Writely Obsessions

Lurker trying to learn, writer trying to write.

[warning-heckboop]

“In the face of current threats to our liberties, this project is a reminder of the principles and guts of generations of Bostonians, and it is expressed on the same sites where our history has played out over the centuries.”

Under the pseudonym "Silence Dogood," a group of artists projected a series of anti-tyranny messages onto the Old State House in Boston Tuesday.

[massachusetts-official]

Official Post of Massachusetts

[xiaq]

A fun but admittedly petty thing I do is when I see a post on social media where someone is saying “God bless Trump!! Pray for Trump!!”and suchlike, I comment, “Amen! Psalm 109:8-17!” And depending on the platform I’ll get likes/hearts/prayer hands emojis etc. but I’ve been doing this for months and so far no one has actually read the verse, I don’t think. Lol.

[xiaq]

[bikuwana-still-on-discord-deact]

girls when the media they're obsessed with is never going to be as good as they wish it could be

[lordofseagulls]

girls when the media they're obsessed with is never going to be as good as they wish it could be

[jaubaius]

[nabi3000]

[narcissistcookbook]

the second eel at the end in its little cuck shelter 💜

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

eel deets from @whitefangthefightingwolf

[reikomakoto]

[subcultureblues]

love when ppl ask to see pics of my axolotl and are expecting something cute + pink + all smiles and instead with genuine fear in their eyes, and in their heart, say WHAT the fuck is that.

[subcultureblues]

demon

[subcultureblues]

“aw she’s cute 💕” you fool. Average 7inch Adult Axolotl for scale

[subcultureblues]

everyone in the comments : STOP calling The Leviathan adorable you’re making her insecure!!!!!!!!!!!! She’s a wicked, malevolent creature of darkness and you WILL show her some respect!!!

[talesfromtreatment]

*delighted gasp*

[st-just]

[recurringwriter]

WHOA!!!!! i love my friends' ocs

[abtl]

Reblog to let your friends know you love their ocs

[awizardcommandingsleep]

Yet another writing ask

Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to?

How would you describe your writing style?

Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

What's a tag you never want to use for your works even when it applies?

What's your ratio for rating your works?

Your favourite ao3 tag.

How slow is a slow burn?

Thoughts on cliffhangers.

Top three favourite fic tropes.

Three tropes that are fine but overrated.

If you write in more than one language, what's the difference?

Rate your worldbuilding skills from 1 to 10.

Write and share the first sentence of a new fic. Just that.

What's your favourite plotless fic you have written?

Are one-shots really underrated?

Past or present tense? Why?

First, second, or third person?

Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

Do you work on a single project or many at the same time? How does that work for you?

Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what's your secret?

What is it about watching the same two idiots falling in love over and over again?

Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.

Is writing the whole thing beforehand better or worse than writing it as you go?

What would you describe as OOC?

Do you agree that one shouldn't start a story with a piece of dialogue?

Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

What's the hardest thing about writing?

Describe a fic that almost happened, but then it didn't.

What was the most difficult fic for you to write (but in the end you made it)?

Do you have a word/expression that you always use in your writing?

Give your writing a compliment.

Do you write to improve? Or is that not a concern for you?

Thoughts on writing challenges/contests.

How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

Do you research before writing or while you write? Is it fun or boring for you?

"This never happened" fix-it fics or "this happened but" fix-it fics?

Wildest AU scenario you have written?

Write a 9-word fic.

[eccentriccollective]

Writing asks! Belated but better late than never?

1, 3, 8, 14, 17, 28, 30, 37

1: Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

Oh I have twooo, both for Kabuto Hyuuga of course, but Double Deception and False Identity are getting a rewrite. False Identity is getting a complete overhaul, the basic plot of that one is too old and staged to feel natural, but I need the source material to write it accurately. I also have some old Teen Titan fic that, if I had access to the comics again, I would like to rewrite between Jericho and Raven.

3: How would you describe your writing style?

I have no idea how to answer this, I don’t give any thought to style? I write introspective pieces that cast a different light on existing events. I wish I had the patience for more involved plots but I don’t get that often, so for now I am a oneshot queen.

8: How slow is a slow burn?

Listen. There is a Sherlock fanfic in my AO3 bookmark where Sherlock and John aren’t even CONSCIOUS in the same room until the second to last chapter and it’s an 89k word fic. If I start reading this fic, I won’t sleep until I have finished it. If it doesn’t take me, a fast reader, at least an hour to get to first resolution, it isn’t slow.

14: Write and share the first sentence of a new fic. Just that.

I’m still in the middle of one and can’t let the focus go, so have the opening line.

Shizune looks up from setting the bone from a crush injury and can’t see Kabuto.

17: Past or present tense? Why?

Because I write flashback and memory sequences frequently, I use both, often in the same fic. I think using both gives you the ability to manipulate your impact better.

28: Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

I haven’t been given any advice I’ve used, but if I’m writing something I’m not familiar with, I go looking for someone who knows it to explain common misconceptions. I’ve done it with writing horror, writing limb-loss characters, pain, alcohol effects, etc.

The advice I would give is that you have to write it, no matter how bad you feel it’s going to be. Get it out of your head and on paper, it’s a lot easier to make it better when you don’t have to remember everything every time. Once it’s written down, editing is easier to me. One thing that’s really helped me stick to this is carrying around a notebook. I write in the office during downtime and when I was a waitress, I wrote in the margins of my order sheet.

And don’t be afraid to change things if they aren’t working! You don’t need to delete it, put it in a different document to save like a museum. Even if you no longer use it, it’s not lost. I make a whole new document, copy the old version into it, then edit the new document.

30: Describe a fic that almost happened, but then it didn't.

I once developed an entire OC session for Homestuck for my original characters. I had like, three acts outlined up to the first climax? But it was a big endeavor I started in college and didn’t have time for after and given that I haven’t started writing the newest version of the main story yet? It’s best to leave it alone.

37: Do you research before writing or while you write? Is it fun or boring for you?

Both and I love it! I write works that usually modify canon in some way and often for franchises that don’t fully utilize what they’ve written. Researching gives me the opportunity to exploit underused elements and gives me secrets that I can convert into details that hook the reader.

[redstonedust]

if vampires existed in real life i think there would be shady companies advertising "organic blood" sourced from "willing donors" who are coincidentally all poor people being paid like $5 per blood donation. and like haughty vegan vampires who only drink a synthetic blood drink thats brewed in a way thats actively worse for the enviroment. and radical traditionalist vampires who go on tiktok and claim that true alpha chads have to drain and kill people and anyone who leaves their victims alive is a liberal cuck. enter the world of hypothetical insufferable vampire politics with me.

[one-poor-life-decision-later]

@cryptoriawebb confirm / deny

[cryptoriawebb]

I think confirmed, except for the synthetic blood. Society would have to be more organized and vampire-forward for that

Plus. Would it even keep them alive? So many unknown variables…

[eccentriccollective]

@cryptoriawebb and I'm sorry friend, but Ice King absolutely falls under the radical traditionalists and Luke is only here encouraging him. XD

[cryptoriawebb]

XD I was more or less thinking of American society and structure when I said this but thanks for the input 😜

Besides, he’s softened a little since the last time we really sat down to write together❄️

[eccentriccollective]

Well, then we need to sit down to write together again!!

[redstonedust]

if vampires existed in real life i think there would be shady companies advertising "organic blood" sourced from "willing donors" who are coincidentally all poor people being paid like $5 per blood donation. and like haughty vegan vampires who only drink a synthetic blood drink thats brewed in a way thats actively worse for the enviroment. and radical traditionalist vampires who go on tiktok and claim that true alpha chads have to drain and kill people and anyone who leaves their victims alive is a liberal cuck. enter the world of hypothetical insufferable vampire politics with me.

[one-poor-life-decision-later]

@cryptoriawebb confirm / deny

[cryptoriawebb]

I think confirmed, except for the synthetic blood. Society would have to be more organized and vampire-forward for that

Plus. Would it even keep them alive? So many unknown variables…

[eccentriccollective]

@cryptoriawebb and I'm sorry friend, but Ice King absolutely falls under the radical traditionalists and Luke is only here encouraging him. XD

[albertcamusofficial]

[coconutjelly]

This has been accurate non-stop since it was originally posted.

[thelifeofacactus]

[thetrekkiehasthephonebox]

Verified:

Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment (Newsweek - April 6, 2023)

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk dies after being shot at Utah college event (AP - September 10, 2025)

[throwingmenthols-deactivated202]

“denied the catharsis of punishment” is an underappreciated but hugely effective narrative consequence imo 

[unabashedlyseveresandwich]

#it’s so tasty and it comes in so many flavors#does the character self-loathe and feel anguished by what others intended as an act of forgiveness and grace?#does the character know they need to change but sort of madly wish they could trade the unceasing exhausting improvement journey#for a flash bang of slate-clearing repentance so they don’t have to *think* about it anymore?#is is a creeping horror as the character realizes no one is going to punish them because everyone else still thinks what they did was okay?#does the character have to live the rest of their life just feeling ever so slightly untrusted by everyone with no way to stop it?#sorry for leaving pretentious tags on tumblr dot com it will happen again 

Peer-reviewed tags by @annabelle–cane

[notquiteaghost]

"it's okay, i can peel back the layers of you until i find the soft and gentle core of you you've had to work so hard to hide"? no. no, it's okay, i know you're hollow; i'm here anyway. you don't have to pretend it isn't masks the whole way down. whatever face you want to wear, i still love you. i don't need you to be good or unflinching or the antonym of violence. if i did, i wouldn't be here. i wouldn't ask that of you.

[notquiteaghost]

i have nothing against a character who is layers of scar tissue and callous protecting a small little sliver of their before self, who just wants to be safe to let that sliver grow and heal

however. when the only thing under all the scarring is more scarring. when there's nothing of the before self left at all. when there was a precipice, and they tumbled over it, and even if they got back up they'll never heal right.

and then to have someone still say i care for you. you are broken and i can't fix you and i'm here anyway. so what if you're a ghost of yourself? you can haunt me

[mariacallous]

Antisemitism in the Oval Office

A confrontation seen with a historian's eye

The attempt to humiliate Volodymyr Zelens'kyi in the Oval Office a week ago was an American strategic collapse. It heralded a new constellation of disorderly powers, obsessed with resources, seizing what they can. Inside that new disaster is something old and familiar that we might prefer not to see: antisemitism. The encounter in the White House was antisemitic.

I am historian of the Holocaust. I was trained by a survivor. Jerzy Jedlicki was nine years old when the Germans invaded, and fourteen when he emerged from hiding in Warsaw, and a prominent Polish historian by the time we met. He talked to me about antisemitism for decades, from the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union until his death in 2018. The way that I reacted to the scene in the Oval Office, and how I have pondered and considered it since, have to do with my research, but also with him.

Jerzy survived the Holocaust because his mother Wanda, a literary translator, refused to go with her children to the Warsaw ghetto. Thanks to her courage and ingenuity, and to others who helped her, he and his brother survived. Jerzy's father was murdered, like more than three million other Jews in Poland. The family history emerged bit by bit, as we became friends, as some of his own colleagues wrote memoirs of childhood survival, as my own interests turned towards the war. During my research, I found a recollection, by his mother, of their time in hiding in Warsaw. It turned out that he had helped her to write it.

In post-communist Poland, in the 1990s and 2000s, Jerzy was an activist against antisemitism and xenophobia, and I attended at his urging some of the meetings of the association he helped direct. The entire time, I think, he was trying to train my eye.

Some forms of what he defined as antisemitism had to do with his memories of occupation. Jews had to show deference. Germans mocked the ways Jews dressed. That was before they were sent to the ghetto and murdered. Jews were scapegoated, made responsible for what the Germans wished to do anyway.

Some characteristics of antisemitism as he described it were more abstract. Jewish achievement was portrayed as illegitimate. Jews only gained success, antisemites say, by lying and propaganda. If a Jew was prominent, that only proved the existence of a Jewish conspiracy, and thereby the illegitimacy of the institution where the success was achieved. A prominent Jew was always, went the antisemitic assumption, motivated by money.

Some of what Jerzy said had to do with his experience after the war. Non-Jews will deny the courage and suffering of Jews. They will claim all heroism and martyrdom as their own. He kept a photo of his mother in a locket. It was important to him that she had been courageous. There was a legend in communist Poland, which still survives, which suppressed Jewish courage and claimed all resistance for non-Jewish Poles. And there was after the war a Soviet antisemitism, with a broader and longer heritage, that claimed that Jews had somehow all remained at the rear while others fought and died. The facts were no defense.

The elements that emerged in conversation with Jerzy over the years -- the mockery of Jewish appearances, the need for Jewish submissiveness, the claims about dishonesty, greed, cowardice, and corrupt conspiracies -- figure in the scholarly literature on the subject. And the scholarship is very important, as are the testimonies, and is the teaching in schools. But all of this should help us to see antisemitism in real life. Some cases are so overwhelming in scale that we find them difficult to confront and name. As Orwell noted, it can be hard to see what is right in front of your face.

Much has been said about the evils of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its antisemitic element, however, has been underestimated. Russia's major war aim was fascist regime change, the overturning of a democratically-elected president in favor of some sort of collaborator. The premise is absurd: that Ukrainians do not really exist as a nation, and in fact would prefer a Russian. But it was also antisemitic: that it is unnatural that a Jew could hold an important office. Volodymyr Zelens'kyi, the Ukrainian president, is of Jewish origin. Members of his family fought in the Red Army against the Germans. Others were murdered in the Holocaust. Although his Jewishness is not very relevant in Ukrainian politics, it is highly salient to Russian (and other) antisemites.

Ukraine, says Putin, does not really exist. But another theme of the propaganda is that Zelens'kyi is not actually the president of Ukraine. These two bizarre ideas work together: Ukraine is artificial and can exist thanks to the Jewish international conspiracy. The fact that a Jew leads the country confirms — for Russian fascists — both the unreality of Ukraine and the reality of a conspiracy. This Russian regime perspective is implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) antisemitic. Russian propaganda treats Zelens'kyi as obsessed with money and as subhuman. Zelens'kyi was elected on a peace platform in 2019, but Putin did not want to talk to him, in part because he did not think that Zelens'kyi showed him enough deference. The Russian regime that ordered the invasion is itself obviously fascist, on any definition of fascism you care to choose.

Last Friday I happened to start watching the discussion at the White House between Zelens'kyi, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Brian Glenn towards the end, when Vance was already yelling at the Ukrainian president: "you're wrong!" I took in the tone and the body language, and my first, reflexive reactions was: these are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew. Three against one. A roomful against one. An antisemitic scene.

And the more I listened to the words, the more that reaction was confirmed. I won't speak for how Zelens'kyi regards himself. Ukrainian, of course. Beyond that I don't know. These things are complex, and personal.

But not for the antisemite.

It was all there, in the Oval Office, in the shouting and in the interruptions, in the noises and in the silences. A courageous man seen as Jewish had to be brought down. When he said things that were simply true he was shouted down and called a propagandist. There was no acknowledgement of Zelens'kyi's bravery in remaining in Kyiv. The Americans portrayed themselves as the real heroes because they provided some of the weapons. The suffering of Ukrainians went unmentioned. An attempt to refer to it was cruelly and falsely reduced to a "propaganda tours" led by Zelens'kyi. The Americans portrayed themselves as the real victims of the because they paid for some of the weapons. It was all, bizarrely, about money. There is this odd Trumpian notion, unique to Ukraine, that aid should be paid back as if it were a loan, with Trump himself just making up the amount owed. Zelens'kyi was portrayed as someone who was taking our cash, giving is nothing in return, ripping us off. He was also mocked for not knowing how to dress for the space, as not belonging. And his deference was demanded: "Have you said thank you once?" "Offer some words of appreciation." And then was thrown out of the White House. And told to resign his office as president of Ukraine.

As always with antisemitism, facts are no defense. Zelens'kyi consistently thanks Americans, as can be easily verified. He is the elected president of a country that is a democratic republic under a constitution. Zelens'kyi won the last election with 73% and his approval rating is now 68%; if there were another election, he would win. By the terms of the constitution, the next election will be held when the war is over and martial law can be lifted. It is the general opinion in Ukraine, shared by Zelens'kyi's opponents in parliament, that elections cannot be held while Russia is invading, holding swathes of Ukrainian territory, and coercing Ukrainian citizens. Zelens'kyi has been personally courageous. He stayed in Kyiv when everyone expected him to flee. He visits the front on a regular basis. Ukrainian suffering, sadly, is all too real, from the torture chambers through the executions through the kidnapped children and destroyed cities. It is quite true that the anti-tank weapons Trump authorized during his first term were very important during the first few weeks of the war. But it was the astonishing fact of successful Ukrainian resistance that led to the delivery of further weapons. The arms allocations to Ukraine were aid, and aid is not a lone. They are an essentially invisible portion of the U.S. budget, a penny on the dollar. Most of that penny on the dollar remains in the U.S., restarting assembly lines that had gone cold. Much of what the U.S. has given Ukraine were obsolescent weapons that would have been otherwise been thrown away. As everyone in the room in fact knew, what Zelens'kyi was wearing was meant as an expression of solidarity with a people at war. It was not so unlike what Churchill wore in the White House in 1942.

To conclude that the scene in the White House was antisemitic, one does not need to know anything further. It's all right there: the demand for deference, the obsession with money, the claims of corruption and dishonesty, the encirclement, the loud voices, the bizarre grievances, the underlying sense that a Jewish person does not fit and must be expelled. The context was evocative enough, and nothing more is really needed: those historical markers of antisemitism; Zelens'kyi's Jewish origins; the particular way he was treated by non-Jews.

If we consider for a moment the men who tried to humiliate him, however, the picture only sharpens and clarifies. The man who asked him about his clothes, Brian Glenn, is a conspiracy-theorizing far-right journalist. It is not clear why he was in the Oval Office; but he does seem to know Marjorie Taylor-Greene, she of the Jewish space lasers and the determined defense of Russian propaganda. The man who demanded deference and spoke of "propaganda tours," JD Vance, had just returned from Germany, where he made a point of publicly supporting the German far right. Vance presents Zelens'kyi as a corrupt liar, with no evidence beyond what was brought to him by an internet which has, apparently, found his vulnerabilities. The man who insisted that the Americans (and indeed he himself personally) were the real heroes, Donald Trump, told Jews last fall they would be held responsible if he lost the election -- among many other things. And the man behind them all, Elon Musk, supports the extreme right in several countries, adapts his social media platform to support fascists, and is notorious around the world for his Hitlergrüß. Musk's idea that Zelens'kyi is a grifter could hardly be more antisemitic.

And what have the Americans done since last Friday? They have scapegoated Zelens'kyi. They have doubled down on lies that, sadly, only make sense in an antisemitic worldview. They have blamed him, over and over again, for the things that they wanted to do anyway. It is somehow his fault, rather than their choice, that they are denying weapons to Ukraine and supporting Russia; that they are denying Ukraine necessary intelligence and thereby making it easier for Russia to kill Ukrainians in missile and drone strikes. The scapegoating is antisemitic in form, relying on preposterous notions that American strategic choices can and should be shaped by an ally's dress and demeanor. And it is antisemitic in content, shifting all responsibility from oneself to the Jewish person who must take the blame for everything. The Americans continue to encircle Zelens'kyi, on media, denying his legitimacy as president, calling for his resignation. Musk piles on, calling Zelens'kyi names, and demanding that he be replaced and removed from his country.

Underlying this all is an assumption that can only really be understood as both antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian: that if Zelens'kyi were to resign, the war would somehow end, because he, and not Putin and the Russians, is somehow its instigator. And that is profoundly and weirdly wrong: Zelens'kyi is not some master conspirator who is somehow getting Ukrainians to do something that they would not otherwise do. Ukrainians are actors in all this. Ukrainians have been attacked and who are defending themselves. Their president is, in his own words, just one grain of sand in the hourglass. If Zelens'kyi were assassinated, an outcome that the American abuse has made more likely, Ukraine would continue to fight.

The American antisemitism now merges with the Russian antisemitism and reinforces it. The idea that Zelens'kyi is not a real president, and that his government is therefore not a real government, has been a very specific Russian antisemitic trope from the beginning. And the Russian approval for the American behavior in the White House since Friday could hardly have been more explicit. A spokesman for Putin expressed his pleasure that policies were aligning. A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign minister compared Ukrainians to pedophiles and thieves. The foreign minister himself said that Zelens'kyi was "hardly human." A former Russian president called Zelens'kyi a swine and cheered on Trump. Russian television has celebrated Trump as a Russian ally all week. During this chorus of Russian praise, the White House halted military aid and limited intelligence assistance to Ukraine. And so the United States is now aiding the fascist invasion, and legitimating the attempt at fascist regime change.

It is harder in the 2020s to call things by name than it was, perhaps, in the last century. Actual fascists now call other people "fascists" to make the word meaningless, and so they themselves cannot be seen for what they are. This is the normal Russian practice, now picked up by American fascists. Antisemites likewise can call other people "antisemites." When Russians say that they had to invaded Ukraine because of someone else’s antisemitism rather than their own, they are just trying to make the term meaningless. When Americans claim that antisemitism means that universities must be harassed, they are doing much the same thing. The fact that someone wants to ban protests does not mean that they oppose antisemitism. History would suggest rather the contrary. A concerted effort is being made to train us to think that antisemitism is something besides traditionally hostile ways that non-Jews regard and treat Jews. The result of these semantic abuses is a trivialization of antisemitism — a concept we all need to be able to take seriously, a phenomenon we all need to recognize.

In addition to abusing the word, antisemites can react with manufactured outrage when called out. They can try to hide behind Israel, or by pointing to Jews in their vicinity. So when confronted by actions that appear antisemitic, you have to consider what you see for yourself. The moral and political implications are of the greatest significance. I had a strong personal reaction to that scene in the Oval Office, and I checked it for a week with friends and colleagues, who confessed that they had had the same reaction. I reconsidered what I had learned as a historian. I looked at the scholarly definitions. Everything, sadly, lines up.

The negative reactions to the Oval Office scene can of course take other forms. The antisemitic element of the confrontation, though important, was not the only dynamic. Ukrainians and Europeans, understandably, took the attempt to humiliate Zelens’kyi as a prompt to begin discussions of a security order that accounts for an unreliable United States. Moral assessments along other lines also came in, including from former dissidents in eastern Europe. On Monday, thirty onetime Polish anti-communist oppositionists signed a letter to Donald Trump. They expressed their repugnance at how Zelens'kyi had been treated in the White House. They pointed out that no monetary currency can be equivalent to that of blood shed for freedom. They compared the atmosphere in the Oval Office during that confrontation on Friday to that of a communist interrogation or communist trial, in which the person who had taken the risk to do right was told that they held no cards, that might makes right.

My dissertation advisor, Jerzy Jedlicki, had been a dissident. Polish communists placed him in an internment camp. Perhaps Jerzy, were he still with us, would have signed that letter. As someone who has studied and written about communist terror, I can see the dissident perspective; and given their own personal experiences with interrogations and communist terror, it is one that must be taken seriously. What they failed to mention, though, is that communist interrogation techniques in the 1970s and 1980s were antisemitic: people of Jewish origin were presented as alien to the nation, and were subjected to special abuse. Multiple interrogators would encircle the dissident, and talk among themselves about his supposedly Jewish betrayals and failures. Encirclement, bullying, belittling.

And so I can't escape that first reflexive response to that scene in the Oval Office: here is a person of Jewish origin being treated in a very particular and familiar way by non-Jews. I get the dissidents’ comparison to an interrogation or trial, and can imagine the cell or the courtroom. But what struck me was the circle of bullying gentiles -- as in Europe in the 1930s, and in other places and times, at the particular moment when the mob felt that power was shifting.

But is it? In writing about antisemitism here I am obviously making a moral point. I am asking us, Americans, to think seriously about what we are doing, about Russia's criminal war against Ukraine, in which we are now becoming complicit. That Russia's war is antisemitic is one of its many evils; taking Russia’s side in that war is wrong for many reasons, including that one. At a time when antisemitism is a growing problem around the world, I would like for us to be able to see the obvious examples, especially when we Americans are so closely involved in them. There is a certain mobbish mindlessness in the growing circle of American voices calling for Zelens'kyi to leave office, and I think it has a name and a history. I would like for us to recall that history and remember that the name can apply to us.

In writing about antisemitism I am also making a political claim. The antisemite really believes that the Jew must defer, that the Jew cannot fight, that a state led by a Jew must duly crumble. This was one of Putin's mistakes, two years ago. And now, I suspect, it is also Trump's, and Musk's. America does have the power, of course, to hurt Ukraine. Just as Russia does. The combination of American and Russian policy is killing Ukrainians right now. The costs of the emerging Russian-American axis will be terrible for Ukraine. But Ukraine will not immediately collapse, nor will the Ukrainian population turn against Zelens'kyi. What he will personally do I couldn't say and won't try to predict: and that, of course, is my point.

In the world of the antisemite, all is known in advance: the Jew is just a deceiver, concerned only with money, subject to exclusion, intimidated by force. As soon as he is humiliated and eliminated, everything else will fall into its proper place. Consider the smirks in the Oval Office last Friday: the antisemite thinks that he has understood everything. But in the actual world in which we actually live, Jews are humans, perilous and beautiful like the rest of us. The United States has never elected a Jewish president, and perhaps never will. But Ukraine has; and that president represents his people, facing challenges that those who mock him will never understand. Those Americans have chosen to add their own to the evil he must confront. But that does not mean that they will control what happens next.

In 1936, before the war, Wanda, Jerzy’s mother, translated a book entitled Oil Rules the World. We seem to be heedlessly returning to an era where resources demand violence. American foreign policy now seems to be all about mineral wealth: in Greenland, in Canada, and in Ukraine — where the pressure on Zelens’kyi is connected to an American desire to control Ukrainian minerals. This is worrying for a number of reasons.

In the antisemitic imagination, everything is for the taking. I used to talk with Jerzy Jedlicki about Mein Kampf, whether and how it should be censored, who read it in the twenty-first century. Our world, as Hitler described it in Mein Kampf, is just thin crust of land, to be defined by the fertility of the topsoil and the bounty of the minerals beneath. Only the Jews, he thought, stand in the way of its conquest by the strongest. Behind all of the calumnies about the lying and the stealing and the conspiracies was Hitler's true fear: the Jews, he thought, were the only source of human values, the reason why we might think that there is something in the world aside from power and the greed of the powerful, something beyond an endless war for topsoil and minerals. To extinguish virtue the Jew must be mocked, and then marginalized, and then murdered. And that, of course, worked as politics in Nazi Germany; not because the premise was true, but because Germans went along, killing their own virtue along the way. Never again means attending to the smaller aggressions that imply the greater ones to come.

The war that Hitler began, the Second World War, was about eliminating Jews and stealing resources. He was aiming above all for the fertile soil of Ukraine and the mineral wealth of the Caucasus: for what he called Lebensraum, living space. To get to Ukraine, Germans had to cross Poland, where they created ghettos, like the one in Warsaw where Wanda did not go; and then the death factories, like Treblinka, where the Jews of Warsaw were murdered. Jerzy escaped gassing at Treblinka; decades later on he tried to helped me to see, and to think. He was trying to help me to have the eye of a historian in the present, and perhaps he succeeded, a bit. About one thing I am certain. Our eyes have to be open to what we do not wish to see.

[ultrafacts]

[the-real-seebs]

teal-deer:

ultrafacts:

He says that KKK members have many misconceptions about black people, which stem mostly from intense brainwashing in the home. When the Klansmen get to know him, he says, it becomes impossible for them to hold on to their prejudices. He explains:

This Klansman and I were riding around in my car and the topic of crime came up. He made the remark that all black people had a gene that makes us violent. I said ‘Gary, what are you talking about?’ He said ‘Who’s doing all the shootings?’ I said ‘let me tell you something, I am as black as anyone you’ve ever seen and I’ve never done a drive by or a shooting.’ After a time I said ‘you know, it’s a fact that all white people have within them a gene that makes them serial killers. Name me three black serial killers.’ He could not do it. I said ‘you have the gene. It’s just latent.’ He said ‘well that’s stupid’ I said ‘it’s just as stupid as what you said to me.’ He was very quiet after that and I know it was sinking in.

(Full Article)

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I

Wow

Man sometimes Maryland is hella badass

The thing that’s interesting about this is, if you read up on how he does it… The big thing is that he listens to them and lets them say their stupid shit. He sometimes argues with them, but he also lets them talk about stuff and ask questions, and guess what, it works.

Guy’s got >20 sets of klan robes in his closet that people have sent him when they decided to quit the Klan.

This guy is a great example of why I think being polite to people you think are wrong is an effective strategy.

[sheabutterfemme]

Yeah this story is cute or whatever but fuck the idea that people are obligated to be nice and polite to members of a literal terror organization.

[the-real-seebs]

Who said they were obligated to do so? I don’t recall saying that.

The question here is not “what is obligatory” but “what is effective”.

[soulsuckingisaacnewton]

#’that story is cute or whatever’#DISMANTLED THE ENTIRE KKK NETWORK IN MARYLAND#’cute’#yes the idea of being polite to people who you disagree with#to people who hate you#is gut-churning and terrifying#so it must not be the right thing to do#right?#because making the world a better place never involves doing anything hard or scary#and of course it’s not obligatory to subject yourself to discomfort and danger by doing this kind of thing#that’s why it’s an AMAZING story#that’s why this man is a HERO#and trivializing this story be calling it ‘cute’ because it makes you uncomfortable is just so messed up#you have the right to be uncomfortable#obviously#I’m not claiming the right to tell anyone how to feel but I object strenuously to this response.