Arma Virumque Cano

        idle musings masquerading as biting historical and social commentary, discussions of swordsmanship and martial arts, occasional personal stuff      

[timeturner-jay]

I told my friend that tumblr would love her shirt, don't let me down guys

[no-one-offical]

‎

[thecrushheb]

I really hate the "Jerusalem is very important to three religions why would Judaism get full control of it" because its only important because thats where the JEWISH TEMPLE was and where the JUDEAN KINGS lived. just because people made religions out of fanficing Judaism means we have to give them equal slices of our own cultural history?

[h4ganah]

But even beyond that, are you going to try and tell me that Jerusalem is equally important to all three?

Sure, Jerusalem is either

1) the most important place in every single way to not just the entire religion but the entire people and its history,

2) the place Yeshua got cancelled by Pontius Pilate (not where he lived or anything, but sure), or

3) the place where Mohammed exited to heaven (allegedly, mind you) which is why you put a mosque on top of the holiest place in the world for the religion that preceeded yours

Yeah, obviously Jerusalem is important to both Islam and Christianity. Is it considered the holiest place in the world? Is it where christians and muslims direct their prayers? Is it mentioned literally everywhere in your prayers and holy texts, literally daily? Is it the focal epicenter of your people's entire history and religiosity? For one of these religions, Jerusalem is THE most important place on earth. For the other two, either another place is way, way more important, or it's the story that took place in Jerusalem that is the most important thing to the religion, not the location itself.

In no way shape or form is the importance of Jerusalem to Islam or Christianity even remotely comparable to its importance to Judaism and the jewish people, and I'm tired of pretending otherwise.

[daughterofstories]

*in a dream.

Muhammad allegedly visited Jerusalem on his way to heaven in a dream. Dude never once set foot in the actual irl Jerusalem.

Literally the only reason they give a damn about the city is that it's important to us.

[historicallyspeaking]

I don’t think this gives us the right to kick all the non-Jews out or anything, but yeah this “what makes the Jews so special” bullshit is pretty frustrating. “What makes the Jews so special” I dunno man, why don’t you ask the founders of your religions who thought we were so cool they wanted to steal all our stuff!?

[ilions-end]

it's darkly funny to me at the end of the odyssey when odysseus and penelope talk about all the livestock and valuables they've lost to the suitors, and odysseus assures her he's gonna work really hard and soon go on lots of raids to get more, in the exact same tone as "don't worry honey, i'll work extra shifts down at the factory"

[ilions-end]

i've been seeing some confusion in the notes of this post so i'd like to clarify that the thing i find darkly funny isn't that odysseus is planning to head out, it's that he's planning to head out on raids. the man who was so enraged about the threat to his household and its resources that it led to a death toll in the triple digits is planning to go out and kill and enslave someone else entirely and take their livestock and valuables for himself to make up for the losses. and this passes as completely neutral information to both husband and wife and narrator!

[historicallyspeaking]

One of the most important themes in pre-modern literature is that there’s a right way and a wrong way to kill people and take their stuff and it’s very important not to confuse the two.

[mslovelyrita-deactivated2026070]

Currently rereading The Hobbit, and I swear it's like Tolkien took every antisemitic stereotype and caricature that was being used to dehumanize Jews during this time and put them onto the dwarves but turned them on its head to make them traits to be admired. I already knew he was a badass for telling the Nazis to go fuck themselves, but this just makes me love his work more.

[maimonideznuts]

[historicallyspeaking]

I absolutely fell in love with the dwarves in The Hobbit when long before learning about the Jewish connection. I’ve always wondered if it was a coincidence, or if there was something there that I picked up on even as a second grader.

[prokopetz]

In retrospect it's a good thing The X-Files debuted five years before the fraudulent Wakefield study dropped, because given how the show's early season are about addressing contemporary social issues, there 100% would have been an episode about how vaccines cause autism because of aliens.

[zaprowsdower27]

I'm just glad it came out in the comparatively narrow window where "episodes about conspiracy theories being real" and "addressing contemporary social topics of discussion" didn't mean episodes about evil aliens pretending to be Jews or something

[prokopetz]

Oddly enough, those are basically the same bullet dodged, timeline-wise. While the idea of secret societies of shape-shifting lizard people had been around since the early days of pulp fiction, it didn't specifically become associated with antisemitic conspiracy theories until David Icke popularised his Reptoid Hypothesis in the late 1990s; the Wakefield study and Icke's The Biggest Secret dropped less than a year apart.

[daughterofstories]

Important to note that this may be the beginning of the "Jews are actually lizard people" claim, it is very much not the origin of "Jews are actually inhuman monsters" or "Jews are controlling the world for nefarious purposes."

The later was the premise of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, first published in 1903, which also did not create the belief, but rather claimed to be evidence of ideas which had already existed for centuries.

[historicallyspeaking]

Honestly, X-files Jewish episode is one of the best instances of Jewish representation I’ve seen on tv.

[weirdtranssexual]

why do europeans hate their diasporas so fucking much lol

[weirdtranssexual]

“irish americans aren’t irish” “italian americans aren’t italian” what the fuck else are they and why do you think you’re allowed to gatekeep a fucking ethnicity?

europeans will act like their concept of ethnicity is the only concept of ethnicity and throw a fit when euro-americans feel attached to their heritage. yes they’re americans first and foremost but idk how to tell you that “american” is not an ethnicity. euro-americans have european heritage and acting like they don’t because it pisses you off is fucking childish and eurocentric af.

[historicallyspeaking]

It’s especially insulting since Euro-American immigrants sending money home has been so important for so many European economies.

[spanishsongs]

"Here’s the crazy thing about the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian debate in the U.S. A perfectly reasonable political stance like Elhanan’s below, one held by many others in Israel, especially on the left, could and should be supported by pro-Palestinian activists here in the U.S., but it isn’t because it accepts the idea of Israelis and Palestinians co-existing.

Instead, the radicalized American left now rejects pragmatic politics that doesn’t challenge Zionism or the legitimacy of Israel and doesn’t partake of pseudo-intellectual academic shibboleths like anti-Zionism, anti-colonialism, settler-colonialism, or “Jewish supremacy.” They reject real-world solutions in favor of the fantasies of U.S. podcasters and professors with no actual stake in the game. It’s crazy.

And as a result, Israel’s supporters have to spend most of their time and energy combatting the nihilistic and hateful politics of anti-Zionism and delegitimization rather than focusing on sensible politics, peacemaking, bridge-building, and coming up with political solutions that might actually work."

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[avhira]

I could use some luck

[charlesoberonn]

English has some extremely specific words like "defenestrate" but then there're words like "fine" that have like six unrelated definitions.

[prismatic-bell]

I have terrible news for you about "good."

[feste-the-mad]

Well that doesn't sound good.

[prismatic-bell]

😂😂😂

As far as I know, it has four meanings, none of which are related: a tangible object for sale is a good, a state of personal wellbeing, I.e. "I'm doing good," an abstract attribute of pleasantness e.g. "that's a really good painting," and a state of moral superiority, e.g. good versus evil.

[heathenvampires]

allow me to introduce Nick

Nick went to nick something, but nicked his finger as he escaped. In the nick of time, he got nicked and ended up in the nick.

(Unrelated to knickers)

[prismatic-bell]

Where he made a deal with Old Nick that was stopped by Saint Nick.

[the-library-alcove]

He obviously went to steal a nick-nack.

[historicallyspeaking]

I think “good” is reasonably definable as “desirable.” If you’re “doing good” it means you’re reasonably happy with your state of being, a state you desire to remain in, if something is morally good then it describes some behavior that you desire people to adopt, if it’s a good painting then it’s a painting that you desire to look at/own/be able to emulate, etc.

“Bad” (and its synonyms) on the other hand is/are, imo, a little more interesting. Because it *usually* means “the opposite of good, undesirable,” but if your friend said:

“I’m dating this guy Mark and on Friday nights we go to bad movies with his roommate Kevin and then go back to their place and drink terrible beer while Kevin does these awful impressions of the characters… you should come with us next time!”

…then she’s probably talking about an experience that she really enjoys and desires to share even though all the adjectives she used were negative.

[nonbinaryjudean]

The reality of being Jewish right now is that antisemites think you should learn to be safe in diaspora, should understand your supposed privilege, should stop exaggerating antisemitism and that denouncing a country you’ve never even been to is the one difference between being a Jew deserving of antisemitism (Bad Jew) and a Jew who is not deserving of antisemitism (Good Jew). And then they support politicians who are literal nazis, defend violent criminals who see Jewish children and elders as valid targets, and deny that any of this is happening, it’s just a false flag. The Jews who are targeted in diaspora? Simply a false flag to get Jews to fear antisemitism and move to Israel. Because they genuinely prefer to say that Jews being murdered in diaspora is a result of Israel murdering Jews and blaming it on antisemitism to drive more Jews to Israel than to say that antisemitism is a real and serious issue right now and that they might belong to a movement that is allowing it to fester. They refuse to combat antisemitism in diaspora and yet continue to expect us to be complicit in our own dehumanization and to enjoy living in oppressive, exclusionary, and violent environments.

[historicallyspeaking]

I think the thing that really seals the deal for me on the Platner SS tattoo thing is that neither he nor any of his supporters are at all sympathetic to people who are upset about it.

I'm not saying it would make me like him, but it would make me like him *more* if he had said something like, "I understand that this symbol is deeply offensive to millions of people, and recalls some of the most devastating intergenerational trauma carried by humans today. If people can't look past that I understand, but I'm going to try and show that I have learned and changed and I commit to earning the trust of everyone who is willing to let me." Or something like that.

But no, he and the rest of the clowns who support him are just doubling down on the "it's an old tattoo, *obviously* doesn't mean anything, it's those Jews, I mean Zionists, trying to smear a good man again." And I think that's pretty telling in, and of itself.

[spider-artdump]

[mariacallous]

[sprinkledsalt]

“Had the chance to codify the Voting Rights Act—“ Do these morons even know what the VRA was? IT WAS LEGISLATION SIGNED INTO LAW BY A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT. What else were Democrats supposed to do? It was literally the law of the land!

Like Jesus Christ the significance of this legislation is literally first-paragraph-of-Wikipedia-level shit:

How else were Democrats supposed to “codify” effective legislation they created and signed into law? Oh, wait a moment….perhaps putting more liberals on the Supreme Court would’ve helped? Hmmmm hmmm hmmmm and whomst told everyone about the importance of the Supreme Court but subsequently got screamed at by these very same people for “scaremongering”?

Right. There’s no reflection whatsoever from people that maybe the internet was trained like a performance monkey to attack Democrats and perform their “both sides” dance as soon as Republicans alone roll back civil rights because of reasons that have much less to do with what Democrats actually do and much more to do with people refusing to accept responsibility for fucking up 2016, and the constant anti-Democrat propaganda that’s been pumped into every corner of the internet for the past decade. Ten fucking years of this shit because people decided voting was cringe and gobbled up their emotional support bot-backed disinformation

[fittingoutjane]

They just copy-paste lifted it from the Roe v Wade discourse. Abortion was, in fact, never codified in federal law. I doubt that such a law would have much slowed down a court as hostile as the one we have now, they overturn federal legislation a lot, but it's true that there wasn't a law.

The VRA was literally a law. Act means the legislative branch acted. They did a thing. They voted it into law.

I'm hearing a lot of this sort of stupidity. Sure, there's things the Democrats could have done in the past and didn't, but there's also things the Democrats built solidly and well which are now being dismantled, often in open violation of legal principles, because the US voting public let a death cult have a trifecta.

The post office, air traffic control, the CDC and public health generally, Medicaid, all of these HAD protections written in law. Those laws have been repealed, found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, reinterpreted into toothlessness by the Court, or simply ignored by a rogue Executive Branch, which is granted immunity by the Court.

[avian-misdemeanors]

hey goyim you don't know what zionism is stop saying it

zionism is not:

-murder all Palestinians!

-conquer Gaza!

-Jewish fascism

zionism is:

-an umbrella term for a vague but inherently Jewish ideology

-intrinsic to Judaism

-a belief in the Jewish homeland in historic Judea and Samaria, now known as Israel

-a yearning to live safe and free in that homeland

Jews are naturally argumentative with each other. we debate and disagree constantly and love each other for it. there are almost as many interpretations of, and approaches to zionism as there are Jews. for most of us zionism is peacefully living alongside the Palestinian people in our shared homeland. for most of us it's just Jewish safety, freedom, and self-determination in our indigenous lands. for most of us it's just living in a place where we won't be killed just for being Jewish.

for an extreme minority of Jews (such as Benjamin Netanyahu), it's twisted into some kind of violent pseudo-fascism.

But overall, zionism is a Jewish term for a Jewish concept and when Jews tell you you're using it wrong the right thing to do is to fucking stop and correct yourself.

I'm an anarchist, I believe in freedom and self-determination for all peoples and hope for a world in which we don't need the apparatus of the state to ensure that for anyone. I also believe in Jewish freedom, safety, and self-determination in our ancestral lands alongside the Palestinians who also call the land home.

my personal philosophy is best described as anarcho-zionism (with communist/primitivist leanings but we don't need to get into that now).

but yeah. you don't get to tell Jews what our words mean so fucking stop. and if you're frothing at the mouth to misbehave at me right now because of this post then you're only proving my point.

rant over I guess.

am Yisrael chai.

[outstandingorangs]

This person is absolutely right to me Zionism just means a home for Jews that DOESN’T hurt others and it does NOT mean a fascist state that believes in “Jew supremacy”. I am tired of people telling me what “Zionist” means when they just learned about it after October 7 whereas I’ve been learning about this my entire life. Please stay safe out there—both my Jewish, Muslim and other non-Jewish friends.

[cloacatak]

Just to be clear, and so I as a gentile can learn how to be specific and support my Jewish and Palestinian friends, is there specific language (ideological, theoretical, institutional) that refers to these definitional differences? Because what Israel is doing right now is built on a very specific, politically statist and explicitly colonialist ideological framework, with what I'm sure are complex roots. As it stands, Israel is paradigmatic of (big M) Modern colonial state-building mechanisms and practices. Given the differences in these interpretations of Zionism, where could I find resources that explore the divergence of the radically different frameworks laid out here (and how they have historically interacted)?

[applesauce42069-deactivated2024]

Zionism is an idea that can be implemented in different ways. It pre dates the existence of the modern state of Israel and it pre dates the existence of Theodore Herzl.

This type of Zionism, the type that supports harm to Palestinians, is called Kahanism.

It is named after Reb Meir Kahane. Kahane was not necessarily involved in 1948 and the Nakba but he is the poster child for the racist, anti-Palestinian ideology that has made things increasingly worse since its rise to power roughly after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. We use Kahanist to describe that element in Israeli society and outside of it.

But if you think Jews moving to Eretz Yisrael, our ancestral and indigenous homeland, is colonialism we are never going to be able to have a conversation. We can talk about the parallels between the Nakba and events related to settler colonialism because they’re there. We can talk about how the language that political Zionists used was very colonial in nature and almost definitely inspired by the European colonial world they lived in. But this movement to pretend that Jews are foreign to Eretz Yisrael and cannot be there is harmful and false, and that is what I will always pick a fight with.

[achaziel]

some good tags

[notaplaceofhonour]

The correct word for what the Israeli far right is doing would definitely not be Colonialism (which is heavily loaded with implications of a native/non-native dichotomy, in which people with no history or cultural ties to a land take it over for resources or to expand an empire); it’s Irredentism and Revanchism, which are annexation aimed at, respectively, returning/reunifying previously held land/scattered people, and revenge for previous grievances/injustices.

The Israeli far right is not trying to conquer random lands. Their expansionism is directed at a specific vision of a “Greater Israel” in which Jews hold sovereignty over all land that was previously within the borders of the unified Kingdom of Israel (Irredentism), and their anti-Muslim & anti-Arab bigotry is rooted in a desire for revenge for violence & oppression Jews have suffered from Muslims & Arabs (Revanchism).

[daughterofstories]

I'm warry about talking too much about the right way to criticize Israel or the correct terms for the Israeli far right's destructive and immoral beliefs and actions, because there are very much people who will think that, if they use the correct language, their statements cannot possibly be antisemitic, no matter that they've never bothered to think critically about the underlying ideas.

I don't want people pulling out their screeds about how Israel is the most evil colonial force ever, doing a quick find and replace to turn "colonial" into "irredental," and thinking they're now being they're being fair and even handed.

That said, I do think these terms are very important for anyone trying to look at the world through a post-colonial lens to study and understand.

Because these are motivations that can drive and justify truly horrific things.

They can also be, depending on who is acting on them, inherently anticolonial.

[ouidamforeman]

my hot take on the fantasy genre is that it's not inherently bad to do a medieval europe based fantasy world or really any european inspired fantasy world, in fact i like that stuff and think it can be very cool and while yeah definitely diversify the historical cultures the genre bases fantasy worlds on, that's always good and having european culture be the default for everything ever is bad, the problem here i never see anyone talk about is that people keep somehow making medieval and early modern europe boring as fuck and not understanding anything about it

[heimeldat]

yessssss! Please can we have actual medieval fantasy instead of vaguely renaissance with modern flair? Can we have a bunch of randos traveling together to avoid dragon attacks on their pilgrimage to see the gold-plated skull of a famous paladin who died calling down fire from heaven on the pagan hordes? Have a guy in the marketplace selling penis and vulva charms guaranteed to protect you on your way to bathe in the sacred sulfur springs? Some lads hanging out carving promise spoons for their lady friends and talking about those weird foreigners who keep insisting "nothing" is a number? A female character who serves as a castle chatelaine and spends her time keeping account books and overseeing storage and organization? Merchant caravans traveling the Spice Road and avoiding phoenixes and giant ants along the way? A princess spending an entire year working with her ladies in the solar to sew and embroider that special gown for her wedding? Strangers sharing a bed at the inn, ladies in waiting sharing a bed with their queen (or sleeping on the trundle bed beside her), entire families sharing a bed in their little thatched house, because yes there often was only one bed? Collective cultural obsession with the proper order of all things and the natural hierarchy built into the world from the lowest insect to the divinely appointed king, with heated scholarly debates about where magic-users fit into this scheme? Widespread excitement about the invention of a new type of plow and how this will completely change farming techniques? Multiple generations working to complete a hundred-year building project? Constant arguing and politicking and back-stabbing and boot-licking between the church and the state? The philosophical joy of knowing your rightful place in the grand spinning harmony of the cosmos? The apothecaries and alchemists taking the first awkward steps into developing the scientific method? The all-pervasiveness of song and worship and moral debate?

Also for the love of God hide your characters' hair! There are a million incredible, ludicrous, delightful types of medieval headgear. Loose flowing locks are out of the question please.

[mikkeneko]

...I will say that the Chalion books by Lois McMaster Bujold cover a lot of these.

[schraubd]

The Oppressor Class

Phoebe Maltz nails it, discussing the creation of a late 19th century German colony established, in part, to keep good Aryans away from those meddlesome Jews:

Anti-Semites weren’t - aren’t - just people who think they’re better than Jews. They’re people who think they’re being oppressed by Jews.

This is part of the reason why anti-Semitism so easily finds footing among certain branches of the far-left. To be sure, it’s also why anti-Semitism finds footing among the far-right – the right certainly has no trouble imagining untrustworthy aliens who threaten Our Way of Life. But the left’s rhetoric of opposing “oppression” and “hierarchy” can easily incorporate anti-Semitic prejudices insofar as they buy into popular narratives of Jews and the quintessential oppressing class.

This also relates to some popular prescriptions of how Jews can end anti-Semitism (much like ending rape or ending racism, this is of course typically presented as the obligation of the victim rather than the perpetrator). Jews will cease being hated when they cease possessing power, whether it be social (control of Hollywood), political (“the Jewish lobby”), national (Israel), or what have you. See, for example, this piece of work (proof that finding yourself on a Google Book Search isn’t always a happy day).  A Jew who has the temerity to succeed (and in particular, succeed at persuading others) is a Jew who is playing to stereotype. A polity where Jews are successfully convincing non-Jews to adopt policies Jews find amenable is a polity that clearly,clearly, has been damaged or diseased in some way. How else could Jews possibly win but by dirty pool?

The corollary is that Jews have a normative obligation to be weak, to be at the sufferance of others. It is wrong for Jews to win, and it is extra wrong for Jews to win based on their own decisions and determinations (as opposed to being gifted a privilege by the benevolent majority). Jewish power is always taken to be Jewish oppression; hence, the bare fact that Jews sometimes are in a position where they don’t have to answer to the Gentile world is itself an outrage. This is why so much of the “critical” (so to speak) assault on Jewish institutions focuses not on what they do, but the fact of their continued existence. That Jews have institutions which can make decisions which impact the world without –gasp– gentile permission; this is the anathema. The problem is when Jews are subjects – actors who have the ability to influence the world around them. The solution is to make them subjects – subjugated and controlled by others who know best.

[hero-israel]

From May 2013.

[bdalak]

It is wrong for Jews to win, and it is extra wrong for Jews to win based on their own decisions and determinations (as opposed to being gifted a privilege by the benevolent majority).

[the-library-alcove]

I think I've said this before, but there's one thing that's become extremely apparent to me from the last two and a half years of dealing with Western Leftist Jew-Hate.

Specifically, a tremendous amount of the assumptions, conclusions, and general arguments made by them make much more sense if they--implicitly or explicitly--believe that:

there was a break of continuity, both in religious practice and ethnic descent, between modern Rabbinic Judaism and Second Temple Judaism.

that modern Rabbinic Judaism is a modern, post-Reformation/Enlightenment reconstruction of an extinct religious tradition composed of post-Christian converts (akin to neo-pagans)

the sole group who can claim ethnic descent from the Second Temple-era Jews are Palestinians.

There's a lot of cross-pollination with Khazar Theory, obviously, in there, but it stands on its own to at least some extent.

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

I couldn’t reblog this without @a-s-fischer’s tags