I want to unlearn english. Every day I wake up and get faced with news stories like "good news! they just made it illegal to grind endangered birds into bonemeal!" and in the comments someone is like "this is oversimplified, and only partially true: after decades of campaigning and like 3 of them left in the wild, we've gotten them to make it illegal to snatch specimens of this specific one species of super-endangered birds right out of the wild and throw them alive into the bonemeal grinder. They're still allowed to do that in every other condition except these specific parametres."
And someone else comments in, in outrage: "Ugh pretty fucking typical that they care about ANIMALS more when it's still 100% legal to do this same thing TO CHILDREN."
And some third person comments in "actually that is also illegal in almost every place in the world. The only countries where they have no law against throwing live children into bonemeal grinder is the US and Israel."
EDIT: By the way, Bahrain, Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia, Morocco, Myanmar, Singapore, the UAE, the US, Venezuela, and Yemen, only agreed to the Genocide Convention on the condition that their citizens be immune from prosecution without the consent of their governments, making any kind of prosecution of government officials basically impossible without a domestic change of government.
A notable exclusion from that list? MOTHERFUCKING ISRAEL! WHICH IS HOW NETANYAHU CAN BE PROSECUTED BY THE ICC IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE!
So the tweet featured above has this correction tweet underneath with what looks like a powerpoint slide.
This google drive has the powerpoint that provided the slide in the correction tweet.
If you don't want to click a google drive link you can find it by going to the Global Nutrition Cluster website, finding Palestine on the "Where We Work" map, going to the country page, and scrolling to the bottom to the "Nutrition cluster meeting minutes and presentations" link.
It doesnt have a full report, it's a results summary, but I poked around the Global Nutrition Cluster, UNICEF, and Action Against Hunger websites and I couldn't find anything other than what I've already linked.
[Image description: a two-panel comic titled âMy Art Evolutionâ. In the first panel, labeled âPastâ, a beelike person frowns at a drawing of a happy sun and says âOh no. It isnât perfect no one can ever see thisâ. In the right panel, labeled âPresentâ, the person holds up the same drawing, and with a sly jokester expression (which includes a nose), says âHe he. Who wants to see my new eye crimeâ. /End description.]
my Highly Problematic Kink That I Forced Strangers To Participate In is that back when I played FFXIV, I would queue Orbonne Monastery, Eden Fulmination, or (my favorite) Eden Iconoclasm. and then I'd shriek with laughter as people loaded in from the roulette queue, expecting an easy raid, only to begin wailing in horror upon realizing they'd been dragged into some of FFXIV's most infamous side content. and because I was a healer none of them ever got to stay dead
so, for those of you who don't go here, I want to explain Eden's Verse: Iconoclasm, aka: E7N. aka: Birdnado: Thinking With Portals (That Kill You)!
see, FFXIV's boss encounters like to take a Central Mechanic that they Gradually Convolute as the fight goes on. in E7N, the Central Mechanic is that the arena is a perfect square divided into a 4 by 4 grid (so: 4 horizontal lanes and 4 vertical lanes), and the boss shoots perfectly horizontal or vertical Bird Blasts that fit exactly inside these lanes.
here's an example of one such Bird Blast: the rightmost lane is being blasted, but the lane right next to it hasn't had its Bird Blast go off yet. therefore, you can avoid being hit by standing in the left lane first, then moving into the right lane after the rightmost blast goes off and before the left blast goes off. (all my screenshots are from this video guide btw)
easy enough so far, right?
then the first Convolution happens! in which the boss summons PORTALS!
here's an example of the portals in question: two pairs, one red, one blue! it turns out that while you can't go through these portals, the Bird Blasts can - and after a short delay, they'll come out of the other portal of the same color. so now you have situations in which you not only have to dodge the first alternating set of blasts, but you have to pay attention to the order in which the portals schlorped up birds, and dodge that set of blasts, accordingly.
but wait! there's more!
it's more birds! but Uh-Oh! this time, they're all charging up at the same time, which means there won't be alternating safe spots to hide in! also, some are white and some are... purple???
well, I have good news and bad news. the good news is that you can take minimal damage here despite the birds being undodgeable. the bad news is that you must do this by being hit by the Correct color of bird. see, right before the birds charge up, you'll be given a white or a purple aura. you need to get hit by the birds of the OPPOSITE color, or else you'll suffer a Critical Overload of White/Purple. and die.
but wait, what's that in the upper left corner...?
THAT'S RIGHT! WE'RE STILL THINKING WITH PORTALS, BABY!!!!
so you not only have to make sure you get hit by the Correct color of bird, you have to pay attention to which color of portal each color of bird is entering, and position yourself so that you get hit by the Correct color of bird a Second time. except did I mention that every time you get hit by the Correct birds, your own aura swaps color? oh yeah, and of course, you're doing all of this while you're also making a valiant attempt at DPS, or healing, or tanking. hope you can hold all of that information in your head! you have three seconds to choose correctly! good luck!!!
and if the party wipes, you get to do it all again from the very start :)
anyway. you can imagine why people start wailing in despair when they load into this fight. it never gets old
Heated Rivalry Season 1 is officially being released on physical formats: DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray collectors edition with an exclusive, yet to be revealed cover art and a runtime of 5 hours. All 3 editions are reportedly releasing on April 30th, 2027.
Pre-order available on Amazon
"Alliance Home Entertainment will collaborate closely with the series' creators to develop a range of premium, collection-worthy physical editions designed to meet the passion and expectations of Heated Rivalry's devoted fanbase. These releases will feature elevated packaging, curated bonus content, and exclusive materials that celebrate the characters, storytelling, and cultural impact that have driven the series' breakout success."
as someone who wants to make Every Art And Craft, Ever, All The Time it's actually suuuuuuch a relief when I come across a technique that I don't vibe with aesthetically. my pile of Things To Learn is endless and ever-growing and normally every time I see a new thing it's like well. there it goes. on the infinite pile. so on the rare occasions i see something i DON'T have a fervent and immediate desire to learn I'm just oh wow I don't like this. thank fucking god.
Iâm glad to finally see a post that says to care about Jews without feeling the need to follow up with other potential victims, we can absolutely care about others but holy shit thatâs not why anyone should care about antisemitism, your care and concern for another human being shouldnât have to come from a self centered place.
Yeah, sorry guys, but no amount of insane conspiracies about Israel having an "arab mein kampf agitprop printing industry" is going to remove the evidence of how popular nazi literature is in the Middle East. This is an actual, for-real Problem that people who want to improve the problem of Arab antisemitism need to seriously grapple with.
logically i know "jumblr" is a portmanteau of "jew" and "tumblr" but every time i see something tagged with it i just think. ah yes. the jumblr. the machine that jumbles you. *puts you in the jumblr* get jumbled. idiot.
so ive worked in childcare for a bit now. during the pandemic, the place i worked started a day program for kids whose parents needed to return to work. turns out the school district uses memorization and cueing, and when combined with online learning that read all the instructions to them, overwhelmingly the kids aged 5-9 just... couldnt read.
i brought in a bunch of my books from childhood, and we started having one-on-one reading lessons with the littles. then i went out and bought about fifty more books secondhand. first step was covering the pictures so the kids couldnt guess what the words said and had to actually TRY reading them first. second step was making a list of new words for each kid so we could learn about those words, what they meant, and if the kids were old enough, some of the etymology behind them (because if you can recognize latin root words, it's easier to make connections for pronunciation later on eg. unicorn -> universe).
the kids HATED this. reading was previously the easiest class and now it was really, really hard. but reading class had also previously been the most boring class; their books were ten pictures with a single sentence on the opposite page. we got through it by taking turns reading books the kids picked out from my collection- they would read one sentence or paragraph, then i would read the whole page complete with funny voices, then it would be their turn again, etc. it turns out that if kids are motivated to hear the rest of a good story or a lot of information about a topic they love, they're more willing to struggle.
the kids improved so rapidly that i honestly almost cried a few times from how proud i was. one little girl (kindergarten aged) went from being unable to sound out the whole alphabet to reading goodnight moon by herself in two months :'>
all this, though, was NOT my job. my job was to keep the kids on task during their online schooling and prevent them from killing each other or starving. i am not a teacher. the school system was failing these kids to the degree that outside individual reading lessons were necessary, and school systems across the US are still doing this!
if you are a parent or teacher or childcare worker, PLEASE check to see what your kid is being taught. ask to see examples of lesson materials. raise concerns about the importance of phonics over any other reading strategy. join the pta, go to school board meetings, send emails- just make sure your kid is actually learning to read.
As an Israeli who isn't terribly excited or supportive of the current war for various reasons, I still do come across countless hypocritical opinions about how "Israel's war" is illegal and I'm genuinely amused by the mere idea of a legal war. I usually comment to ask those who claim that what, exactly, is a legal war and if they could name a legal war recently fought anywhere in the world. This of course bring about anti-Semitic tirades in response and nothing else. Of course there's international law and the Geneva Convention but none of these people actually mean THAT nor can they ever actually quote anything relating to international law. What they don't say but usually mean is that Western countries aren't ALLOWED to fight what they consider to be 'oppressed' people, as though Hezbollah or Hamas are helpless little children and not two of the most well-funded, well-organized and well-armed Islamist organizations in the Middle East. All they mean, really, is Israel Bad/America Bad. So I wonder if you have any thoughts on the matter of 'legal war' and those claims that Israel's wars are 'illegal', not based on vibes but compared to the legality of other wars.
Legal War: An Infodump Explainer
In the framework of international law, the legality of a war is determined in one of two categories:
1. Jus ad bellum: The right to go to war
Under the UN Charter, there are two ways a war is "legal"
Self-Defense (Article 51): A state can legally use force if an "armed attack" occurs.
UN Security Council Mandate: Action authorized to maintain international peace (like the 1991 Gulf War).
Critics often call wars "illegal" when they believe the "self-defense" justification is a pretext or is no longer proportionate or necessary.
2. Jus in bello: Right conduct of war
This is where people often get confused. A war can be "legal" to start but actions taken in its execution are "illegal" if a party violates the Geneva Conventions (like targeting civilians).
This works the other way, too. A war can be "illegal" to start (an act of aggression) but still be fought "legally" according to the rules of engagement.
Words Mean Things - Specific Things
Anon, you're absolutely right that In modern discourse, "illegal" is often used as a moral pejorative rather than a legal finding. It's similar to the way the words "genocide" and "apartheid" are used against Israel not by their legal definitions, but as moral condemnation that is applied selectively.
Many modern conflicts (Iraq 2003, various proxy wars) exist in a "grey zone" where legal scholars might argue for decades - but the public simply applies the "illegal" label to conflicts they find morally or politically distasteful.
Does "legal" / "illegal" make sense for assymetrical conflicts or non-state actors?
International law was designed for uniform-wearing armies. When a state fights a non-state actor (like Hezbollah or Hamas) that 100% doesn't follow these rules, the legal framework becomes incredibly messy while selective application applies not wildly different moral standards.
Ultimately, a "legal war" is one that fits into a specific, often narrow, treaty-based exception to a presumed global prohibition on inter-state violence.
Anon writes:
What they don't say but usually mean is that Western countries aren't ALLOWED to fight what they [leftists] consider to be 'oppressed' people, as though Hezbollah or Hamas are helpless little children and not two of the most well-funded, well-organized and well-armed Islamist organizations in the Middle East.
Funded and armed for decades by Iran, yeah.
Again, in the eyes of many modern professional havers-of-opinions, legality has been replaced by a faux morality based on relative capability and emotional resonance.
âThe relative capability argument is a kind of Underdog Bias. There is a pervasive (and often non-legal) belief that the party with more advanced technology, a formal state, or "Western" backing is inherently the aggressor.
Anon is right that this framing also involves a denial of agency. By framing groups like Hezbollah or Hamas as merely "oppressed people" rather than sophisticated military entities (run by intelligent adults who are capable of moral discernment), critics effectively pretend they're not armies/combatants. (Perhaps worse, this is also a racist dehumanization of Hezbollah/Hamas members, casting them as reactive animals instead of intelligent human beings making conscious choices.)
This creates a useful rhetorical shield. If one side is "helpless victims," any action against them is dishonestly framed as a crime rather than a war, regardless of the actions of the supposed victims.
Under the Geneva Conventions, the status of a person as oppressed or an underdog is irrelevant to the legality of a strike.
What matters is Distinction, Military Necessity, and Proportionality.
Distinction (Is this target a combatant?):
One must seek to distinguish between a valid military target and a protected civilian object.
Combatants are prohibited from intentionally attacking civilians or civilian infrastructure.
However, a "sensitive" civilian object (like a hospital or ambulance) loses its protection the moment it is used for military purposes (like as a command center or troop carrier). At that point, the law reclassifies it as a valid military objective.
That's why Israel was not committing a war crime by attacking Hamas in hospitals or killing combatants disguised in Red Crescent uniforms and riding in ambulances. Using the hospital or an ambulance for military purposes, as Hamas did and does, is a war crime called perfidy - feigning protected status to commit an attack. Targeting those objects after Hamas militarizes them is not.
Military Necessity (Does hitting this target help win the conflict?):
This principle allows for the use of force only if it is actually required to achieve a legitimate military goal (like neutralizing an enemy combatant or destroying a weapons cache). You can't just blow things up for "fun" or out of spite. Hamas using a building as a command center makes that building a legit target - not the whole block. That brings us to...
Proportionality (is the civilian 'cost' too high?):
Even if a target is valid (Distinction) and hitting it is helpful (Military Necessity), it still may be "illegal" to pull the trigger if the collateral damage is too high.
The expected loss of civilian life must not be excessive compared to the direct military advantage gained, so you can't (for example) level an entire occupied apartment building just to take out one sniper on the roof. The "cost" in civilian lives would outweigh the "value" of that one kill.
This is some of the most nauseating math I can imagine, and that's the root of the problem with proportionality.
The law doesn't define "excessive" No numbers, no ratios. There's no objective standard. Instead, it leaves that judgement to the "reasonable commander" at the time of the strike.
Critics often see a resulting tragedy and call it "illegal" out of emotional resonance, ignoring distinction, the military value (necessity) of the target, and the proportionality.
Can we name an unambiguously legal war in modern times?
You bet.
The 1991 Gulf War to push the Iraqi military out of Kuwait was unquestionably legal by all standards.
There was explicit Security Council authorization.
There were clear acts of unprovoked Iraqi aggression against another sovereign state.
The US was invited into Kuwait by the sovereign Kuwaiti government
The objectives were proportionate
That's what a legal war looks like.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the 2003 US Invasion of Iraq.
No authorization
Fabricated self-defense justification
Preemptive framing based on that fabricated justification
Now let's apply the same framework to the US/Israel strikes in Iran:
On jus ad bellum, I think the US attacks on the regime seem closer to Iraq 2003 than to the 1991 Gulf War.
The US is using preemption (hitting them before they hit us) as the primary legal justification and that doesn't hold up.
Israel's justification, though, is easier to argue under article 51 of the UN Charter. Israel has been attacked for years by the regime's proxies, including on 10/7/23. On OCtober 1st, 2024, Iran launched what was at the time the largest ballistic missile attack in history - at Israel. The regime has openly worked to destroy Israel for decades.
The jus in bello questions can't really be answered yet.
To do so so would require detailed knowledge about specific strikes and specific targets.
Distinction, Necessity, Proportionality...we can't apply any of these tools without much more information than we have.
Meanwhile, when most people say "the war is illegal" they're not talking about any of this.
They're just reaching for the strongest possible moral condemnation they can think of. They don't (and can't) articulate which provision was violated.
We can - and we should. We should do so objectively and honestly, regardless of our feelings or group alliances.
Does it matter if the strikes on the regime by the US are illegal?
Was anyone in the GW Bush administration ever held accountable for the errors and deceptions of the 2003 invasion of Iraq?
Nope.
If enforcement is weak, inconsistent, or non-existent...is it still "law"?
Some argue that law requires centralized enforcement, and International Law doesn't have that. Those folks say that this means it isn't truly law.
Others argue law is a system of recognized rules that states treat as binding, even if enforcement is diffuse, indirect, ot reputational. These folks say international law is real...but structurally different. Enforcement may be delayed, but not absent.
(Tell that to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, et al)
So when critics say "international law isn't real"...are they right?
Their strongest arguments are:
It has no central enforcement authority
Powerful states can ignore it
Compliance is inconsistent at best
Courts lack jurisdiction over key actors
They're undeniably right that enforcement is uneven and usually political - and that power seems to matter much more than "legality."
But I would argue:
Law does not require perfect enforcement to be real
Many domestic laws are also unevenly enforced
International law regularly influences state behavior
So what is international law?
International law is a system of rules that states generally follow because it is in their interest to do so, backed by decentralized and imperfect enforcement mechanisms. It's neither a global criminal justice system nor meaningless.
International law is real, but structurally weak.
Enforcement is diffuse, political, and inconsistent.
It still shapes incentives, behavior, and legitimacy over time.
So...is International Law "not real"? Is it fake?
No, that's too simplistic to be accurate - but the people claiming it isn't real are capturing something true about its limitations, biases, and wildly uneven/selective enforcement.
I gotta say, as an oblivious white guy, it's absolutely astounding finding out the things ppl have been racist about. I'm taking a piano class, and it includes a book about the history of piano ("A Natural History of the Piano" by Stuart Isacoff) that I'm supposed to read a ch a week and make notes for. All good all good. He discusses race in piano a lot, how culture shapes music and composers.
This chapter is about melody-based pianists, and mostly about the Romantic period of music. Isacoff's writing has been really interesting in that he discusses how the public viewed the pianists while alive and then after their deaths- and its pages about how some romantic pianists like Johannes Brahms and Felix Mendelssohn's music were panned for decades. I'm enjoying the deep dive on how music can go unappreciated in life or underappreciated afterwards.
Then at the tail end. One little paragraph. It's fucking antisemitism. Johannes Brahms wasn't Jewish, but his music was accused of "sounding" Jewish during the culture war. Felix Mendelssohn was enjoyed in life but three years after his death Richard Wagner (fucking coward) published an essay titled "Judaism in Music" that was a smear campaign to his and other ppls' legacies.
It's like getting hit with an ancient wet fish. Whattaya mean you can play music "too Jewish"????? What does that shit even MEAN???? Why are you publishing a whole ass essay being mad at Jewish people for playing music??? DEAD PPL YOU GOTTA STOP DOING THIS SHIT.
This got more attention than I expected (not a lot, mind, but usually my rants get like 4 likes and we move on, bc this is tumblr) so I wanted to add something from my experience, and it's that a lot of white people are legitimately that fucking dumb. I am one of them. I just got out of a college class on the literature of the Holocaust last semester, and it's insane how something taught as one of the worst things in history is both A.) not as new as white ppl like to pretend it is and B.) somehow WORSE in every aspect you can think of.
Want an example? Sure! Josef Mengele. The man who took twins from their mothers- and that was, in a sick way, probably the nicest part of all he did to the people under his thumb. He never went to prison or trial. He lived "in hiding" in South America for over three decades- while it's true that some of that time was spent hidden away and paranoid, he lived a long life of many years of drinking, partying, having powerful political friends, and a second wife he stole from his dead brother. He even got to publish scientific works in the newspaper.
He passed away on vacation, having a stroke amongst friends, and was buried under a false name for a few years before being dug up for genealogical testing. One of the most well-known Nazis who committed crimes against women and children lived to his sixties, wrote an autobiography (that's how there's so much info about his life on the run, btw; it was never published, but they found it in his home), and was even still in contact with his family. He got to see his son in person once. I won't go into gorey details unprompted like this, but this is a man who really liked operating on pregnant women and unironically went everywhere with candies to give children while experimenting on them. The government knew where he was. The government refused to hand him over. So for thirty years, Holocaust survivors lived knowing he was out there on the streets somewhere.
I was fifteen when I found out about the antisemitic caricature. Not SEEN it, mind- I grew up on Harry Potter, the greedy merchant, the same as everyone else in my generation- but it wasn't linked to a race until then. My first reaction to finding out that the hook-nose banker was antisemitic wasn't 'i've never seen this man in my life'. It was 'Wait, he's supposed to be Jewish?' because while I knew Jewish people have been stereotyped against, I wasn't taught how like they do with most other big racism oofs.
They teach you about Nazis in school. They tell you that the Nazis targeted Jewish people even before the death camps. They don't explain how, or how much, or how absolutely barbaric the inhumane actions were- there were a good chunk of Nazis out there who genuinely loved their jobs and getting to torture others. That's just how American learning is so skewed- I didn't know about the internment camps until that age either, and I learned from a voluntary (and, of course, despicably underfunded) Japanese class, not history.
I wanna end this with something I also only learned last semester, at twenty-six, when I should've been taught a lot earlier: the term genocide wasn't defined because this was the first instance of Jewish people being massacred for being Jewish, but the biggest. The term for the systematic murdering of Jews beforehand was pogrom. They have a word for it because it HAPPENS A LOT.
Anyway: Don't take it from me, take it from actual people who were there. If you want a specific name to look into, Dr. Gisella Perl was a Jewish doctor in Auschwitz who was forced to work under Mengele. She wrote and published her story, which is available on archive, as well as tried to testify against Mengele, though she was brushed off by the government due to a frankly batshit clerical error. Eva Mozes Kor, one of the most well-known survivors, gave many talks about her story along with many many years of activism, which included locating 122 other Mengele survivors across the globe. Though controversial for her decision to forgive the Nazis, I was personally moved by her strength- her forgiveness was given in exchange for documented proof by a Nazi doctor to the horrors she and others went through, signed and dated, to publicly defraud Holocaust deniers of what little "evidence" they pretended to have.
(Genocide, as an aside, is actually a lot more complicated a term than I first knew, too. For example, despite there not being (known) death camps (there's still a lot of murder and brainwashing), there is currently an ongoing LEGALLY-DEFINED genocide of the Uyghur people in China by mass sterilization. The idea is that while they aren't directly murdering all of them, they are making it their goal to ensure the destruction of a race from the planet with government backing and funding.)
The trouble with a lot of this, the âpunch a naziâ website, is that much of its supposedly leftist user base canât tell a nazi or nazi talking points apart from a rock. A lot of people will talk about supporting Jews and the Jewish community, but this websiteâs userbase has also effectively ghettoized most its Jewish users. You donât hear them talking about how terrified they are about the uptick in antisemitism from all parts of the political spectrum because youâve blocked them all. Any post on Judaism, no matter how innocuous, it could be a cute picture of a cat in front of a plate of hamantaschen, that does make it through ends up being flooded with antisemitic comments. Because youâve effectively allowed much of this website to become a nazi bar.
#antisemitism#nazism is a form of fascism thatâs built around the idea of hating jews#itâs a central tenant of the ideology#and far too much of this website uses it as a generic insult#without recognizing that theyâre parroting nazi talking points
I consider anyone on social media who uses "Zionist" as a slur to be antisemitic. I consider anyone who calls Israel "a settler-colonialist ethnostate" to be antisemitic and fucking ignorant of history (or just stupid). Hamasniks are antisemitic and Useful Idiots. If you're one of those foolish children who posts "Zionists DNI", congrats, you're a baby Nazi.
Nazism is a profoundly stupid and cruel ideology. Its adherents are idiots and bullies, as can be seen on U.S. news all the time. It isn't the only flavor of antisemitism out there--Russian antisemitism has just as ugly a history and was just as blind and stupid.
Just to be a nerd about this: I'm going to break the ones on the right down, and show how they're connected to the ones on the left.
This is long.
But if you're questioning some part of the meme above, you can scroll down and learn how these things are similar.
SKINHEADS VS KEFFIYEHS
Skinheads and people wearing keffiyehs are not inherently or necessarily biased against Jews. But as a group, we've seen a disproportionate amount of negativity and even violence against Jews from each one.
SWASTIKAS VS RED TRIANGLES
Swastikas are a symbol of a group that explicitly considers Jews the enemy; accuses them of controlling the international mass media and imperialistic nations with their wealth; starting and profiting from every war; corrupting societies; wanting to occupy the entire world; and having outlined this plan in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion....
And so are inverted red triangles. I literally copied all of that from Hamas's founding documents.
Additionally, inverted red triangles are the symbol Hamas uses to mark targets it's boasting about hitting or hunting down.
Berlin has banned the inverted red triangle symbol due to its use by Hamas and their supporters to mark enemy targets in videos and graffiti
NOT WHITE VS TOO WHITE
Nazis and other white supremacists, to this day, vehemently argue that Jews are not white. Jews are one of their favorite targets.
That's a big part of the reason that in the U.S., almost every single year, the second-most hate crimes are against Jews.
(The most: Black people. The third-most: Gay men. If you include the hate crimes against all groups in the LGBTQIA+ community, the total is larger, but still third.)
Worse: there are 7.55 times as many Black people in the U.S. as Jews. But there are about twice as many hate crimes against Black people as Jews. Which means that in terms of hate crimes per person, Jews win first prize?
If you're not Jewish, you're probably going, "But you can't trust the ADL!" And I have to tell you: these statistics are from the FBI, actually.
But this is a good moment to think about where your distrust of the ADL comes from. Was the source solid? Did you fact-check what it was saying?
If a different marginalized group said, "We've tracked the actions that harm us," and people outside that group said, "No they don't, you're just bad people who are trying to chill free speech," what would you think? Would you have the same reaction to that group as to the ADL?
Anyway, here's a fun tweet from Elon Musk:
Please note: that is an actual link preview from the actual link to his tweet. That is not a photoshopped fake tweet. The man literally said this, and I didn't see the Musk-hating progressive community even blink.
He had previously said that white people are gonna get eliminated and replaced, which is standard neo-Nazi garbage. And which DID elicit a lot of outrage.
This is not Elon Musk agreeing that Jews are just regular white people like him.
This is Elon Musk saying that Jews are hyper-privileged. That Jews have enormous power.
This is, simultaneously, Elon Musk weaponizing the Holocaust to be like, "See? That's proof of white genocide!"
Nazi Twitter took great offense.
This Nazi's response neatly bridges the gap for everyone. This is where the two beliefs join hands and become one.
(Tumblr struggles with tweet previews sometimes, so that one IS a screenshot.)
I've seen lots of "Jews are white" people also say that a secret cabal of Jews controls the media, the government, and/or the world. Sometimes they think the Israeli government is that secret cabal of Jews. Sometimes they think AIPAC is. Sometimes they just call it "Zionists."
Other comments included:
"You got community noted by the jews that run your community notes"
"Stop playing stupid." followed by this:
And, of course, "The jews are NOT White. They wear 'Whiteness' like a skin suit when it's "convenient. Don't believe me, listen to her..."
Followed by a video in which a Jewish creator explains, "Some Jews are white, like me, but our whiteness is conditional, and that's why it's differentâŠ. we are [considered] white when it's convenient [for actual white people]. We are [considered] white when our whiteness boosts the numbers of white people in order to oppress people of color. We are white. until. we're fucking. NOT.
"And when we're not, we're almost hated in a different way because we can 'fool you' with our whiteness. We can assimilate. Which is why the man whose name starts with H put stars on our jackets. so we wouldn't trick anybody."
(He got the idea, presumably, from the centuries of European countries making Jews wear badges or silly hats for the same purpose. And they got the idea from the centuries of caliphates doing the exact same thing across North Africa and the Middle East.
Which begs the question: if Jews are so obviously white, why did Jews from Morocco through Afghanistan need to wear special badges, belts, or even strings of bells, to make sure they weren't accidentally treated as equals there either?)
Back to the bullet points.
The argument I have seen made over and over, across social media platforms, is that Israel was founded by and is mostly made up of Ashkenazi Jews. I.e. Jews who immigrated from Europe. Who are, therefore, white people.
Literally: they came from Europe, therefore they're white.
Because nothing says, "I am a well-informed person engaging in perfectly reasonable discourse" like the descendants of people who forced Jews into Europe, repeatedly exiled them from region after region, and/or repeatedly tried to kill them off, insisting that being in Europe makes you white.
This short gives a good overview of what's wrong with that theory. But basically, moving to an area with less sunlight will in fact make your descendants lighter-skinned. So will intermarriage and - though this video doesn't address it - rape.
When people are challenged on this idea, the fallback is Khazar theory and racist blood quantum.
Blood quantum emerged as a way to measure 'Indian-ness' through a construct of race. So that over time, Indians would literally breed themselves out and rid the federal government of their legal duties to uphold treaty obligations.
This is the inverse of the equally racist "one drop rule."
The one drop rule measured the amount of 'black blood' that black people had in society. And that ensured that every person who had at least one drop would be considered black and would be covered under these discriminatory laws and, even in the earlier days, enslaved.
Basically, if you have a way to exploit a group, you define them using "one drop." If you don't, then you just want to eliminate them. So you use "blood quantum"/DNA to argue them out of existence.
People will claim that research shows Ashkenazi Jews only have European DNA (false) and that's why DNA tests are illegal in Israel (false): because (((they))) don't want you to know they don't belong there!
There are 4,000+ years of continuous archeological and historical records showing that the Jewish people originated in Israel and are the only group that has continuously been there.
But we don't learn about the history of West Asia (the Middle East) in Western schools. So we default to our racist assumptions about the people there, and ignore and speak over all of them.
HOLOCAUST DENIAL VS HOLOCAUST INVERSION
Holocaust Inversion is a much easier one to explain.
Inversion is when you take a traumatizing experience of oppression that a group has experienced, and claim that actually, that group is the one committing that oppression on another.
White replacement/white genocide theories are a good example of that.
Like when white conservative groups, who are only here because their forebears violently replaced the existing populations (in some cases via actual genocide), claim that they're being deliberately "replaced" by indigenous people immigrating from farther south. And that the intention is somehow to commit genocide against them.
Inversion conveniently waters down what actually happened.
It relieves people of the perceived guilt from what their ancestors did, while awarding themselves the moral weight of it.
It's so, so juicy, you guys. It's such a good move. Who wouldn't want to turn, for example, the deliberate attempt to demonize all Jews, in order to gain the power to take over the world, while wiping them off the earth, and the mass enslavement of Jews along the way, into a war that has killed about as many Gazans as have been born during that time?
It simultaneously removes "you literally tried to kill all of us less than a century ago, don't talk to us about genocide" as an argument, and (ironically) gives you that healthy moral glow you feel from passionately arguing against the Holocaust.
Plus, it makes arguments against it sound like they're the ones minimizing it. It's very difficult to argue against exaggerations of the death toll, for instance, without sounding callous and uncaring of those who have been killed.
Ultimately, Holocaust inversion does the same thing as Holocaust denial.
Many Holocaust deniers don't argue that the Holocaust never happened. Instead, they seek to minimize it by saying that far fewer than 6 million Jews died. 271,000 is a popular denial number that I've seen thrown around in a lot of Instagram comments.
Or to increase the number of non-Jews who were killed. To argue that it was not specifically an attempt to kill every Jew on earth. To argue that Jews weren't targeted at all.
By contrast, people commonly say, "what Israel is doing in Gaza is exactly like the Holocaust."
This is the equivalent of saying that the Nazi Party spent almost two years bombing a 140 square mile area where 15% of the Jews on earth lived. And attacking it through ground invasions. And that they let humanitarian aid in.
And that the UN could not distribute that aid effectively, partly because 88% of its trucks regularly got looted, partly because there was a war going on around it.
It's actually a brilliant way to erase both the Holocaust and October 7.
Because the assumption, and implication, is that Israel attacked Gaza in order to wipe Palestinians off the face of the earth. Or at least to drive them out of Gaza and grab the land.
Land where Israel had already destroyed all its settlements in 2005, when it pulled out of Gaza and turned it fully over to Palestinian rule. Land where all synagogues have been destroyed. I don't know why Israel would wait 20 years and then try to take the entire thing back. So far, nobody I've asked has been able to give me a reason for thinking that.
It erases the fact that Hamas invaded Israel and mutilated, tortured, and burned its way across an area larger than the Gaza Strip itself, in just one day.
It erases how incredibly, graphically violent that attack was.
It erases the fact that Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, kicking the Palestinian government out entirely, and has run it as a brutal dictatorship ever since.
It erases the fact that Hamas's stated mission is to violently destroy Israel (because Jews are terrible and have no right to be there, see above).
And that it asked for, and got, $500,000,000 from Iran to plan October 7.
And that it has publicly stated, at least twice, that it will keep attacking until Israel has been "annihilated." (Hamas even has explicit plans for what it will do when it conquers that land.)
Ok I don't know why I thought "easy to explain" would mean I could explain it BRIEFLY
NAZI GERMANY VS THE USSR
Honestly, these are just two wildly Jew-hating places. That's it, that's the tweet.
Okay, fine:
The Russian Empire, while trying to control more and more land, instigated pogroms that scapegoated and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews, while driving out about as many. It continued to be a nightmarishly Jew-hating and Jew-scapegoating place, yea, verily even unto today.
Doesn't matter what it's called, it's been doing the same shit the whole time. Including empire-building invasions.
And part of the way it scapegoated and mass-murdered Jews was by creating some of the worst, most powerful antisemitic propaganda the world has ever seen, and actively spreading it around the world.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times. Although repeatedly discredited,
The Nazi Party had the same playbook. Land, propaganda, murder, profit.
And it drew HEAVILY from the Russian playbook. It even integrated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into its massive propaganda machine.
It was especially heartened by the fact that nobody lifted a finger against Russia for killing and cleansing a total of probably 500,000 Jews.
The main difference is: because the Nazi Party was willing to do the killing itself, and to industrialize it, it was able to kill 2 out of every 3 Jews in all of Europe. 90%+ of the Jews in the countries it occupied. Along with all the Jews who were just killed by civilians who believed in the cause.
It's especially awful that people claim Israel was founded by "white European colonizer Jews," when "white European colonizers" spent so much time and effort trying to wipe the Jews out during that time.
It's also just plain annoying that people misinterpret early Zionist writings as meaning, "we're powerful colonizers!" when, for the first 40 years of the Zionist movement, that was literally the Ottoman Empire.
I asked someone recently how she could claim those Jews were colonizing a literal empire. The response was that they were obviously colonizers, because they came from Europe.
Please send help.
RIGHT WING VS LEFT WING
This is purely a matter of what other issues you support, and - sometimes - how you frame your arguments.
I literally can't tell the difference on Twitter anymore.
Like, ok:
She's responding to French president Emmanuel Macron saying France stands with Lebanon. "Exterminating the population" is Holocaust inversion. I'm going to guess that this is a leftist, based on the "all of humanity" wording, but I literally don't know. Let's find out!
Her header says, "The whole world is my temple, love is my sanctuary, the universe is my homeland." She's white and blonde as heck, which maybe explains why she feels like the entire universe is her homeland.
Her retweets are for USAID, against everyone in the Epstein files, against attacking Iran. She has one saying, "they lied to you about what a terrorist looks like," with a photo of some white dude I'm guessing is Pete Hesgeth or somebody. And another claiming that they lied to you about who bombed all the countries in West Asia - that it was not Iran, it was all "false flag operations" by the US and Israel.
(hilariously, one of the tweets claims that this was "revealed" by someone named "Krystal Ball." propagandists have realized they don't have to try anymore)
And then: a retweet from white supremacist Jackson Hinkle, whose "MAGA Communism" has been called out by antifascist groups for "cryptofascist" socialism. In other words, he infiltrates the left wing and creates a pipeline to the right wing.
(Followed by a tweet claiming that "If we don't stop Israel in time, it will do to the entire world what it has already done to the Palestinians." Again, buying right into the standard-issue propaganda that comes from both Russia and the Nazis.)
Let's do just one more! I thought right-wing at first, based on "vibes" I guess. But then I noticed the use of "anti zionists," which implies leftist. And "zios" was popularized by KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, which should mean right-wing - but it's been embraced by the left now.
Plus, it's in response to a politically conservative rabbi rejoicing that literal Nazis Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Joe Kent are no longer working in government.
Aaaaand.... I'm wrong.
His Twitter page implies that he's a Christian Nationalist. His most recent retweet is from a contest to win three guns. And he follows that by retweeting something claiming that your enemy if you're a Republican or Democrat is not the other party, it's Satanists. This one really clinches it:
oof.
Okay, last item!
OPEN BIGOTRY/RACE POLLUTERS VS ELIMINATIONISM/ZIONIST INQUISITION
This is very "potayto, potahto."
But only if both potatoes are green and poisonous.
I assume we all understand that openly being a bigot is bad. And that believing a group is "polluting" your race is also bad. So let's look at "eliminationism."
The most obvious example is the frequent claim that Israel is "Occupied Palestine"/"a failed state" that should be eliminated.
Some people who say this seem to think it's possible to just order a country's government to disband and hand the reins over to the neighboring government.
This would be especially complicated in the current situation, when Israelis are explicitly not allowed in almost any West Bank cities and it's a capital offense to sell land in Palestine to Israelis.
But also, that's just... literally not a thing. The way you get that would be by Palestine invading and conquering Israel. That's what you're talking about. And honestly, the government of Palestine doesn't seem to want that land or its people. That's a lot to dump on it all of a sudden.
Others who say this are clear that they mean someone should indeed invade and kill all the Zionists, by which they mean everyone in Israel. (Including about half the Jews on earth.)
Personally, I think that there should be a once-a-millennium limit on killing half the Jews on earth. (/s)
oh crap they're just gonna say they're taking this one early fuck shit fuck (/gen)
Literally, though, you cannot just sit there and call for the destruction of a country. You know that's calling for genocide.
But what else does "eliminationism" mean?
Pervasive right-wing extremist themes on radio, television, and some online news sources (often as a modern-day replacement for hard-copy newspapers and newsletters).... support an increasingly passionate and virulent message in public discourse.
This message encourages persons who feel uneasy or displaced in society to expiate their grievances not through the political process, but through murder.
That paper points out that Americans tend to think our country is immune to such things - and that our history of lynching, among other things, disproves that.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were thousands of lynchings. This was a direct reaction to the end of slavery. That's why (and when) the KKK and other white supremacist groups started.
Being a Jew in a predominantly Christian town could be fatal.
However, courts recognized that if the defendant was a black man the likelihood of race-based hostility grew significantly.
....When a more or less silent majority discounts eliminationist rhetoric as "merely" symbolic, the message can manifest as action. Cultural symbols gain power by articulating aspects of a group narrative.
People generally talk about this as a right-wing, even fascist phenomenon.
But like.
This is a false binary. But it's a very fucking popular false binary.
Because let's be real: we're all very fucking angry about how shitty capitalism is. And especially American capitalism. And especially its impact on the American healthcare system. And it's fun to fantasize angrily that this one dude killing one healthcare CEO is going to get us universal coverage. Instead of having zero impact on the system.
Fantasizing that you can achieve major social change by just going out and killing people, and that doing that wouldn't fuck you up, makes people feel powerful. Which makes us happy.
It's fun to imagine taking your rage out on the people in power.
But it's kind of scary to see people cheering on the murder of someone they abstractly hate, when you've seen time and again that they also abstractly hate you.
(In fact, people were spreading disinformation claiming that the New York Times ran a headline saying "The Glorification of Luigi Mangione Is Inherently Anti-Israel."
People are at the point where they make literally everything about "Israel" somehow. Everything is a "zionist psyop."
It feels like watching the Protocols of the Elders of Zion get popular. It feels like the 1930s.)
Symbols are manipulated to create an atmosphere that accepts political violence.
The next ones are replies to someone selling cryptocurrency called Snowball:
An NYC group tried to incite a second Crown Heights riot in 2025, spreading the same old lies that started the first one. but this time, targeting the "jewish supremacist zios" who "martyred" the kid who died to a car accident.
This was the lie that started the Crown Heights Riots in 1991, in which 29-year-old Yankel Rosenbaum was murdered and 38 civilians were injured.
This begins by dehumanizing the targeted social group. The repeated use of culturally specific imagery supports brutalizing such targets individually.
Research from the Union of Jewish Students suggests antisemitic attitudes have become increasingly common on university campuses
"The research found that student groups have explicitly called for violence against Jews, with some justifying the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach in December, which killed 15 people and injured 40. Nearly half, 49 per cent, of students had heard slogans or chants glorifying Hamas, Hezbollah or other proscribed groups on campus, while 47 per cent have witnessed justification of the October 7 attacks."
As moderate voices remain silent or ineffective in the face of such events, extremist messages move from the fringe toward the center of public discourse.
By imbuing the message with religiosity, extremist positions and actions convert into "[h]oly wars and just causes [that] invite warriors to view battle as sacred drama."
A 19-year-old accused of setting a Mississippi synagogue on fire allegedly dubbed Beth Israel a âsynagogue of Satan.â The phrase echoed anti
Extremist violence against the dehumanized becomes accepted.
Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter says Washington attack on diplomats was deliberate and preplanned, linking suspect Elias Rodriguezâs 'Gaza
Episodic events of assault turn into acts of arson and rampages, then, if unchecked, into pogroms and genocide.
A man accused of yelling âFree Palestineâ and throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaz
After the Bondi Beach shooting, what is at stake is not a âconflationâ between Jews and Zionists, but the power of anti-Israel hatred itself
No arrests yet, as new Iran-linked terror group claims responsibility for burning of four community ambulances next to Golders Green synagog
We have grown used to the reality of anti-Semitic attacks like the torching of the Hatzola ambulance service
(de-paywalled links: the bondi beach one, the jews are no longer surprised one)
âThere are 4,000+ years of continuous archeological and historical records showing that the Jewish people originated in Israel and are the only group that has continuously been there.â
^^^^Why is this so hard for people to grasp.
Great read. I had NO idea how the Crown Heights incident went down - for years Iâm sorry to say that I had also thought the Hatzalah ambulance abandoned that child.
Also wanted to add, regarding Jews and privilege -
Itâs a lot more complex, but in a nutshell - a lot of Jewish success comes from multiple factors. While a small percentage of Jews who are light-skinned and not-visibly-Jewish like myself do have some privilege and advantages in the west when visibly out in the open, we do NOT benefit from white privilege.
Weâre a tiny group with overlapping culture of emphasis of education despite diaspora. We were not allowed to have property in many countries in many time periods. PLUS we were often exiled out of places and lost whatever property we had. So education was all we had. Knowledge could not be taken.
We were not allowed ârealâ jobs. Medicine (especially in Europe) back in the day was basically considered what crystal healing is today, so it was a job that a lot of Jews were allowed to do and they did what they could to survive.
Dealing with money and jewelry was also considered materialistic and lowly, so we were allowed to do that too. And again, we thrived. Hence the Jewish banker stereotype.
We were not allowed medicine sometimes - New York City hospitals had often banned both Jewish doctors AND patients - so we founded our own, Mount Sinai Hospital.
We were not allowed to make our own stories. So we founded Hollywood, we helped found Broadway. Again we thrived because we learned that our work and education was our bread and butter. But⊠that became âJews control media, Jews control Hollywoodâ etc.
It doesnât mean weâre better than anyone, nor do we think weâre better than anyone.
Very rarely throughout history was there ever a case of Jews owning slaves, Jews never invaded any country and stole their resources (contrary to the âNakbahâ narrative - we never kicked out Arabs from our own land, they left on their own. The descendants of those Arabs who stayed are largely still residing in Israel as equal citizens.)
So our success was NOT from stealing or pillaging or taking advantage. It was fully made and earned.
The usual case is white privileged people taking advantage over POC, enslaving them, hoarding generational wealth, etc.
Jews donât fit neatly into either stereotype, so this leads to wild and widespread discriminatory assumptions about Jews.
We didnât steal but we also didnât need saving.
Very rarely will anyone come to save us. Thatâs why Nazi Germany was able to kill so many of us (1/3rd of our entire global population). Hitler was only stopped because he was stepping on other countriesâ toes, not because anyone cared that much about Jews. Thereâs literally more uproar from the west currently about Palestinian casualties than there ever were for Jewish casualties in WWII.
Thatâs why we believe in protecting ourselves. Thatâs why the IDF exists (that and 80 years of terrorism). Thatâs why modern Israel is a thriving country today despite starting off with poverty and poor resources, and many traumatized survivors from Europe or forcibly removed immigrants from Arab countries.
(And lastly, impoverished Jews do still exist, racism within and outside ofJudaism does exist, as with any group. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.)
The "Jews are white" crowd loves to pretend that Israel is a white country. It's not. A lot of its citizens are descendants of refugees kicked out of North Africa and the Middle East. They're dark skinned. Physically, these are people whose foundation shade is solidly in the middle, not people who would use "Alabaster" or "Fair". There are also all the Jews who aren't from EuropeâBeta Israel (Ethiopian), Ugandan, Kaifeng (Chinese), Cochin (Indian), et cetera. A lot of us settled in Europe, but not all of us. Skin tones in Israel are extremely varied and you'll see that a lot.
And since people love to make this a white vs brown issue, Palestinians also run the gammut! Ahed Tamimi, who is a fairly well known Palestinian activist, is blonde and blue eyed. She's whiter than I am! Does that make her not Palestinian? Of course not! Palestinians also have variety and their skin tone doesn't have anything to do with their race or oppression or indigenity. Just like Jewish Israeli skin tones have nothing to do with Jewish oppression or indigenity.
"This fic is literally just porn, why do you care about the quality of the editing" unfortunately, both my brain and my dick have strong opinions about verb tenses.
