JFNA threw in a free meal voucher for the day; a couple of concession stands were certified kosher and offered hot dogs and chicken schnitzel sandwiches.

Uhh… were those made from imitation meat or something? I’m confused.

“A year in the headlines is a long time,” said Zeitz, 57, who was wearing a blue “I Stand with Israel” sweatshirt. “It’s waning. I get the feeling some of us are losing interest.”

Look, I know that you kids had lots of fun LARPing as ancient Israelites for the past seventy-six years, pretending that unarmed children are really the seed of big scary Amalek, but now everybody else is tired of playing with you. Give up. Colonialism is not an air element that Jews need to breathe.

Just let the Zionist project go… it’s over.

How my professor and a fellow student understood this quote is that Marx says that history can only change if Europeans do something, if Europeans are somehow involved. So Marx was very Eurocentric. Do you agree with this interpretation?

I actually laughed out loud when I read this. Definitely not. Only an anticommunist whom somebody indoctrinated to interpret everything that we say in the worst light possible could arrive at such a ridiculous conclusion. The quote was not even talking about Europeans in general.

The British Empire imposed capitalism and colonialism on India, therefore, whether it intended it or not, that made revolution inevitable. The British Empire was certainly not the direct cause of revolution (which nobody argued), only the indirect one.

LGBTQ+ lives have only ever improved under LIBERALISM

https://books.google.com/books?id=ygJ1RG0PQ70C&pg=PA94

The psycho-endocrinologist Professor Aron Belkin, a pioneer of Soviet research into transsexualism, even carried out sex-change operations without conducting any psychological testing or employing any other sort of psychological expertise—not because he didn’t want to do it; the country simply had no literate psychologists or approved tests to aid him.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200823154553im_/http://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/juskaite_jurate.pdf

While there is no academic literature on transsexualism in the Soviet Union, there are journalistic accounts of the first sex reassignment surgery in the Soviet Union. It dates back to as 1972 and was performed by the Latvian surgeon Viktor Kalnberz. In published interviews Kalnberz emphasizes that the surgery was performed with substantial medical knowledge.

It was not as groundbreaking as it might appear from the first glance. By that time, the topic was discussed in medical circles. He also confirms that he was familiar with the fact that a similar surgery had taken place in [the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic] and some information about it was available to him.³ Kalnberz’s account suggests that by the time he performed the surgery, a discourse on transsexualism already existed in the Soviet region and CEE. My research supports these claims.

And I have to add that saying that ‘LGBTQ+ lives have only ever improved under LIBERALISM’ while their liberties are in decline and constantly under assault in the imperial core only makes the author look incredibly blockheaded. This is like shouting ‘I’m the greatest lifeguard of all time!’ when everybody can see that you just let several kids drown.

I already told you:

(If you are experiencing graphical glitches, see here for instructions.)

ETA: I edited the message to be more specific.

I think that the main reason that the Third Reich banned All’s Quiet on the Western Front is that its accurate description of WWI made the conflict sound unnecessary or wasteful; the Fascists had no patience for antiwar content. Presently I am reading Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler, and it demonstrates continuities between the expansionist ambitions of all three Reichs, especially the last two. The German Fascists thought that the Twoth Reich’s expansion during WWI and earlier was good, and opposition to the conflict only inhibited that. They wanted to succeed where their predecessors had failed.

Downfall is a good reenactment. It is somewhat similar to The Zone of Interest in that it depicts the Fascists more broadly rather than focussing on their atrocities. Knowing the atrocities is important, but seeing how the perpetrators behaved elsewhen is important too because that is necessary for recognizing war criminals, who do not necessarily act the way that we imagine them. I think that you’ll roll your eyes during Downfall, not because it is lousy, but because it is hard to take pity on these awful people now that they have finally been reduced to such a pathetic state (which was undoubtedly what happened in real life).

Why is it so hard for liberals to admit that autocrats can become popular, too? Some of history’s most beloved politicians — the Caesars, Napoleon Bonaparte and even Abraham Lincoln — were all dictatorial in some way, yet their popularity persists to the present!

I have no interest in advocating for autocracy, but underestimating the enemy can be the biggest mistake that somebody can make, which is one of the reasons that the Ukrainian army is losing the fight against the Russian Federation. If these dullards want to take their enemies seriously then the first thing that they should do is outgrow their absurdly simplistic ‘LIBERALISM GOOD, EVERYTHING ELSE BAD’ binary.

Let’s pretend, for the sake of argument, that these legislators want to help ordinary Jews: how does this help them? Where are the talks with lower-class Jews? Where are all the Rabbis? Where can we find somebody talking about expanding education on Jewish history or Judaism? How about maybe funding Synagogues so that nobody has to pay a membership fee? How about funding Jewish musea? Theatres? Musical events? Language courses? How about giving Shoah survivors reparations directly instead of blowing money on a worthless apartheid régime that can’t even protect its own snotty citizens?

If this really be about reducing antisemitism then it is the most uncreative and laziest fecking effort that I have ever seen. They can’t even be bothered to record each other making performative gestures like visiting Synagogues or eating Ashkenazi cuisine. What an absolute joke.

Bill Clinton blamed President Milošević for the NATO massacring civilians.

Clinton said the civilian deaths occurred because Serbs were using civilians as “human shields” and the person responsible was Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

The pogroms (veritable mass murder episodes) that took place in 1940 and 1941, such as the Iași Pogrom, were publicly justified by alleged Jewish armed subversion against [Axis] soldiers.⁴⁰

Reading about the alleged Jewish attacks against the army in Iași (June 1941), some better-informed Romanians, such as former Prime Minister Argetoianu, recorded their disbelief in the accusations: “The [insert slur here] have no weapons.”⁴¹ Despite the antisemitic slur, Argetoianu was right. Romanian Jews lacked weapons and military organization, key elements for any armed resistance.

(Source.)

The agreement that the Jews of Kiev had to be killed in “retaliation” for the bombings and arson amounted to a diversionary maneuver. The [Axis] officers merely seized on them as a justification for the murders, which had been planned in advance on ideological grounds. The term “retaliation” was intended to create the impression of military necessity and thus justify it in the eyes of soldiers and members of the SS.⁸⁷

(Source.)

One Sunday I saw some [Fascist] soldiers enter an Ethiopian church and ring the bells. Sixteen old men thought it was time for prayer, but before they could enter the church the [Fascists] killed them. I heard the words of these poor men: ‘Egziabher Yasywo’ (May God open your eyes to the truth!) I could not help crying, but the [Fascists] were laughing. The dead bodies lay for two days on the steps of the church.

(Source.)

Men whom Boaglio had considered fair and honest […] were ‘grinning coldly’ as they calmly shot the people running out screaming from their burning homes.⁴⁷

Accounts by witnesses in the Feransay Legassion district mention the use of hand grenades. This was confirmed by the French consul-general, who wrote that the killing turned into a pogrom: ‘They were killing for the fun of killing; they pillaged for the joy of destroying and getting drunk; they then set fire, through an imperious need to complete the devastation […] The tukuls, roofed with thatch and serving as houses for the natives, were burned; sometimes with their occupants inside, due to the impossibility of escaping before the forces liberally unleashed. Flame-throwers and grenades served to exacerbate the evils.’⁴⁸

[…]

Liqe Tebebt was shot and also fell, seriously injured, into the water. In his state of shock he saw that the major was trampling on the dead and the dying on the riverbank, and laughing at one of his victims who was in agony and begging to be given the coup de grâce.

[…]

‘After the three days of rampaging in the town, Fascist beasts who had returned from Holetta [military academy] with a truck tied the legs of Ato Ar’aya to the back of the truck. Before the vehicle moved, Ar’aya sang a mission song:

Heaven is opening for me to enter
– I will see Jesus there.
I am happy! I am happy!
– I am happy!’

Unmoved, the laughing Blackshirts told him that it would be better for him to listen to their song instead, and chanted their ‘war cry’: ‘Du-ce! Du-ce!’

(Source.)