Pardon Me While I Have a Strange Interlude

Too many people think that being anti fascist just means being anti establishment which is actually terrible because fascism is an anti establishment ideology.

A lot of people wonder how right-wing populists can rail against “elites” and simultaneously embrace billionaires like Musk and Thiel. The confusion vanishes when you realize conservatives use “elites” to mean the people who would be popular at a New York City cocktail party.

They mean Jews

Not necessarily actual Jews, but you can do a find-and-replace without diminishing the intended effect

"It's all The Religion, and everyone knows The Religion is a homogeneous monolith that loves capitalism and hates dissent and difference"

There’s a difference between something being spiritually or culturally true and something being literally true and a lot of people who don’t live with this kind of belief system can’t seem to wrap their heads around it or they seem to think that people who function like that can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality.

Another realization of this is "religion is how people Back Then explained stuff we now explain with science." Which (aside from making people Back Then out to be stupid) leads to "anyone who has a religion now that science exists is backward and primitive if they keep it to themselves and actively dangerous if they don't"

when the people you fetishize call you out 😂

also never forget:

lmaoooooo

📣AUSTRALIAAAAAAA IS NOT THE USAAAAAAAAA 📣

They do not have a first amendment 😭

They have a totally different constitution and form of government 😱

more caitlin tea lmao

john is palestinian

she’s following the blueprint of SJP/CUAD/JVP who’ve all routinely blocked actual Palestinians (including John!) every time they’ve spoken out against Hamas.

this is Caitlin:

that last one was her response to Sinwar’s ignoble death, which she valorized to a point that can only be classified as disturbing.

So, uh, is she actually saying "we white people have no connection to our history, so when Jews claim they do have a connection they must be lying"?

Pigeon Comic 44 - Under Pressure

Stay coo’, pigeon army.

This feels very … timely

look i normally hate it when people univeralize jewish concepts to describe all oppression but everyone needs to know about ostjuden

anyway today i met a trans guy who said he hates it when people who look like me (long hair? not on t? sports bra instead of binder? i guess) use they/them or think we have a place in spaces designated as being for transmascs and afab nonbinary people

like 15 minutes earlier he was trying to convince a trans woman to come to his transmasc group because i guess she doesn't present fem enough for him to see her as a woman

right i skipped the part where i tell you about ostjuden. it means "eastern jews." german jews in the early twentieth century were antisemitic towards eastern european jews who they saw as too primitive, superstitious, yiddish-speaking, religious, poor, dirty, folk-y, etc.

so. basically there's a phenomenon where people adopt the form bigotry targeted at their group but you wouldn't say they internalize it, because they don't direct at themselves; they direct it only at other members of their group who they perceive as somehow lesser.

not a direct comparison to the above example because viewing someone as inferior (like the ostjuden) is different from like... viewer someone as a poser, in terms of the power dynamics involved.

anyway, we should talk more about this kind of oppression, because it's not exactly internalized oppression but it's like. internalized oppression's cousin.

When one of my ancestors came to America he changed his name from Krasny to Roth (not the actual names, but you get the idea). Family lore has long held it was to sound less Jewish, but recently I've developed the hypothesis that he was trying not to seem ostjudisch

If your goals basically amount to "after The Revolution everything will be great because people will all have the Good Ethics and work together in my Perfect System and the Evil People with Bad Morals and Bad Behaviour who are making this world bad will be gone (killed/imprisoned/exiled/all converted to agree with us when they see our Perfect System)" then that's just fascism. I hate to say it but you've put a gay socialist hat on fascism.

The MAGA people are still gonna be around in your Perfect System and a very large proportion of them are still gonna be Like That. We can discourage antisocial behaviour through laws and education and changing cultural norms, but if plans for future society involve [group I'm opposed to] magically not being part of it so the Good People can Do Things Right, well.

I can kinda see how, if you think they're Like That because of The Conditions, they'll stop being Like That when The Conditions are fixed.

Unfortunately, the same reasoning would lead to the conclusion that if you take the knife out, you heal the stab wound, which I do not believe is correct

OR maybe we’re just pissed because you think you don’t have to respect others’ beliefs and you genuinely think religion should not exist which is an inherently bigoted take

this isn’t some big conspiracy where everyone is mad they can’t control you, everyone is mad at you because you can’t muster up basic respect for the diversity of beliefs that people have on this huge diverse planet

and the fact you’re so willing to paint everyone as being obsessed with controlling you and that they believe their “one true religion is 100% correct” sounds like projection on your part, YOU are the one wishing to exert control over others

being an atheist is perfectly fine because people should get to have control over their own lives, antitheism IS NOT fine because AGAIN people should get to have control over their own lives

why do white people not understand that for smaller ethnic groups religion IS culture?

belief in the things is not what is being challenged when you are anti religion as a concept you are challenging someone's ethnic identity and their race and cultural practices and traditions and things their community finds sacred.

(i guarantee you underwater dumbass would not be this yelly about indigenous american religions, it's a double standard in addition to how messed up it is at face value)

I think that depends on context. If they were on a tear about "religion" they might not stop to make exceptions even for something like that. It you frame it as something cultural, then they probably would be more (superficially) accepting

if you’re 26 and older, reblog.

shaking women by their shoulders with all my strength, screaming YOU DONT NEED TO GET PERMISSION TO BREAK UP WITH SOMEONE!!!!

In particular:

[1] You should probably do what you can so their life doesn't immediately implode, just human-to-human, but you're still allowed to break up

Most states have some level of civic education provided or required, and at some point people have to accept the responsibility to educate and inform themselves. “We weren’t taught this in school” is not a sufficient justification or conclusion.

On the one hand, you don't know what you don't know.

On the other, it's easy to, when you find yourself saying "why didn't the Democrats just ___?", stop to determine if they Democrats could have just ___, if the Democrats did in fact try to ___, if the Democrats doing ___ would have made a difference, before jumping to "Democrats must not actually want to stop bad things, maybe they even like the bad things"

Since Musk thinks most other people aren't real, he doesn't see this as a problem

i understand hating cops because *gestures vaguely at the entire institution of policing in the US* but why do so many of you hate firefighters and other first responders too like?? they’re firefighters, they’re not going to shoot you for “failing to comply” or whatever excuse the cops will give for killing somebody.

their entire job revolves around saving lives and promoting public safety, and a bunch of jackasses on the internet lump them in with the cops who shoot people in the back.

like i’m ngl i deeply respect first responders and so it’s kinda wildto me how many of you look at any praise of first responders as if it’s all copaganda

There are definitely issues with firefighters and paramedics killing people they were supposed to protect but it is nowhere near the degree to which cops murder people for looking at them wrong.

yeah if people don’t trust first responders because of cases like the death of tyra hunter i guess i understand that, but people legit hate firefighters and ems to the same level as they hate cops when they’re just not the same by and large. it’s legit wild and like i just do not get it.

There's no reason to think the median first responder is less terrible than the median person overall[1], and possibly the culture of it means the median first responder is a little worse[2], but institutionally firefighters and EMS are not like cops at all. Because they aren't cops.

The most I would defend the association is "if you call 911, cops will come, even if you don't need cops," but that's not a decision the rest of them made

[1] I suspect the median person is less terrible than Tumblr's perception of the median person

[2] For avoidance of pissing on the poor: I'm not saying they are, just pointing out a risk

This place is way too big. Not for a mall, for literally anything human

I'm pretty sure the name isn't Updikean on purpose, but if I invented a place like this and called it "American Dream" people would say I was a hack

I have a bit of an unfairly jaundiced view of this, not just because of NYC provincialism, but … I guess a more specific form of NYC provincialism. If I want, say, fancy chocolate I'll go to Li-Lac or Venchi, and if my soul yearns for Läderach specifically I'm pretty sure I don't have to come out to East Rutherford for that (edit: DDG tells me there are two in Midtown).

This place is way too big. Not for a mall, for literally anything human

I'm pretty sure the name isn't Updikean on purpose, but if I invented a place like this and called it "American Dream" people would say I was a hack