

I want one of the Batfamily Members to run across a Video online of "Roman Helmet Guy" on Tiktok talking about Danny with that Badass Music in the Background.

Like, Danny is known as the Insane Solider of WW1/WW2. The guy who somehow managed to capture entire Platoons singlehandedly. The Guy who raided Enemy Camps in the Dead of night and managed to capture High Ranking Commanders on his own. The Guy that survives life threatening wounds like it's nothing MULTIPLE TIMES, and is somwhow back on the battlefield within the hour.

Some people speculate that he was an early Metahuman, but nobody can confirm because he hasn't been seen in decades. Some people.think he must be dead by now.

And then the Batfam member does a double take because, That's Old Man Danny.

Thats the old guy who runs their favorite Cafe. He must be well over 100 years old by now, but he looks like he's in his early 70's.

And doesn't Alfred frequent that Cafe?

Yes, he does. Alfred and Danny are old War Buddies.

Idk where this is going, I feel braindead right now.

I just wanted Danny to be seen as a Historical Legend because I was binging 'Roman Helmet Guy's videos and thought of this.

Wait, wasn't Diana in WW1? Like, in the movie at least she fought in WW1, so what if she met Danny during that time? What if she wasn't the only one to rush into No-Mans Land during that action scene in the Movie?

Diana shows up in Gotham and just says, "Oh no need to worry, I'm just visiting an old Friend."

Also, I recommend watching videos on Simo Hayha, he is such a badass.

[wellntruly]

If you read the novel Catch-22 (1961), about U.S. Army pilots & sundry stationed on a Greek island during World War II, you will encounter this off-hand description during the period where Yossarian is hiding in the field hospital:

At which you will either pause worryingly, or you’re normal.

I am not normal, because I have watched the television show M*A*S*H (1972-1983), about U.S. Army medical staff in a mobile surgical unit during the Korean War, and which features a character called Hawkeye Pierce, who frequently looks like this:

Now this bathrobe, iconic simply, appears red to the observer. However, deep into the run there is a line in which Hawkeye refers to it as "purple"—great consternation. But film cameras and light waves being what they are (capricious, devilish), it could very well be maroon in life. It could very well be maroon. It’s what I assumed after that comment. But what I'd never asked was, what is it made out of? Is that corduroy, could it be corduroy, could this be—

Oh noooooooo!

Why is Hawkeye the only one who is wearing the robe of patients from the last war, I ask you! Is it for the METAPHOR. To make me YELL. Did the costume department make it for him, or did they just already have one on hand in the WWII storage? Wait it wasn't real was it? Where is it, where is this robe!

Well babe, it’s in the Smithsonian:

A) of all, fucking fantastic, could not be a place I more want Alan Alda’s bathrobe as Hawkeye Pierce to be than the National Museum of American History. B) well well well well well, what do we have here:

[sic]

So looking THAT up brings you nothing that makes any sense, even trying to correct for spelling. But not to fear: historical re-enactors are here.

On the website of the “WW2 US Medical Research Centre,” an absolutely delightful combination of words and spelling brought to you by two European history buffs, and that’s Europeans who are obsessed with history, specifically American medical units in the 1940s, there’s a page for pajamas, and why look who’s here:

OH ho oh HO!

“Progressive Coat & Apron Mfg. Co.” is so similarly bizarre that I would be very willing to bet that something like idk, the imperfect process of digitizing thousands of records for a website catalog, could have absolutely resulted in “Agressive Coat and Manufacturing Company.” Which would mean yeah, yeah yeah: vintage World War II, slash Korea, just five years later. It was authentic, what they gave Alda to wear, along with his dog tags.

Just Hawkeye though still, which is what's odd.

BUT HANG ON.

Heeeeey now!

So I was recently reminded that in the pilot episode, but the pilot episode only, Wayne Rogers as Trapper John McIntyre also has the regulation corduroy MD/USA bathrobe! In fact, he actually has what would appear to become Hawkeye’s—observe the location of the embroidery. Pocket, like Hawkeye’s in every robe appearance after this first episode, the robe that ends up in the Smithsonian Museum. Whereas the one with the embroidery on the chest that's hanging above Hawkeye's cot here, a common variant that shows up when you’re searching around on military history websites, after this appearance I believe is seen just once more on a visiting colonel later in the first season, then quietly vanishes. Alda ends up in Trapper's, and stays in it for keeps, while Rogers gets, of all things, a cheery goldenrod terry number.

But like, why. Why just Hawkeye in the WWII surplus robe. Both Doyle and Watson have avenues here that I like to think about. For the Doylist side, I suspect it was a decision of like, this is simply too matchy. It’s 1972, our TV screens are small, we gotta take any chance we can get to distinguish these tall white men constantly wearing the same of two monochrome outfits.

In fact, I actually wonder if there was a world where Trapper might have stayed in the maroon and Hawkeye could have ended up in Henry’s robe.

The light blue & white striped bathrobe McLean Stevenson wore as Henry Blake was sold at auction in 2018, and the item description contains the curious detail of it having a handwritten tag inside reading “Hawkeye.” Well heeeyy again.

And here’s another curious detail:

There was a blue & white striped Army-issue robe as well

Now Henry’s is clearly NOT vintage WWII, lacking the pocket embroidery, being terry cloth, and also of course: pastel. But it’s INTERESTING, isn’t it? They had to have been GOING for that look, with that same unusual collar shape and that multi-stripe patterning.

(Also, for real 'what the hell even IS this color' fun, this militaria collectors purveyor has one of the maroon versions too, with photos you can page though and laugh as it flips between looking clearly purple and clearly red in every other photograph. Cameras!!!)

Anyway now we turn to the Watsonian explanation, which seems to run like this: the men at the 4077 were just casually passing their robes around to each other. It's about the intimacy in the face of war, etc. I can see bathrobes going missing when they bug out, getting stolen from the laundry by Klinger and scrapped for parts, being handed off to a poor cold Korean kid who needs it more, and then they need to get to the showers and one of them is like hey, just take mine, and then it’s his now. And eventually most of them end up in warmer-looking civilian robes than the Army holdovers that were being distributed early on, but Hawkeye, he just hung on to Trapper's.

And as a side effect, still looks like he's been injured in World War II.

[professorcalculusstanaccount]

Tintin through time! 

Thought it would be fun to have my various designs for Tintin in one post. The canon comics have a floating timeline and Tintin never ages. I think rooting him in a specific time and context makes him feel a little more real (also I am a sucker for historical fiction). Click below for a potted timeline and notes about each design!

Left to right, top to bottom:

Child - in my timeline Tintin was born in 1915, a year into the First World War. He was probably picked on a lot by his peers for being small, ginger and slightly effeminate, and was picked on by adults for being “difficult” and asking too many questions.

Early canon - He leaves school early and becomes a reporter at 14. He’s unhinged, he’s blasé, he dresses like Spongebob. Coming right out of Catholic school he has a lot of unhealthy beliefs he needs to confront and unlearn. I imagine his editor is a pretty shady person as they are willing to send this kid off to dangerous places. His naivety prevents him from spotting any red flags at first.

Late canon - Tintin as we know him! His journalism career is at its peak at the tender age of 17. He’s found a family and stability at Marlinspike. His politics are evolving. He is, however, pretty neglectful of his own personal life, almost fully focusing on his career. He’s starting to grow wary of his editor and they frequently argue, Tintin often winning out as he knows it’s his articles that sell papers.

Young adult - With the Second World War breaking out this is an unstable time in his life. He’s come to terms with being gay but is fired from his paper after being forcibly outed. Tintin and the Marlinspike team take fighting fascism into their own hands. 

For his design here he wears a turtleneck like Captain Haddock, glasses like Professor Calculus (also representing a renewed perspective on things) and his hair is more relaxed like Chang’s! The idea was to show how he has been impacted by the people he cares about. 

After the war ends he struggles with unemployment and burnout, insecure that he might have peaked as a teenager.

Middle aged - It’s the late 50s - early 60s, Tintin is jaded and cynical but still kind and willing to help others. He is absolutely horrified by the events of WW2 and carries an enormous sense of guilt, feeling he didn’t do enough. His faith in journalism has also been thoroughly shaken, witnessing the spectacular failing of the system himself, and realising there are people who genuinely do not care for the truth, and are only concerned with power. 

Elderly - if he somehow makes it to old age he’d be a chaotic little old man who doesn’t give a Single Shit. It’s the late 80s and early 90s, at this point he has retired from journalism and has published his own books, and has taken to becoming a full time political activist (here he’s wearing an AIDS awareness ribbon from 1991, in the 70s Herge had Tintin wear a helmet displaying a symbol for nuclear disarmament). Kids adore him, cops hate him! 

He has taken to technology, being an early adopter of the Internet and desktop computers. He and Chang have since been able to reunite with Chang’s family and they often spend time with Didi’s grandkids!

I don’t know what would kill him. Old age? A car bomb? Maybe he falls over badly and bangs his head one last time. I don’t think it’s my place to decide.

[going-to-ikea-for-the-fries]

Three. Four. Five. || Toxic!Husband!Price

For @glitterypirateduck's “O, Captain!” writing challenge! I used prompts:

30. "I hate you but if anything happened to you I'd burn the world" vibe.;

42. The story spans over a period of 10 or more years;

78. Give us a "That's my Wife!" moment.

Rating: E Words: 3.3K cw: toxic couple, VERY toxic, insults, death wishes, smut fade to black, pregnancy. Tags: f!reader, you/your pronouns but no Y/N, miilitary/court martial inaccuracies, very bad family dynamics?, dark humour??. Summary: John and Reader are in the worst fucking marriage ever. A collection of moments, dialogues and scenes from their terrible relationship. a/n: They are SO fucking toxic and dumb, I cannot- This is also very different from the stuff I usually write. This is ALSO not particularly angsty, more so dark humour.

There was a time when you loved John Price.

With all your heart, all your soul (and all your pussy).

That time was when you were young.

Ages 14 to 21, you loved him. He was your first kiss, your first time. High school sweethearts, you supported him through the academy, he supported you when you went to university. 

You stayed together through his first and second deployments. It was like an old-timey WW2 romance. 

So many letters exchanged back and forth. All lovey-dovey, with faint pen ink and smudged blotches on the pages as you made plans for the future.

Phone calls with spotty service and loads of static, only five minutes per soldier, 5 minutes which he’d spend only ever spend talking to you, asking you to relay any other messages to his mum, dad, siblings so he wouldn’t have to hang up with you. 

Polaroids clipped on the inside of envelopes which he would then slip into the breast pocket of his shirt, keeping you over his heart… one he’d often pull out and look at during transpo, thumbs tracing your eternal smile.

Polaroids of yours, a bit more risqué, which he would keep tucked into a journal under his pillow, for his eyes only.

John would walk around overseas with a smile on his lips after getting a letter or a call from you, brag to his teammates about his “bird back home”, never going out to bars to find one night stands like they did…

But sometime after his second deployment and joining the SAS, the puppy love that had lasted for years started to dwindle. 

Slowly but surely, you found that you were both growing distant.

You assumed you were both growing a bit ‘comfortable’, perhaps complacent… like all relationships tend to get after a while. 

By that time, John and you had already moved in together and you were no longer consistently alone for months at a time waiting for him to return from deployment. You blamed it on that. Plus, you’d been together for years by then!

But it felt different. There was distance, emotional and physical. Whenever he cuddled up to you, you felt cold and so did he. The kisses to your forehead were meaningless, the dinners at home eerily silent.

And between the distance and the inability to make proper plans, proper dates, celebrate milestones together, forgotten anniversaries, overlooked birthdays… It turned into arguments. 

And one argument turned to three, to five, to seven… hundred.

You found yourself growing bitter, angry, hateful.

It wasn’t a sudden shift or anything.

Not like you woke up one day and the one thought in your head was “I hate him”...

But you remember hating him longer than you ever loved him.

You tried breaking up. And failed. 

Some… bastardised feeling of guilt came to the forefront of both your minds at the idea of throwing away 5 6 7 8 9 10 years together, and giving up on your first love… and maybe even fear of having to start anew with someone else.

So, you simply continued going through the motions. You got engaged, big shiny rock on your finger, all big smile, but no tears came when he proposed. Your families were ecstatic, not quite able to see through the thinly veiled deceit.

For the wedding, you pulled out all the stops, stressed yourself out preparing the ceremony and reception with the women in your family (and his! His mother and sister were so happy that John was getting married!), going wedding dress shopping…

You had a beautiful ceremony, John wearing his full dress suit, army green, with the beige SAS beret. You were both 27, and together for 13 years.

Then, came the honeymoon, which was cut short. Not that it was a true honeymoon. Just three days in a coastal town in Northern France, having to be within a day's drive of Hereford lest he get called out for a sudden mission, which he was.

Not that you expected any different from him. So the distance continued growing, as did the arguments.

You hated him. He hated you.

Then came the predictable “So, when can we expect some grandkids?”. You put it off for a couple more years, blaming it on your high-priority careers, the law and the military, so similar and so different; his lack of time at home and how regrettable it’d be for you to be alone through the pregnancy; the want to be ‘more present’ for the future kids, needing to wait for things to settle down a bit more…

You’d been together for so long at that point, 15 years under your belt, starkly aware that neither of you is going anywhere. The world keeps spinning and your relationship hasn't ended. Fuck it, might as well go for it.

And now here you are.

It’s been eighteen years since you met. Aged 32, you no longer have arguments, you have throwdowns. You pull out every weapon in your arsenal. Neither of you plays nice.

Insults are traded often. Death wishes even more so. And, more often than not, they’re delivered with such a deadpan nonchalance that you’re sure people would think you both psychopaths.

“Going on a mission. ‘ll be back in a few days.”

“‘Kay, hope you die.”

“So do I.”

-

“Just had a fender bender with a stupid bloke. The car’s at the shop. Taking an uber to the base to get your car.”

“Okay. Shame you didn’t die a fiery death.”

“Don’t remind me, already cried about it.”

-

"I'm getting discharged."

"Why?"

"Shot."

"And it couldn't have killed you?"

-

“Can you get out of the damn toilet? I’m bleeding.”

“Period, accident, or just part of your satanic rituals?”

“Period.”

“Tough luck. Hope you bleed out.”

It never gets physical, never violent. John would rather die than lay a hand on you and you’d never DARE lay one on him. It’s just a lot of yelling, a lot of insulting, a lot of throwing things around, and, especially, a lot of revenge plans being executed to drive each other crazy.

Like recently. You found out John had gotten a grey-haired wig about the same length and texture as your hair, and has been snipping off a few hairs at a time, planting them around the house to blame you for leaving your hair everywhere, while simultaneously making you feel like you’re going grey. So, you put grey hair box dye in his shampoo and beard oil, to make him think he’s going grey.

Or three months ago, when you replaced all your lightbulbs with dimmer ones and lowered the brightness on all electronics, to make him think his eyesight was starting to go bad. You drove him so mad that he had voluntarily signed up for sniper assessments because he was worried he’d become a liability for the team.

Or eight months ago, when John had to return home in the middle of the day wearing a ruined uniform and just about ready to blow smoke out of his ears, having ripped holes in the uniform midway through a meeting all because 2 or so weeks prior you had painstakingly undone part of the stitching on it after an argument, and that had resulted in him baring his hairy thighs and armpits to a boardroom full of officers.

It’s bad. Very bad. You’ve had your windows and doors insulated to make sure the neighbors don’t hear your screaming matches and call the cops on the “domestic violence” happening next door. 

You probably shouldn’t have kids with this man. And yet-

He drives you insane.

And you’ve TRIED to fix it! You did. Marriage counseling, rage rooms, axe-throwing, paintball matches, yoga, meditation.… Nothing worked! In fact, it only infuriated you more because:

“You’ve got a tactical advantage, you need to play with a handicap!”

“Tough luck, sweetheart. Get good or get shot!”.

-

“You can throw harder than that.”

“Oh, I’ll show ya throwing hard, you gobshite!”

“Okay, when are you planning to start?”

-

“My back hurts-”

“Because you’re getting old.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m just telling you the truth. Face it, John, if the downward dog hurts your back, then you’re old.”

-

“Can you breathe any louder?”

“Yes, I can. Wanna see?”

“Just shut up. I can’t hear myself think.”

“Not much to hear either way, pretty hollow in there.”

“I hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual, sweetness.”

There are only three occasions when you’re not actively at each other’s throats. Other, then, of course, when John’s working, especially when he’s overseas. You can’t fight if he’s both a) not home and b) unreachable via calls or texts or e-mails.

When you need a favor from the other, something you can’t quite do, or that falls in the other’s ‘jurisdiction’ in house chores.

“The washing machine’s leaking.”

“Turn off the water main, I’ll go check in a sec.”

“Mkay.”

-

“Here. Popped a button.”

“I don’t have any more army green thread.”

“Then use brown or black or whatever.”

-

“Where are your car keys?”

“What for?”

“Going to get it washed and detailed.”

“My purse.”

-

“You’re not gonna wear that, are you?”

“Why?”

“Besides the fact that it’s wrinkly? That’s a ‘house’ shirt, not a ‘going out’ shirt. Wear this one instead.”

2. When you’re both complaining or dealing with an outside force, a 3rd party, together.

"Excuse me, hi, I'm sending this back it's not cooked the way I asked."

"Ma'am that's exactly what you-"

"Are you calling my wife a liar?"

-

“Oh, fuck no. Why the fuck is he winning the Great British Bake Off?"

"Hm? Oh- oh! Yeah, why the fuck is he winning?"

“Bloody hell, he rolled his pastry too thin and had watery pie filling-”

“Wankers. This is not fair.”

-

“John. John!”

“What?”

“Look-”

“Blood hell, he’s back early-”

“Yeah and her boytoy’s car still there. They’re definitely still going at it.”

“Oh, this is going to be fun.”

-

“Excuse me! Hey, excuse me! Pick up after your bloody dog! NO, don’t you start with me, you keep leaving your dog’s shite right by our garden, don’t you see the sign my husband’s posted up?! Pick it up or I’ll do it and then drop it in your garden.”

3. During sex.

Marching into the bedroom after breakfast, you find John combing through his hair in the bathroom mirror. The room is steamy from the hot shower he just took. 

“Take your trousers off. I’m ovulating.” You warn him as you wave your phone in the air, showing off the period tracking app.

“I literally just showered.” John replies as you’re already shrugging off your robe and pajamas.

“Well, believe or not, I don’t control my ovaries, John.” You reply. “Now take your trousers off.”

“Already on it.” He replies as he already starts taking off his shirt and sweatpants, leaving them on a pile on the floor, before his boxer briefs follow suit.

His hand palms his cock as you’re getting comfortable on the bed, tugging on it lightly as he watches your fingers do the same between your legs. 

“Can we try to enjoy it this time?” He asks you in earnest.

“Sure.” You reply simply. “Been a while since we’ve had proper sex and not…”

“Not a breeding session?” He quips as he kneels on the bed between your parted thighs. His hand replaces yours and he starts rubbing your clit for you.

“Shut it…” You quip, while your own hand wraps around his cock, stroking it slowly. John lowers himself onto you and his lips slowly brush against yours before he kisses you.

No, as it turns out… There are actually four occasions when you’re not actively at each other’s throats:

4. The Kid

In a day like any other, you’re lying in bed, reading a book. It’s a lazy Sunday morning, your big, round belly feeling particularly heavy. You’ve stolen every other pillow in the house to try and find some comfort, which you fail remarkably at.

“I think I’m going grey.” John states to no one in particular.

He’s in the en-suite bathroom, applying beard oil across his mutton chops like he tends to do, about three times a week.

“You are.” You remark in a bored, dismissive tone as you read a book in bed.

“That’s not funny. I’m not that old.”

“You’re getting up there.”

“Look who’s talking, we’re the same age.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Jonathan?”

“It means you’re there yourself, darling.”

Raising your eyes from the book in your hands, the bottom of which rests atop your pregnant belly, you cock a brow at your ‘beloved’ husband.

“And this is coming from Santa Claus?” You retort swiftly.

John peeks his head out of the bathroom door to look at you. “You think you’ve got a leg to stand on, you crone?”

Grunting under your breath, you glare at him, and he glares at you, complete silence in the bedroom. 

There’s something in that face of his, the look in his eyes, those STUPID fucking mutton chops that you’ve told him to shave and he refuses…

Grabbing your book and rolling it into a cylinder, you hurl it at him, putting as much force behind your arm as you possibly can. It misses the mark, but only because he had the presence of mind to duck. 

“You’re such a fuckin’ knobhead!” You insult him, tongue dripping with bitterness.

“Wel, not like I can be anything else, really, when I’m married to such a raging cunt.” He retorts.

“OH FUCK YOU!” You retort.

“ALREADY AM MORE THAN FUCKED, SPENDING THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH YOU.”

“OH, PLEASE, YOU’RE MORE MARRIED TO YOUR BLOODY GUN THAN YOU ARE TO ME!”

“YEAH CAUSE AT LEAST MY GUN DOESN’T DRIVE ME FUCKING MENTAL!”

“OH PISS OFF!” You shout, your face twisting with a scowl.

“You know, you really shouldn’t be stressing yourself out like this. It’s not good for your blood pressure. Or for John Junior.”

“First of all, it’s not gonna be a boy. Secondly, even if it is a boy, we’re not naming him after you. And thirdly, how about you die, then I won’t get stressed.”

“And why would I do that, when I can stay right here, perfectly alive and healthy, and watch you give birth to John Junior, and have the pleasure of rubbing a ‘I told you so’ right in your face?”

“Oh fuck you. It’s not going to happen.” You sulk and cross your arms over your chest, leaning back against your mountain of pillows.

“Someone doesn’t like the idea of having a son that takes after me, hm??” John teases as he comes up to the bed, a brow cocked.

You trail him with your eyes as he sits next to you on the bed. “Absolutely not. I wanna have a child I actually am able to love, and not one that I have to lie to.”

“A mother’s love knows no bounds, huh? What a load of crap.” John quips.

“Oh, that’s 100% true. I love this baby to bits already, but if it takes after you… I’ll probably die.”

“Good.” John remarks, causing you to roll your eyss. “Much better than if our child takes after you. Spawn of Satan, he would be.” John’s hand slides up your leg and slowly cups your swollen stomach.

“I should probably address the fact you just called our child ‘Satan’s spawn’, but I’m more concerned over the fact you keep calling the baby a ‘son’.” You murmur as you uncross your arms and watch him caress your skin.

“I feel like it’s a boy, I don’t know what to tell you.” He replies as his calloused fingers drag over the stretch marks and linea nigra on your stomach.

“What if it’s a girl?”

“What about it?”

“I’ve seen enough men online getting pissy over havin’ a daughter.” You quip and cock a brow up, looking him in the eyes.

John’s eyes lock onto yours. “Not me.” Then they return to the belly as he continues rubbing you. “Would love a little girl too.”

“Hm.” You remark and slowly, your hand rubs over the belly on the opposite side, where John’s hand isn’t. “We’ve gotta promise not to yell or argue in front of the baby.”

“Kind of hard to do that when I’m married to the Devil.” John quips, causing you to look up at him, eyes narrowed.

“You’ve gotta promise. We’ve gotta promise.” You murmur as you look at him.

For a moment, his usually grumpy face softens and he nods. “I promise.”

Nodding as well, you echo the sentiment. “I promise.”

No, wait, five:

5. When you have his back.

“General, that is not what I asked you. I would ask that you stop beating around the bush, feeding me, the jury, and the people watching at home, fabricated information and embellished words in a sorry attempt to save your credibility. Stick to the questions being asked and stop wasting our times.” You warned the man as you paced the space in front of the stand.

“Me and everyone else in this room are looking for nothing but the truth, or must I remind you that you are under oath and also live on television?” You ask outloud as you turn to look at him.

“No, counselor.” The General, a heavy-set, older, mustachioed man replies, through gritted teeth, his face showing a polite expression while the man himself was seething on the inside.

“Very well, then, I’ll repeat the question. Were you or were you not aware of the aforementioned, unsactioned operations being conducted in the Al-Mazarah and Urzikstan border, involving CIA and MI6 operatives?” You asked, eyes glaring into the man’s eyes as you leaned into the stand near him.

“Well, as with most operations...”

“A yes or no is enough, General.” You told him sternly.

“Yes.” The man grits out.

“And did you, or did you not, give permission for these CIA and MI6 operatives, working under the guise of NATO, and I quote, from the transcript: “Authority to use any means necessary” on the enemy forces?” You confronted him.

“Well-”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“And did you do that while being aware that the teams involved would interpret such command as permission to execute an operation in which they’d use ‘extreme physical persuasion’ or, in other words, torture to achieve their goals?”

“I-”

“Did you or did you not, General?”

“Yes, but-”

“And did you, or did you not, not only demand the censoring of the clear and transparent reports received in the aftermath of that operation but also sign off on them yourself, to circumvent the proper channels of evaluation, which would force an internal audit to be conducted?”

“Yes-”

“So, in short, you just confirmed that you authorized your troops to, essentially, wipe their asses with the Geneva convention and comit war crimes on the POWs under their care?”

“Counselor-” One of the judges called out.

“Withdrawn. No further questions, Mr. Chairman.” You told the Chairman and the jury panel that sat above you, as you swiftly turned around and marched up to your table, high heels clacking on the polished floors of the court room.

Your eyes locked onto John’s as he sat in the back of the room, wearing his full regalia, his eyes locked onto yours with a strange shine to them… Almost like he’s proud of you.

As soon as you sit on the chair and the Chairman once again takes over, addressing the room, the General, calling other witnesses, your phone’s screen lights up on the chair next to you.

Picking it up quietly, you spot a message of John’s:

John: that’s my girl. knew you could do it. you: you owe me big time. John: i do. saved my arse there. you: of course. it’s what I’m here for.  John: almost making it sound like you love me. you: no but I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. you: no way in hell you’re leaving me alone with 3 children. John: i see. selfish woman. you: shut up.  you: and try not torturing POWs next time. John: yes, ma’am.

Five occasions seem to be enough to keep a 23-year marriage afloat.

a/n: Big thanks to my beloved @crashtestbunny for helping draft/plot all these interactiions and just the general toxicity! And also @mothymunson your beloved Toxic!Price is here!

[ O, Captain! Masterlist ] || [ My Masterlist ]

[everything-changed-me]

I dont think anything related to politics and current state of the world has ever enraged and disgusted me more than seeing pro-palestine/marxists/communists/leftist supporters be this extremely hypocritical and evil when it comes to Ukraine. Not only that entire breakout of russian invasion of Ukraine was followed by "what about Palestine/Syria/Afghanistan/Iraq" comments on every video/photo of a destroyed Ukrainian home but also even after more than 2 years of russian invasion and what experts call most brutal war since WW2, this same group of people is constantly minimizing and relativizing tragedy and injustice to Ukraine by lowering number of civilian casualities, holding dearly onto chunks of russian propaganda that have already been debunked countless times, taking announcements of Ukrainian officials out of context or simply excusing oppression of Ukrainians by something unrelated (like supposed support of Ukraine for Israel???). All that while screaming about "double standards" or "Western hypocrisy". Why are Ukrainians who support Israel called out more frequently and harshly than Palestinians who support Russia? What makes Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Syria etc more deserving of sympathy and support than Ukraine? Why are Azovstal defenders called nazis while Hamas is praised as freedom fighters? Why is russian oppression of Ukrainians and erasion of Ukrainian identity that lasted for centuries overlooked? I seriously dont understand psychology behind such reasoning.

[useless-catalanfacts]

I remember exactly what my thoughts were when I first learned what had happened to my great-grandfathers. I used to talk to one of them —the survivor, who lived in Venezuela— on the phone when I was a kid, so I had always known he had had to "leave after the war" (Spanish Civil War), in a very vague sense. When I was in primary school, another class of the last year was studying the Second World War and my mother volunteered to share the letters we still keep that my (other) great-grandfather had sent from the refugee camp and from the front. So I guess it's just normal that at that point they also shared the "secret" with me. Like hundreds of thousands more, and like at least one person in most families in Catalonia, they fought during the war but feared what came after even more than the suffering of war itself. When the fascists won the war in 1939, they crossed the Pyrenee mountains by foot to cross the border with France (they cross into Northern Catalonia, the little bit of Catalonia that was annexed by France centuries ago) and escape the persecution that was mass-murdering antifascists. But when they crossed the border with France, the French authorities locked them in the refugee camps on the beach (my great-grandfathers were in Argelers beach camp), where they had barely any food or drink, no houses besides little tents they made themselves out of reels they could find on the beach, and very little clothes for the winter. Many people died of cold and hunger, particularly the children. When children were born, the mothers buried them under the sand because it was the only way they could think to keep them a bit warm. The humid sand of the beach.

And as I was hearing all of this, my only thought was: how did people let this happen? Why did the French government lock them to make them suffer like this? Why did the guards steal from them and mistreat them the way they did? Why did the people who lived near not give them food or jackets?

And to be fair, many people helped in some way. That's why the Swiss nurse Elizabeth Eidenbenz is a national hero for us Catalans. One of my great-grandfathers managed to escape the camp by being given work by a local man. However, a new war started in Europe (WW2) and the Nazis seemed to be coming near, and Franco (the fascist dictator of Spain) had given orders to the Nazis that any person who had gone on exile from Spain was stateless and could be killed (stateless: the blue triangle in concentration camp prisoners' clothes). My great-grandfather found a way to get to a ship to Venezuela and Mexico —thanks to the open borders of these two countries, thousands of people were saved and started a new life in safety. My other great-grandfather, however, used the only other way to escape the camps: when WW2 came, he enlisted in the foreign legion of the French army to continue the work of fighting fascism. His legion was eventually captured, his friend he had enlisted with was taken to a castle where the Nazis used him for experimenting, and my great-grandfather was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp and later killed in a gas chamber in Gusen camp at the very end of the war. And still, growing up I always heard that we are a lucky family, because at least we know what happened to him. Hundreds of thousands of people are still missing, buried in mass graves. The state of Spain (including Catalonia) is the 2nd country in the world with the highest amount of unfound people, after Cambodia, because of all the massacres of the fascists and the bodies under roadside ditches.

And for all these years I have always had in my mind: how could people do that? And how could people see it and allow it?

Now, we are all like the people of France with a choice of helping or letting it happen. The internet connects the world and we are all witnessing how Israel is committing genocide on the Palestinian people. After having turned Gaza in an open-air concentration camp for decades, now they have decided to completely wipe out its people, homes, cultural heritage, schools, hospitals, universities, shops, streets, sewage system— everything. And just like the people back then, we have the opportunity to help Palestinian people survive.

We cannot save our relatives, but we can do what we wished someone had done for them. If you would have wanted help for your family, if you would have helped mine, please if you can make a donation for Palestinian people.

Here's a list of Palestinian people who are raising funds to escape. Israel has made it impossible for Palestinians to leave the heavily-bombed Gaza strip except for the Rafah crossing (to Egypt); and then Israel went and destroyed the Rafah crossing, too. But the Rafah crossing opens every so often and the people with an Egyptian travel agency permission can cross. To get the permission, they must pay 5000$ each person over 16 years old and 2500$ each child under 16, and this doesn't cover transport nor living expenses. You can collaborate to saving a family by donating to their GoFundMe campaigns. Every donation can make a difference. Click each person's name to go to their GFM page, where you'll find more details of their story.

Yahya Ahmad: 20-year-old Pharmacy student from Gaza wants to evacuate his family including his sick father and young brother, after their house was destroyed and they lost everything. (Verification link) @yahyaahmed5

Mahmoud Khalaf: a PhD student from Gaza in Ireland asks our help to raise funds to get his family out of Gaza. (Verification link: number 151) @mahmoudkhalafff

Muhammad Shehab: Israeli bombs destroyed their home and killed relatives and friends, his family has already been displaced 9 times. They want to escape Gaza and apply to become asylum seekers anywhere possible. (Verification link) @mohammedshehab2

Mahmoud AlBalawi: this family needs help to evacuate for the safety of all and particularly the children who suffer of malnutrition. (Verification link) @elbalawi

Palestine Jad Al-Haq: Palestine gave birth during the war but there aren't medicines nor needed materials to raise a healthy child, her mother is also ill and everyone risks illness as a result of the situation created by Israel (destroying the sewage system, not allowing food and medicine, bombing the hospitals, etc). The whole family wants to escape. (Verification link) @falestine-yousef

Fadi Ayyad: 18-year-old whose family's home has been destroyed, he's taking care of his family including younger relatives. They are very close to reaching their goal!! (Verification link) @aymanayyad82

Abdelrahman: 22-year-old Abdelrahman and his mother. They lost their home and Abdelrahman lost his school where he was studying. They are also quite close to reaching their goal. (Verification link) @anqar

Aziz Zaqout: Heba is a pregnant mother of five, faced a health crisis that took her to seek treatment outside Gaza right before the war started. She was separated from her 1-year-old baby and the rest of her children, leaving them in the care of their father, your donation can help them reunite and save the children and father. (Verification link) @azizzaqout

Abd Alhadi Aburass: the war destroyed his home and advocacy bureau, needs money to save his family and provide healthcare for his children. (Verification link) @abdalhadiaburas

Aya Alanqar: for Aya, her husband and their three children (2, 5 and 7 years old), displaced 13 times after their home was destroyed. (Verification link) @ayaanqarsblog

The children Kareem and Carmen: Yousef Hussein is raising money for his nephews Kareem and Carmen after their family of 8, including their mother, were killed when their house was bombed. They are displaced in a refugee camp with other relatives, they want to evacuate and join their uncle Yousef in the USA. (Verification link) @adham-89

Samer Aburass: Samer, his wife and their 3 children lost their home and businesses, and their children (particularly the youngest one, 1 and a half year old) suffer malnutrition. They want to evacuate for a safe future. (Verification link: number 196) @samerpal

Also consider donating to the Municipality of Gaza's fundraiser to fix the water and sewage system: Gaza Water Project.

These are only a few people, who had contacted me on this blog or on my main blog (with less followers, so it's better to post here), but there are many more. You can also check this spreadsheet of verified fundraisers like this one, follow the Palestinian blogger @90-ghost who verifies fundraisers, or use the site gazafunds.com (every visit shows a different verified fundraiser).

Visca els pobles i visca Palestina lliure 🇵🇸🕊️

[ohnoitsz1m]

HEY. hey. hlvrai airplane furries. okay?

I do plan to make more. Dw. I already know what Tommy is. And I have a pretty good idea for Coomer as well. Bubby,,, I'm conflicted. I only got around to these two because I started at like midnight and it's currently 3 am again

More explanation and rambling below

For those out of the loop Airplane Dragons are an original furry species made by scpkid in like 2015? Idk. They've been around for a while and I really like them.

I've only gotten more interested in airplane dragons in the last 4 years because I'm around planes and jets literally every day,, and while it's not anywhere near MY field of study, being around them every day, you tend to pick up a decent bit of knowledge about them, at least enough to later turn your favorite characters into planes and jets for the hell of it.

For the other characters, if I ever get around to them:

Tommy would be one of those Concorde planes.

Why? Because I think this looks absolutely ridiculous, but the function of the drooped nose is played entirely seriously in a lot of cases and it just felt very Tommy to me. I DID consider making Bubby a Concorde instead but this feels too silly for him. He would never let himself be a Concorde plane...

Coomer, I'm thinking something ww2 era. Why? Old. Military background.

I don't really have any solid ideas for Bubby, maybe it'll come to me later.

[galaxygolfergirl]

What we know about Goncharov’s mysterious director, Matteo JWHJ 0715 and his tragic, yet fascinating life.

He was born as Matteo Di Sciocchezze to a poor catholic farming family on November 5th, 1938, in Torre del Greco, just outside of Naples, during the fascist Mussolini regime.

It is rumored that the Sciocchezzes were heavily indebted to the Russian-Italian Chmerkovskiy crime family, after they bought a surplus of inventory from Matteo’s father’s cheese-making business when they weren’t able to sell off the excess supply.

His older brother Macareo was killed by German Nazis during WW2, causing him to have an intense hatred of Nazism and fascism, which would later be themes in his work.

Self-identified as bisexual in his teens but was shunned by his family. He would later join Fuori!, or “Out!”, the first homosexual organization in Italy, in 1972, soon after its founding after being attracted to its initial Marxist ideals. It was one of the first associations of the Italian homosexual liberation movement.

Matteo was briefly married to actress Rita Lozionne and had one son with her, Bruno Lozionne, in 1970, but the separated soon after she gave birth.

Sophia Loren mentioned in a 1984 Variety article that she had been “madly in love with Matteo” at one point during their relationship in the early 1960s but had to end their relationship because of the “incident in Prague.” She would not go into further detail.

Changed his last name to his license plate number, rejecting his homophobic family and becoming disillusioned with the idea of nationalistic self-identity.

Knew John Waters and helped fund some of his earlier films.

Aside from Goncharov, the only other surviving work in his filmography, most which was tragically lost in a studio fire in Milan in 1987, were the underground early 60s short films “Tales of the Dog,” a 4 part series, and his 90 minute 1968 film “Green Candles.” These works are incomplete and partially damaged due to the fire.

Matteo had been in a gay love affair with the married producer Domenico Procacci (pictured below from a still one of Matteo’s “Tales of the Dog” films) during the production of Goncharov. Procacci admitted to this years later in 1998, and that they had been planning to leave for San Francisco before his untimely death.

Matteo died tragically in 1974, however, after falling backwards out of a window, supposedly while playing the mandolin (his favorite past time), as sources claimed.

His son Bruno Lozionne emigrated with his mother in 1976 to the United States, and is currently living in Carbondale, IL, working as the senior office manager of Hardison Supply Co.

If anyone can send in more information on Matteo please feel free to add to this post.

[ifindus]

since you seem to know a lot of history, I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about norway and his role during ww2, I feel like not a lot of people talk about his importance as an ally.

Let's pretend this wasn't sent back in November! Of course I can!!And "a little" turned into a decent amount 😳

Norway declared itself neutral when the war started in 1939, but became occupied by Germany in April 1940. Throughout the war Norway played an important role helping the allies win. Note that there is also a lot to be said about Norwegian collaboration with the occupiers during these years as well, but that is not the topic of this post.

During the war Norway had both a military and a civil resistance movement. The civil movement was directed towards NS (Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian nazi party and the only party allowed during these years) attempts at converting people to nazism, while the military resistance were building an underground army who were prepared to step in for the liberation and who also organized sabotages during the last year.

Norway’s government went into exile in London, and was in large responsible for Norway’s war effort and resistance. They took control of the Norwegian merchant ships and put it at the allies disposal, probably Norway’s most important asset and contribution to the war effort. The Norwegian marine and air-force also partook in operations along the Allies, and a Norwegian brigade was organized in Scotland, who were to partake in the final liberation of Norway.

The exiled government had an extensive running contact with the growing resistance back home in Norway, and could gradually provide the resistance with supplies and other support. Soldiers from the Scottish base were sent on missions to aid the resistance in Norway and conduct sabotages.

There as also a base for Norwegian resistance established in Stockholm, who were eventually allowed by the Swedish government to form a military force of 14 500 people under disguise of being police. About 50 000 Norwegians fled to Sweden during the war, and many Norwegians in the border areas aided them as guides over the mountains through difficult and secret passages – they also smuggled goods and supplies through the same routes.

The civil resistance was not exclusively organized, but included everyone who was not a nazi and could be as simple as civil disobedience. Teachers, parents, and priests opposed the effort to convert the youth to nazism by the NS through forced nazi curriculums in schools and obligatory youth service. Other examples of civil resistance were Norwegian workers sabotaging or not even doing the bare minimum at the jobs in factories for the Germans, and the publishing of illegal news-papers which were spread by people handing them to the next person. The most famous illegal news-paper was London-Nytt (London News), and were just Norwegian translations of BBC broadcasts transcribed directly from illegal radios.

The military resistance was known as MILORG, and this secret group had its peak in the last year of the war. This was when they began receiving guns, military equipment and professionals. During the last year they carried out assassinations and sabotages to a much more effective and extensive degree. MILORG was taking orders from the Norwegian military in London and coordinating with them, passing vital information back and forth.

When the Second World War began, Norway was the world’s fourth largest shipping nation, after Great Britain, USA, and Japan, with the Norwegian fleet being the most modern. When Norway was occupied and the Germans demanded Norwegian ships return to Norwegian ports, all of the around 1 000 ships set sail for Allied ports. The Norwegian government in exile commanded all Norwegian ships sail for securing supplies for Norway and the Allies. The ships supplied Great Britain with invaluable wares such as food and oil, and kept up the transatlantic trade during the war. The Norwegian sailors were also present at evacuations and invasions of occupied France and fascist Italy, North-Africa, and Normandy in 1944. The Norwegian ships were under constant attack from the German fleet and many sailors lost their lives transporting for the Allies, most of them working continuously for the five years Norway was at war. Almost half of Norway’s fallen during the war were sailors killed at sea.

[shuttershocky]

I hope my lola's older sister (Great Aunt) can come home from the US soon. At the age of 98 she's one of the last living survivors of Imperial Japan's invasion of Manila, I'm only here now because she scooped up my grandmother and her other siblings and fled Manila on foot. Still sharp enough to drive too (though her driver's license in the US got confiscated when the cops saw how old she was)

I really want to interview her about her life during WW2 and the years after, if she's willing. She's a living window into history and we have GOT to talk about something else when she visits other than when I'm going to get married and start the next generation

[mitigatedchaos]

The Floating Causation of Vulgar Anti-Racism

Post for August 12, 2024 ~7,400 words, 36 minutes

-★-

The late 20th century and the early 21st century were an excellent time for 'catch-up' development in under-developed countries. For example, the GDP per capita of the People's Republic of China rose from $312 in 1980, to $12,720 in 2022, more than a 40x increase. This is despite the People's Republic being nominally communist, 92% Han Chinese, and one of the largest potential geopolitical rivals to the United States. This is not a one-off – exports from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United States rose from $50 million in 1994 to $114 billion in 2023.

While the ideologically liberal government of the United States did invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and placed strict limits on Iran, in practical terms, the United States was willing to direct hundreds of billions of dollars of demand, for everything from disposable gloves to rice cookers, to countries that were neither majority white nor, officially, capitalist, which allowed these countries to build up their industrial base.

Inside the United States, as of the early 2020s, Americans of Indian descent, Americans of Asian descent, and a number of other non-white groups are outperforming the median household income of white Americans. It's not uncommon to see an Indian-American as the CEO of a major US corporation, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, or IBM's Arvind Krishna. And while Americans of Nigerian descent aren't earning quite as much money as Sundar Pichai, they are doing better than the U.S. national average. [1]

The American economy is willing to award non-white Americans and non-white immigrants with average pay higher than that the average pay for white Americans, and American society is willing to award members of these same groups with highly prestigious positions – Google is one of the most famous American companies, and to be its CEO is highly prestigious indeed.

Why is it that vulgar anti-racists aren't content to leave well enough alone on negative racial messaging, and take advantage of this opportunity to focus on personal development, ingroup development, and national development? Why is it that they have a strange totalitarian bent, such as Ibram Kendi proposing to give veto power over all government policy to a body of unappointed race experts, which would de facto end democracy?

Last month, @max1461 wrote a post, attempting to find a balanced compromise between the social justice movement and its critics in the discourses on racism over the past 10 years. Perhaps this was intended to close the books and allow the participants to move to a saner footing going forward. Subsequently, Max flagged the post as unrebloggable in order to prevent it from being beat up like a piñata. Near the end of the initial chain, Max wrote:

I can’t stress enough that, for all the excesses of DEI seminars and modern anti-racist academia and whatnot, for however unhelpful or even regressive these things may often be, what they exist in response to is fundamentally a horror of an entirely different and incomparable scale; something unspeakably evil and destructive. And, after 200 years of such an evil world order, which only really began to melt in 1945, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe that all the wounds are now healed.

It would seem that for the most part, the wounds that Japan suffered from America in World War II have already healed. The country already went through reindustrialization, followed by a boom period (which startled Westerners), and then a subsequent crash and the 'lost decade' of the 1990s. The Japanese have a favorable view of the United States, as perhaps they should – Japan has prospered in the Post-WW2 international order, in which they can simply purchase whatever materials they need on global markets with no need to invade or occupy anyone.

Yet for others, the past lingers on.

Ibram Kendi is one of the most famous contemporary self-identified anti-racists, a New York Times bestselling author (his most famous book was titled "How to Be an Anti-Racist") who was not only platformed by major corporations such as Microsoft (in 2020, an advertisement on the login screen of Windows 10 computers linked to a search for "anti-racism books," with his at the top), but even received funding for his own anti-racism center (now under attack for its ineffectiveness).

At one time, Ibram Kendi thought that white people were aliens. A roommate talked him out of it, asking how it was that white people could have children with everyone else if that were the case. To his credit, Kendi did change his mind.

...but how could anyone have come up with Kendi's conclusion in the first place?

In school in the United States, children are taught that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. It is true that Spanish military forces brought about the downfall of the Aztec Empire, but often people forget the details of what they learned in school, and often what they learn in school is itself a simplified story, designed to be told to children. Encyclopedia Britannica's summary of the Battle of Tenochtitlan largely agrees with the gist of Wikipedia's more detailed article on the Fall of Tenochtitlan, which is littered with instances of "[citation needed]."

Wikipedia, however, provides more numbers. In particular, Wikipedia's version provides one of the Internet's favorite parts of wiki battle articles, a listing of the balance of opposed forces (with citations):

There is a racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the brave Spanish explorers overcame the savage, human-sacrificing hordes of the Aztecs. There is an inverted, anti-racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the powerful, cruel Spanish showed up to oppress the weak, innocent Aztecs.

And then there is a third narrative - a narrative that politics happened. A number of tributary states had grievances with the Aztecs, and the small number of Spanish probably didn't seem like enough to conquer the whole territory from the perspective of the tributaries, but did seem powerful enough to rally around to fight the Aztecs and win.

Nobody comes out looking good in this third narrative. The Spanish brought about a brutal war with tens of thousands of casualties, and devastating disease followed their arrival. The Aztecs and tributaries combined failed to overcome a foreign invasion due to (relative to the foreigners being from another continent) local infighting. The Aztecs were awful enough that a number of tributaries sided with an army of foreigners against them.

Now, suppose that we delete the 200,000 native allies from the balance of forces above, but still record a victory for the Spanish. The effect of the native allies remains, but the cause of that effect disappears. This creates an effect without a cause – unattributed causation, which is disconnected from what came before, or what we might call, "floating causation."

Some might call overcoming a force of 80,000 with only 1,000 or so men a miracle. For those not so inclined, the 'floating' causation gets attributed to the Spanish soldiers – their equipment, their valor, their tactics, and their discipline. Each of a thousand Spanish infantrymen is now somehow worth 200 native warriors.

In this cartoon version of history, the Spanish are an unstoppable psychic warrior race. Their steadfast will in the face of danger and their unit cohesion are quite nearly inhuman, and their technological advantage is overwhelming. The natives have not merely made a political miscalculation similar to others of the pre-modern era, such as the decisions of states facing Genghis Khan, but are buffoons to the slaughter, incapable of putting up any real defense.

In this cartoon, the Spanish can go anywhere. They can do anything. And because of this, they are the only people with agency in the whole world.

They sound... like aliens.

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

All three of the above counter-examples are from Asia, which is usually conspicuously absent from self-identified anti-racist thinking, but none of them are obscure.

-★-

It is my belief that floating causation is a source of distortions across the ideological spectrum.

Ideology is not independent from human beings. Manifestos, one might say, do not print themselves. From the other direction, it is not a piece of paper which murders somebody – it is a human being who pulls the trigger.

There is ideology, which is a system of related rules and beliefs, and there are adherents who adopt ideology, spread beliefs, and put ideological rules into practice.

An ideology can contain taboos which prohibit noticing or explaining the true cause of some outcome, separating the cause from its effect. Practitioners can then attribute that effect to a preferred ideological construct instead, making it seem much more powerful, and often dangerous, than it really is.

The Elephants

Imagine (as this example is entirely made-up) that there is some village in which elephants are considered sacred, but the elephants in the area have a habit of trampling crops in the night. To avoid loss of face, the damage to crops is attributed to "bandits" by an initial group of elders. The young children who do not know better are then taught this explanation. Later, after the death of the elders, the initial truth is lost. Anyone claiming to have seen elephants trampling the fields is denounced as choosing the vile bandits over the virtuous elephants. An outsider who did not realize what was happening might be quite impressed to hear that a bandit in the region ruined a dozen fields in a single night, and assume that the bandit has tremendous physical stamina.

But floating causation is not necessarily the result of an ideological taboo. Someone may be ignorant about the cause of an effect, unable to understand the process by which an effect came about, have powerful emotions about the topic which they are unwilling to confront or may not even be aware of, or may simply have poor judgment. An adherent may be drawn to an ideology for these reasons.

Continuing with our example, a fresh-off-the-boat colonial administrator arriving at the village might be unaware that elephants exist, or trample crops, and conclude that there were ongoing feuds driven by animosity among the villagers, with bandits as the cover-story. Alternatively, the new colonial administrator might love the elephants and hate the villagers, and be unwilling to consider the possibility that the elephants are trampling the crops, including cooking up rather elaborate rationalizations.

Ideology

Issues with not understanding a process are more likely to come up with things like economics – occasionally a worker will post a video to social media complaining that he is not paid the full value of the items he sells or creates, ignoring all the money that went into the construction of the facility, the work from other workers putting together the input materials, and so on.

Liberals in the late 00s and early 2010s had an interest in memetics, which concerns the replication and spread of ideas. (This field is where the term "Internet meme" comes from.) Then, as now, they had a tendency to treat people as too similar to each other, and some of them leaned towards the idea that any person could hold any ideology. Ideologies do (in my judgment) influence behavior – there are far fewer monarchists around these days, and far fewer monarchs with real power, for example – but how a set of beliefs is expressed depend on the emotions, motives, and temperament of the person who holds those beliefs.

So do people choose ideologies, or do ideologies choose people?

One way to view this matter is as a cycle. Someone's social environment is partly a matter of choice, and partly a matter of circumstance. The ideologies that show up in someone's environment are generally going to be ones that spread (as ideologies that don't attract new adherents will die out), but which ideology someone actually chooses and how they practice it will be influenced by what type of person they are.

Another way to view this matter is that emotions, motives, temperament, and beliefs are all things that make certain actions or thoughts either easier (and cheaper) or more difficult (and more expensive). A drug addict who believes in hard work and free market capitalism, but finds himself stealing to feed his habit, may find that the influence of his beliefs is not enough to overcome his addiction. (He is likely to feel miserable.) However, when a religious person is choosing what time of day, or day of the week, to worship, the explicit belief of their religion is likely to have a great deal of influence.

Yet another way to view this matter is to treat things like social relations, ideology, and temperament as interacting layers, and then propose that politics spans multiple layers.

Human Talent

I don't believe that all human beings are equally talented, and I don't believe that they all have identical temperaments. Therefore, one of my beliefs is what might be called the "human capital theory of movements." Ideologies consist of networks of related beliefs which can be used to interpret the world, to guide behavior, or to create arguments. But ideologies do not create beliefs or arguments themselves. Humans do.

When a movement has a lot of talented, virtuous people working for it, these people can create new arguments in order to win debates, and change parts of the ideology, the network of beliefs, to adapt the network to changes in conditions. Without talented people, the ideology of a movement will drift farther from environmental conditions, causing its responses to become more misaligned with conditions on the ground.

Talented people are also needed for the implementation of an ideology. An ideological book is just an inert text. No matter how complex it may be, it is fundamentally limited in its complexity. Applying that text in the environment, bridging the gap between what the text says and what that means in the reality of a specific situation, requires both intelligence and good judgment. Not every person is equally talented, and not every person is equally informed. If someone more talented and with better judgment is around, they can read the situation and come up with some simpler rules or orders for others to follow.

The less talented the adherents of a movement are, the lower the ability of the movement to adapt to conditions over both the short-term and the long-term.

A shift in the distribution of talent can precede other forms of political change. Ideologues may smile as the most disagreeable members are driven out of their movement, but at the same time, the lack of criticism will reduce the movement's ability to respond to change.

There are trade-offs. The use of floating causation may make an ideology less aligned with reality, but it may also be useful for the movement to stoke the emotions of their followers in order to drive action. (This emotional motivation bit is why every election in the United States is "the most important in your lifetime.")

-★-

Beliefs are not intelligence. Nonetheless, a person with a belief may act as though they are smarter (or even wiser) than they actually are. This is just the nature of knowledge (as cached intelligence, wisdom, and observation).

I developed the talent theory in the prior section by observing opposition to racism in the United States prior to 2014. In the United States between 2000 and 2014, there was substantial support for individualist "colorblindness," while at the same time, there was immense social pressure against overt white racial organizing.

Racial organizing takes time and effort. Because white Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, they could simply go out into the market and earn what their work was worth. For talented white Americans, the gains from white racial organizing would be marginal, so the penalties could easily overcome those gains. The less talented would have the most to gain due to the ability to reduce the amount of economic competition they would be up against, but they were also less able to organize. [2]

There was somewhere famous for white racial organizing in the US during this era: prisons.

Racial prison gangs have been particularly noted in the California prison system. Prison gangs offer inmates a credible threat of retaliation if the inmate is harmed, so every inmate has an incentive to join one, and the bigger the gang the better that threat of retaliation is, so every gang has an incentive to recruit. If you're a gang member and a new guy comes in and starts causing trouble, and you don't want to escalate (and thus risk extra charges for your guys or reduced privileges), what are you to do? You would prefer to negotiate with someone that has leverage on him. Race is very visible, even if inmates move around between prisons, so if all inmates get sorted into gangs by race, then someone is responsible for this guy, and by talking to the right people, you can make sure he knows it. (If the troublemaker still doesn't respond, and his own gang cut him loose, then you can punish him without fear of retaliation from other inmates.)

Different incentives produce different results.

Four Options

Glenn Loury is a black man, and an economist at Brown University. He views himself as an American and therefore an inheritor of human rights philosophy of the American founders and their English forebears. He has his own show on YouTube in which he regularly discusses matters with John McWhorter, another black man, who is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. (John strikes me as more liberal, and I heard that he was frightened of Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many white American culturally liberal Democrats.) Both of these men are quite smart, and if you watch the show, you'll see them easily consider arguments from various perspectives and toss hypotheticals back and forth.

Neither of these men are vulgar anti-racists.

Roland Fryer is a black man, and is an economist at Harvard (although he was suspended for 2 years) who I have discussed previously. He thinks like an economist, and has conducted studies such as paying children to read books. In previous appearances, it seemed that he believes that education gaps can be closed through extremely rigorous selection of teachers and other methods.

Mr. Fryer does not appear to be a vulgar anti-racist.

These men are all relatively prominent voices. If you go looking for the sort of content they produce, they aren't that hard to find. And they're all smart. They might have disagreements with each other and with some of my readers, but smart people can disagree.

However, during the 2014-2022 era, when it was decided to push a black academic to prominence, political forces settled on Ibram Kendi instead. There must have been dozens of other candidates.

When I think about why that happened, I suspect that the answer is that while the first three men care about the interests of black Americans, all three of them are willing to say, "No." Although I doubt they would phrase it in exactly these terms, I suspect that all three understand human rights as rooted in high-order consequences, limits on information, and human bias.

If you proposed to John McWhorter that we should give veto power to a committee of unelected race experts, he would immediately recognize the problem with just that.

Why Vulgar Anti-Racism?

With all of that said, I believe we can think about vulgar anti-racism by means of comparison.

a. Economics

Loury and Fryer are both economists. They know about gains from trade, prices as a distributed form of economic planning, property rights as enabling investment, specialization of labor, economies of scale, and dozens of other things. They understand where wealth comes from.

The typical vulgar anti-racist that you will encounter on an Internet discussion board has little knowledge of economics, and tends to think of total production as fixed. From their perspective, if someone has more resources than another person, it has nothing to do with production, and is purely the result of hoarding.

The typical vulgar anti-racist also doesn't think in terms of entropy, the tendency of things to break down over time. They tend not to discount temporally-distant advantages. (If a well was built 400 years ago, they treat that advantage as retained today.) They tend to think of capital as fixed and not as something that is constantly being rebuilt and adjusted. They don't understand that the ability to create new capital is generally more important than the initial capital in the long-run.

Thinking about production is probably why we see Fryer focused on educational gains. His theory is likely that if the children have a good base of education, they'll be able to produce more, avoid losses, overcome entropy, and net accumulate wealth. If they don't have a good base of education, then they'll be less productive, and entropy will eat a higher percentage of their earnings, leading to reduced wealth.

If someone doesn't know economics, then the wealth of developed countries is "unexplained," and so are the motives of many people within developed countries.

b. History

I don't know about Fryer specifically, but Loury and McWhorter seem to have a good grasp of history.

A solid understanding of history leads to seeing actions as emerging from their historical contexts. This places a limit on the range of expected behavior.

For example, for most of history up until about the 1900s, the child mortality rate was about 50%. That example is relevant for feminism, as under such brutal conditions, we would expect any society that didn't push for women to have at least 4 children to die out. Gender-based oppression didn't occur for no reason, or because of pure male greed, but was influenced by material circumstances.

If we run this understanding backwards, it follows that 1700s or earlier gender norms would be unlikely to return without 1700s or earlier child mortality rates.

Likewise, some basic historical knowledge would reveal that wars of conquest have happened pretty much everywhere, so it's quite unlikely that Europeans are uniquely conquerors. You end up having to declare everything from feuding Chinese kingdoms, to the Māori, to chimpanzees, be "European" in order to fit the model.

The typical vulgar anti-racist's position is, implicitly, "Everyone lived together in peace and harmony, until one day, for no reason at all, the Europeans became possessed by the spirit of greed, and attacked."

If someone somehow doesn't know that war existed outside of Europe prior to 1492, then the wars of colonialism are "unexplained," and so are the motives of the people who fought them.

When vulgar anti-racists do research history, they generally focus on collecting racial grievances in order to build up a case that the group they favor are poor, oppressed, not responsible for anything bad their group has ever done, and are owed indefinite benefits for incalculable harms. They don't proceed from the idea of, "How does this work?" They don't, say, look at the tremendous economic success of South Korea, and ask, "Based on how South Korea obtained their wealth, how can our group achieve such riches?" (They don't even look at South Korea's birthrate and ask how they can avoid such a fate!)

Even before World War 2, Japan did look afar to ask how they could become rich. That kind of mentality is part of how they were able to become a developed country (who could threaten other people with tanks) in the first place.

Looking to Asia is useful for people making comparisons to figure out how things work, but is not useful for collecting racial grievances in order to build up racial claims to make demands. That's why vulgar anti-racists often don't know basic facts about Asian history, like that state testing to determine government positions was practiced in ancient China. [3]

c. Racial Attachment

Even during the individualist colorblindness of 2000-2014, there were still white Americans with some talent engaged in racial organizing. In general, these were people to whom race was very important, and thus who were out-of-step with the mainstream of white America.

It's my opinion that there is a natural range of tribalism among human beings. Sometimes, the rival tribe on the other side of the mountain just want to trade. Other times, they really are out to kill you. The trait doesn't disappear, because wars still happen, and even if they didn't happen, someone could just reinvent war and start it all back up again.

In my view, this tribalism trait isn't attached to race specifically. It can attach to religion. It can attach to sex. Some of the rhetoric from radical feminists sounds the same as rhetoric from hardcore ethnic nationalists – or at least it would, if we treated men as an ethnicity. In our modern environment in which race is highly legible due to intercontinental travel, for a lot of people, it gets attached to race.

Rather than assigning people a single number on a scale from "moral" to "immoral," it's probably better to think of people as having virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.

Some level of racial attachment itself is not inherently evil. Based on his research topics, for example, Roland Fryer seems interested in bringing about the success of people with a similar background to himself. His virtue (his interest in truth) and his strength (his intelligence) convert that attachment into something that's beneficial to society.

High levels of racial attachment fly much closer to the wire. A highly racially attached individual might do good work in other domains, but there's a risk that they'll end up routing too much of their sense of self-worth through their race, and become obsessed with guarding their race's self-perceived reputation. For such a person, any information deemed unflattering to the group may be interpreted as an attack on himself (or herself).

The Mayo Clinic (a network of hospitals in the United States) describes narcissism as:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.

A number of users on Twitter (now known as X.com) began using the term "ethnic narcissism" to describe this sort of disordered thinking when done on behalf of a racial or ethnic group rather than oneself specifically.

2019 and 2020 were banner years for platforming this sort of behavior, with the nation's leading newspaper arguing, in its own words, that we should make the suffering of a particular racial group the core narrative of American history, that everyone should define their identities around:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Obsession with self-perceived ethnic reputation is part of what leads to the "rebalancing the cartoon" behavior I discussed earlier:

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

How does someone end up so ignorant that they don't know that Genghis Khan existed? By being the kind of person that doesn't want to know that Genghis Khan existed. They don't look it up. If you tell them, they either forget or they take a conflict theorist approach and think that it's some sort of trick.

Unfortunately, while a fairly accurate description of the behavior at issue, the term "ethnic narcissism" can also be used as an attack by ethnic narcissists themselves, as well as people engaged in ethnic conflict. This makes it of limited utility in practice.

The Mysterious Anglo

Option #1: In general, the right wing would consider the vulgar anti-racists to be liars working to selfishly advance their own personal interests and those of their preferred groups. Left-wingers would tend to take a negative view of this, as they believe that right-wingers are unjustly dismissive in order to 'protect the unearned and unquestioned advantages of the privileged.'

In this version, vulgar anti-racists won't drop the issue and hit the GDP gym because they're bullies who think the particular groups they dislike are easy targets. The appropriate response is to become a harder target by systematically defunding any institution that supports them, putting them on the same footing as conventional racial supremacists in the US.

I tend to agree that many of the vulgar anti-racists are just being selfish. There is a question of just how consciously aware of it they are, however.

Option #2: A left-wing view would be that the vulgar anti-racists are "good people, just a bit misguided." Right-wingers tend to take a negative view of this, because if a right-winger published a book titled "Black Fragility" that was as circular in its reasoning as the "White Fragility" of Robin DiAngelo appeared to be, he would be hounded as a racist.

In this version, vulgar anti-racists just need patient guidance to put their empathy back on the right track.

I tend to believe that a good chunk of the vulgar anti-racists are just low-tier progressives who get their opinions socially. If the social consensus changes among progressives, they'll forget ever fretting about "microaggressions." Arguing with them individually mostly won't work, though, because it doesn't override their social consensus, and it won't make them think harder about the issues.

Many left-wingers would disagree with me on this assessment.

Option #3: A more centrist view would be that vulgar anti-racists are a mix of people with excessively high racial attachment, enthusiastic people who are underinformed, and people who serve their niche of the information and political economy, and that this isn't that different from the lower quality wings of other left and right political movements (look how bad "degrowth" is, for example), except that race feels much more core to people's identities (it's certainly not easy to change one's race), so it evokes more powerful emotions. A centrist would likely say that there are more academically and philosophically serious opponents of racism out there, but because the things they say are more serious, they're less controversial, so they get less coverage. ("You wouldn't expect a textbook in the Sunday paper.")

A person with this perspective would say that the appropriate course of action is mostly just to wait for it to blow over.

I would disagree. If vulgar anti-racism is taught in schools for a generation, it would create an expectation that racial blame is the default course of action. This would create a situation which is much more favorable for racial conflict, so it should be shut down now to prevent that from happening.

However, I feel that this does not adequately explain the totalitarian bent. What about other values society might have? What about trade-offs? [4] I would like to throw a fourth possibility into the ring.

Option #4: Life inside the vulgar anti-racist worldview is anxiety-inducing and subtly terrifying.

I don't fully endorse this view, because I think that vulgar anti-racism is a coalition of multiple groups (see the previous three options).

However, while I learned from school that racism and ethnic conflict are extremely dangerous in general (e.g. they can boil over and result in mass murder), the susceptibility of vulgar anti-racists to, "It's impossible to be racist to white people," which is very obviously racist, strongly implies that what they learned was, "Jews good; Germans bad" – basically just a list of which groups are acceptable, and which groups aren't. [5]

I reverse-engineered a sophisticated moral worldview, and when I was young, I assumed that everyone else had done so, too. And for a little while, society approximated that view closely enough for that misconception to kind-of work.

I think that a significant number of people in the vulgar anti-racist coalition don't understand white people.

In terms of anxiety, a number of them seem to think that Europeans and their descendants think about race as much as the vulgar anti-racists do – that they are silently passing judgment, or saying nasty things when others are not listening.

I've been around middle-class and above white Americans my entire life. I've seen some kids make stupid racist jokes, and I can imagine bullying targeting race if it looks like an axis of vulnerability, but in general, among themselves, they don't talk about race much at all.

A skeptic reading this may say that that's just anecdotal. However, according to surveys, "white conservatives" have about the same "racial/ethnic" "ingroup favorability" as either "hispanic moderates" or "asians." "White liberals" were the only group on the chart to have a "pro-outgroup bias."

If we interpret these ingroup favorability measures as racism (which is a stretch, because a favorability measure is not itself a discriminatory policy), then white conservatives have a "normal" (as in typical of most groups) amount of racism. White liberals (probably in the sense that the label "liberal" is used for the entire left in the US) are the only ones who loop around into what might be called "anti-racism." (Razib Khan has his doubts about the stability of this arrangement of anti-racism as opposed to non-racism.)

A vulgar anti-racist doesn't know this, and doesn't want to know this.

Now, for the "subtly terrifying" part. If someone accepts, for instance, that the British were sincere in sending warships to intercept slave traders, then there are all sorts of explanations that they can come up with for that behavior, such as it being a natural result of industrialization, or maybe a result of rising literacy, or motivated by Christianity in combination with previous political developments in England, and so on.

From Wikipedia, here's a map of the British Empire, a map of the Spanish Empire, and a map of the Portuguese Empire. While from the perspective of Europeans at the time, the European states were in competition with each other, if taken together as a group, they were closer to achieving true world conquest than anyone else in history. (Sure, the Mongol Empire was huge, but they didn't make it over to the Americas.)

If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the slave trade for some sincere or enduring reason, then the 1700s are unlikely to come back. If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the 1700s for no reason, or for a secret reason, then one day, they could just... turn the 1700s back on.

And maybe that thought isn't entirely conscious. Maybe it just sits quietly, at the back of the mind.

And they get stuck, much like people who are still focused on "overpopulation" as birthrates plummet in industrialized countries throughout the world.

-★-

Whether they consciously intend to or not, vulgar anti-racists leverage social taboos to make it difficult to argue for one group's innocence without making another, generally more vulnerable, group, look worse. People don't want to be mean and say mean things about a vulnerable group. Vulgar anti-racists exploit this. (This kind of behavior is immoral, but I'm not sure how much vulgar anti-racists consciously understand that.)

Online Tactics

I've developed tactics to argue with them in online space, but I haven't tried them out in in-person institutional spaces where they have institutional influence (power).

In general, you cannot argue with vulgar anti-racists grievance-for-grievance. Building up an ammunition depot of racial or ethnic grievances on behalf of "overperforming" groups won't work – vulgar anti-racists will dismiss you as irrationally motivated by racial hatred and dismiss your entire collection, and normal people will also think it's weird (even though they still don't think many racial or ethnic minorities collecting grievances is weird). [6]

A better approach is to pick one or two grievances to shut down the idea that the group you're defending are "invulnerable." Morally, you shouldn't have to point to, say, children or minors being mass victimized, because it should be obvious that people of any race can be victimized. But that's just the world we live in.

Collect examples of institutional policy, such as by governments, corporations, or universities, that is racially discriminatory against the group you're defending, in order to show that the intent of vulgar anti-racists is racial discrimination. Use center-left, mainstream sources to prevent dismissals. The goal is not to show major harms; most Democrats who are not social justice critical will initially attempt to deny that racial discrimination is a goal of vulgar anti-racism.

(If necessary, it can be emphasized that not wanting to be racially discriminated against is a normal thing to want.)

Vulgar anti-racists will try to shut you down by reciting their list of grievances. Memorizing racial grievances is something that they are strong at. Redirect the conversation to where they are weak: demand that they show whatever policy it is that they want will actually improve things and permanently close racial outcome gaps.

If you find someone who has memorized a list of successful academic or nutrition interventions, you've likely found a philosophical liberal. In my experience, almost no vulgar anti-racist has any even modestly-successful intervention memorized. If they propose an intervention, demand evidence that it will work.

It's possible that they could propose something scientific, but science is undergoing a replication crisis, and 'race scholars' have come under fire for scientific misconduct. If a vulgar anti-racist does come up with something, the next step is to get a binding commitment to close the racial claims against their target group.

If their political leaders will not agree, in writing, with binding mechanisms (and punishments with teeth if they don't follow through), to close out the racial claims against their target groups, conditional on some social intervention going into effect, then they don't believe that the intervention will work.

A working intervention is win-win. Outcomes improve, and the odds of conflict (over this particular issue) decrease.

IRL Tactics

X user CantonaCorona must live somewhere very different from me, because I never hear vulgar anti-racism from people in real life. His advice?

100%. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been in a friendly/polite mutual friend gathering, and someone who knows 10% of the room will add “gawd, white people, gross” etc.

The issue is they are also the person lacking social skills to see the room gets uncomfortable

In 2023ish I started responding by asking them very honest seeming questions and leading them into saying really crazy stuff.

Takes a lot of finesse to not sound like a schizo, but if you can pretend to be genuinely curious it works wonders and someone else will call them out

It does, indeed, take a lot of finesse, even online. Because vulgar anti-racists are exploiting taboos, they have a huge terrain advantage in most encounters due to normal people not wanting to touch reputationally-damaging information. Successfully navigating the situation without sounding "schizo," and without sounding cruel, is difficult.

The advantage of the tactics discussed above are that you don't have to attack the reputation of the vulnerable group that vulgar anti-racists are using to justify their own bad behavior. It isn't surprising that, like a successful hostage rescue, it requires being more careful than the hostage-takers.

"Corrective" racial discrimination that does not permanently close racial outcome gaps is not actually a correction, it's just extra harm for no reason, and the motives of people who support it are suspect.

Demobilization

While the online tactics I've discussed above are reasonably effective for an online debate or argument format (and vulgar anti-racists are increasingly retreating to protected contexts where they don't have to engage in open debate), the long-term goal needs to be demobilization. Ethnic conflict interferes with stability and good government.

There are some supporters that don't recognize the logical errors in their positioning, but they can sense, "Wait, this guy isn't like the others," and flee rather than risk being split off from the social approval of their group.

I propose the fear theory for the potential to develop new angles. If the real motivation is fear, then addressing most of the intermediate arguments won't work, as the intermediate arguments are just products of the fear.

Reportedly, black musician Daryl Davis demobilized many Klansmen just by befriending them. [7] I suspect that most vulgar anti-racists already know a number of white people personally, so that tactic probably won't work here.

I have not conducted field experiments (either online or offline) on using the fear theory during encounters, so I can't provide solid information on its tactical use, yet.

-★★★-

[1] Stylistically, I have chosen to capitalize nationality while not capitalizing racial groups. On a quick reading, the tables provided by Wikipedia don't appear to disaggregate between first-generation immigrants, who have foreign nationality of origin and American citizenship, and second-generation immigrants who only have American nationality. All three CEOs listed were born in India.

[2] The ability to buy off competing talent is one of the reasons for the endurance of capitalism. Capitalist systems tend to be extremely productive. They can offer wages from increased productivity that are higher than the wages that other systems offer from rents.

[3] This is one of the reasons I got into writing about politics. It became common to find people whose professed opinions implied they'd never even heard of Genghis Khan, and at that point, I figured the bar was set pretty low.

[4] Positions on migration appear related, but I'll touch on that in another essay.

[5] One reason it wasn't obvious that people were just making an acceptable targets list at the time was that quite a few people from all over the world have a tendency to get wacky about Jewish people specifically, so putting antisemitism off-limits looked like it was backed by more sophisticated reasoning than it actually was. Obviously, people shouldn't hate Jewish people. The problem with the acceptable targets list approach is that it's fragile – since the list is based on social approval rather than deeper philosophical principles, it can end up being "readjusted" later.

[6] I also suspect that continuing to constantly expose yourself to the worst behavior of other groups may be corrosive. Watching a video where a man is shot on some other street, in some other city, may give you a jolt of adrenaline while you sit helplessly in your chair. Reading about atrocities may make you feel helpless and doomed.

[7] This behavior is morally praiseworthy, not morally obligatory.

[historicity-was-already-taken]

the dumbest part about being both a Person and a Historian* is that you literally can't take a sparkly eyed view of ANYTHING. Like "ooh ww2 was the last just war where the good guys won~~"

and i kind of blame decades of Cold War propaganda for this, but lmao no the fuck they didn't. Stalin is not in any universe a "good guy," and it's pretty astounding to me how many layers of US-propaganda about history I've subconsciously absorbed in regard to WW2. But a lot of that is also that the Soviet Archives only opened to researchers like, 10(?) years ago.

The other part, which I am not getting into any serious conversations about rn tyvm, is that when I was a little kid the Elders taught me that the creation of the State of Israel was like, the happy ending to the Holocaust/WW2, or like, an apology for the Holocaust. Which, no the fuck it wasn't. Like, I don't blame them because they were all living with decades of untreated trauma, but, noooooo Grandma it wasn't.

I kind of miss having naive delusions about the world, tbh.

*yes this does imply that historians are not humans. iykyk

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: WW2 AU. Feliciano Vargas is a passionate, if slightly scared, Italian resistance member. Falling in love with a German fighter pilot was the last thing he expected... and it will test his national loyalty, and his heart, to their limits.

Author: George deValier

Note from submitter: Link is to a reupload/archive, as the original ff.net account was deleted somewhere around 2019. Probably the most famous/notorious Hetalia fic, written by much beloved fandom writer George deValier, as part of a larger WW2 AU known collectively as the Veraverse due to being based around songs by Vera Lynn. The mysterious account deletion after years of inactivity probably only added to the mythos.  It was absolutely the kind of fic you'd find scattered references to in the most random corners of the internet back in the heyday of the Hetalia fandom, with all the dramatics you'd expect to follow.