That nice feeling when you're stuck between a show that wants to be progressive and its fans that are ready to call you racist or homophobe for any criticism to it and its vocal detractors who only really care about making a scene about "wokeness" being the bane of civilization, couldn't really give any less of a shit about Castlevania, and are often ACTUALLY racist and homophobic

bro i just wanted to play the funny games about kicking a vampire's ass i never asked for this :(

I think a big problem in our culture is equating intent and effect, and this works both when predicting the effect and when determining the cause. It is important to remember that just as having good intentions does not excuse the harm one causes, so does someone having caused harm not always mean they intended to cause harm all along.

We are able to know our own thoughts, so when we cause harm we may easily downplay it because "that's not what I intended", as if that would make the harm go away. And when we judge others who cause harm, we similarly try to work backwards from the assumption that harm requires intent - and since we see the harm but not the intent, we assign intent somewhere where it may not even exist.

None of this is to excuse people who cause harm, but maybe to clarify that what we call evil is not some nefarious satanic mindset of ill intent, but rather a stubborn unwillingness to critically examine whether you might be causing harm even if you don't actively intend to, and even whether or not you truly care.

And the more power you have, the easier it is to distance yourself from the harm you cause and keep causing it.

the people who think that christianity is the worst most problematic religion ever and the people who think that islam is the worst most problematic religion ever are two sides of the same coin to me

432 jumpscare

The amount of people on here who are like "america will be next" as if black and indigenous Americans haven't been saying for years that the notion of white genocide (because that's really what you're talking about here let's be honest. What many of you describe is not a "revolution") is built on the racist assumption that they are/will be as cruel as white people. White leftists just don't know how to let go of their rapture fetish.

To clarify I hate the government and think oppressive people in power deserve to have a pipe bomb placed in their mailbox there's just a lot of people on here being fucking stupid and putting words in people of color's mouths.

tatsumi bring the mullet back

Omg! I saw you briefly mentioned Tomorrow in an ask and I just finished the show. I have so many thoughts about it and not sure if they’re all good but I would love to hear your opinion about the overall show (especially the distinct costume design of each character and the set design!!). For a show that navigated some heavy material — it was full of such bright color and fun fashion decisions! Unsure if you talk about shows but I thought to ask because you always provide such interesting and thoughtful critiques.

THE COSTUME DESIGN IN TOMORROW!!!!!! it's soooooooooooo good it was one of the things that kept me watching bc yes there some glaringly obvious problems with the script. the production/set design are excellent too, especially for jumadeung. literally framing it as a company is a.....choice, but visually framing it with art deco style architecture a la the chrysler building is a smart way to keep it feeling outside time, because our brains still interpret art deco as a relatively modern style because of its scarcity and association with wealth, but in reality art deco is approaching it's centennial in just a couple of years.

ok i'm gonna talk about some major plot beats so spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't finished the show or cares about that kind of thing.

tbh i actually think the best costume design was in the scenes with all the team leaders because they were so quick and so infrequent but each of them had such a clear signature that tbh i spent like five minutes stopping and starting that first intro scene where we see everyone just to try and pick up all the little details.

other than that though, they do such a good job with koo ryeon, joong-gil and ryung-gu and interpreting how very old/essentially immortal characters would interpret clothing and what they would be comfortable in. jun-woong is fine, but the show itself kind of acknowledges by the back half that really he's the vehicle for the rest of their stories, so imo his design choices are all intentionally wallflower-y. but koo ryeon, joong-gil, and ryung-gu all share some key character traits: they're all extremely loyal, dedicated, defensive, AND they all lived their formative lives pre the invention of the zipper and stretch fabric. i know this sounds like a very weird point to make, but trust me on this one, i'll get to it. and all three of these characters embody all of these traits in their clothing. many of the creature comforts that we associate with fashion are very very modern, think within the last 100-150 years. zippers? the 1910s. spandex/lycra/synthetic stretch fabrics? 1958. hell, even the concept of sportswear and leisure clothing only started cropping up in the mid 1800s. for a lot of cultures and for long periods of history, clothing consisted of a lot of layers and a fair amount of internal structure, by virtue of fabric being a solid weave. for a significant portion of their lives, all three of these characters were wearing anywhere between two and probably five layers at all times, with koo ryeon and joong-gil for about 250yrs longer and also with much more intricacy due to their higher class. clothing plays a very big part into how someone presents themselves to the world, and it can be a protective measure. this might be a bit difficult for some to understand for some, especially in our modern 'comfort first' fashion culture, but the structure and weight of a lot of layers and the rituals around getting dressed a specific way can be both a defensive mechanism and also a physical comfort. you see it with older generations and their likelihood of wearing older styles/styles that were 'on trend' in their youth; think grannies who still get their hair permed and put on lipstick every time they leave the house, or someone like my grandfather, who never stopped wearing the same style of highwaisted slacks and dress shirts from the early 60s. and i think it's a very fair trait to extrapolate to characters who 1) have had particularly traumatic lives, 2) have spent a very long time wearing the same thing, and 3) have a textually noted extended/different understanding of time.

let's start with joong-gil, who exclusively wears a three piece suit post-becoming a reaper. this means he's wearing at least three well structured layers, and i'd be willing to bet that he'd be the type to wear a singlet/underlayer as well, which brings that total up to four. he's also frequently shown wearing an additional jacket (five layers) and gloves, another further barrier. given the fact that jumadeung appears to have 'westernized' aesthetically when korea was freed from japanese colonial rule***, three piece suits were still standard business attire. and he's very strict about his own dress code, he's either in white shirt and three piece or a black shirt and three piece. obviously this is also a physical manifestation of his discipline and dedication of the 'rules', as we can see that when he deviates from that uniform it is as a specific character point for him. the most notable instances of this are in the last episode, where he's wearing a turtleneck (but still a waistcoat) when jun-woong goes to try and reason with him, and then again later in the episode when joong-gil is taking his punishment in his shirtsleeves. and then for a third time at the very end of the episode, where his black three piece has been exchanged for a grey one, signalling his softening and the merging of his two selves (his pre-reaper self that wore mostly lighter colours, and his post-reaper self that wore mostly black).

unsurprisingly, koo ryeon is also a very defensive dresser. all the same observations from joong-gil apply here, but with koo ryeon instead of her being a dedicated rule-follower, her dedication manifests as rule-breaking in order to achieve her goals; as you can see she wears a lot of colours in counter to joong-gil's monochrome. but i think the most interesting of her visual 'rule-breaking' is that she doesn't particularly follow the convenions of 'feminine' coded dressing. this is most noticable in when the rm team goes on 'assignment' in different workplaces, where ryeon will wear nearly identical suits to jun-woong and ryung-gu (interestingly, it's pointedly not her wearing men's clothes, she's always wearing a 'female' version even if the cuts are virtually identical. you can tell bc the button closures are opposite). she also dresses very 'modestly', she doesn't show any skin at all and more notably, she doesn't wear anything form fitting. she favours boxy and bulky shapes with a predominance for longer lines and wider shapes on her lower body. now there's two reasons to speculate for this: the first is the same as for joong-gil, that she's very used to layers and a specific silhouette, especially considering that the shape of female hanbok is not even close to being form-fitting and has heavy skirting. and the second is that her trauma is directly tied to people's perception of her femininity. literally the reason ryeon died is because she was stigmatized for 'using her femininity to get out of an adverse situation' even though we are explicitly shown that that is emphatically not the case. thus her rejection of more western feminine silhouettes is directly related to how she wants there to be no question that the reason she is so accomplished at her job is purely because of her skills, and not for any other reason.

and ryung-gu! more similar to koo ryeon in style than joong-gil, but again they all share that propensity for numerous heavy and obscurative layers that echoes a more traditional style of dress. because ryung-gu is younger (literal age wise but also i'm pretty sure he died younger as well) there's a little more flexibility in his materials and cuts, and because he's of a lower class than koo ryeon and joong-gil, he tends towards less formal shapes too. although i would not describe koo ryeon as a 'formal' dresser, she wears a lot of blazers and two piece suits, as well as heavy wools and fabrics that are generally associated with business and formalwear. ryung-gu however, almost exclusively picks his shapes from garments that have a working class or blue collar origin; lots of jeans, informal but still structured jackets like bombers and denim jackets, and a fair amount of casual sportswear, practical wear, and synthetic fabrics. and although ryung-gu is framed as being rebellious like koo ryeon, unlike ryeon his rebellion always comes as an active response to something that upsets his internal or external systems. as a child he is dutifully and lovingly reverent of his mother, she's the centre of his world, and even as a reaper he isn't shown to have any real issues with authority. sure he clocks out right at eight hours, but that's not being rebellious, that's just following the rules to a technicality. it's only when his mother is taken from his life and he loses that external structure that he actively 'becomes rebellious', and even then i think rebellion is the wrong word; it's actually just self destructive behaviour that is 'morally' grey according to the wider societal system. when his story arc finally concludes and he has his mother back in his life (sort of), he visually sheds some of his more 'rebelliously' attributes by cutting and redying his hair to the 'standard masculine' haircut and showing up to work in a suit and/or less flamboyant patterns and garments. but he does still keep the same number of layers and shapes as he did before.

---

***when japan surrendered in 1945 it ceded all its territories to the us, so really korea was actually just colonized again. you can see in the korean war vet episode that in flashbacks joong-gil is wearing a western style suit as a reaper, which would have been between 1950-53, but in the comfort women episode he's still wearing hanbok, which would have been at the earliest 1930ish. also it would makes sense logistically as jumadeung is supposed to mirror the 'real' world. i also think this is where the framing of it as a 'company' comes from as well.

“The world would be fixed if we just got rid of religion!” The USSR called, they’re throwing you in the gulag if you don’t give them their ideology back.

I hope I’m not being a complete dunce, but paganism briefly came up in a conversation with a friend of mine and I was hoping you could explain it to me 😅 (I’m not Christian). I understand that it can be a sort of Christian branch(?) but I’ve also heard it being used to describe like- non Christian related religions.

And honestly, though I’ve grown up in the United States, and a few teachers when I was younger brought it up quite a lot to (grew up in the Bible Belt lol), I never really figured out what it was?

Is it a broad term or a specific term? I understand if you can’t answer or but do you recommend any sources to read about pagans? Where pagans came from and all that? Sorry if this is super random, but I’m not sure who else I can ask-

This is a complicated question because "Pagan" or more accurately "Neo-Pagan" is a very broad umbrella term, and the answers to "what is it", "where does it come from", and "what's a good source on it" really varies depending on what type of Paganism you're talking about.

Here is the working definition I usually give people: Paganism is a general term for religions that have multiple gods/goddesses and believe in magic. These religions are usually based in the worship of nature.

So for an easy example - Hellenism or Hellenic Paganism is a set of religious traditions that fall under the umbrella category of Paganism. It refers to people who worship ancient greek deities like Zeus and Hestia. The greek pantheon is mostly made up of deities that represent aspects of the natural world and daily human life, making it a nature based practice. Some Hellenic pagans will use spells (think candles and tarot cards type spells, not harry potter type spells) and participate in rituals as part of their worship.

But like I said this is very much a working definition, and if you really wanted to get into the weeds on it I'm sure I could find examples of spiritual groups that contradicted each part of the definition I gave and still consider themselves to fall under the Pagan umbrella. And that doesn't even begin to get into the significant number of spiritual practices that technically do fit under this definition but whose practitioners would absolutely never call themselves Pagan.

"Pagan" can also be used as a personal identifier for folks who subscribe more broadly to the even harder-to-define umbrella of "Pagan beliefs" but don't belong to a more specific spiritual tradition so 🤷‍♀️ Idk.

If you ask 100 different Pagans this question you will get 100 different answers. I guess if you want a general rule of thumb, anyone who worships ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, or Celtic deities can probably be assumed to identify under the Pagan umbrella, but like, you should even take that with a grain of salt tbh.

If you want to see other people's perspectives Patheos does have a whole Paganism section where you can at least get a feel for the kinds of topics and ideas that might regularly come up in Pagan religious space.

woah you made the "swarthy" looking fellow in your story a creepy pervert who crosses peoples boundaries? ground breaking.

i just had one of those realizations moments where a piece of a frustrating puzzle clicks in. and suddenly i think i understand! but the new understanding is kinda bugging me....

US Americans have got to stop the "go back to New York" "settlers = Brooklyn landlords" thing. Are there American Jewish settlers in Palestine? Absolutely. Are there Israeli Jews in the U.S. who are still reservists? Absolutely.

The problem is that they are a small minority of settlers and Israelis. There are about 30,000 Israelis in the entire state of New York, including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. [x] There are 1,600,000 Jews just in New York City. [x]

500,000 Israelis have U.S. passports, including Palestinian citizens of Israel. [x] There are 9,174,520 Israelis, again including Palestinians with citizenship. [x]

Saying this does not diminish what's happening in Palestine or the absolute U.S. government support for colonialism and genocide. Settlers do not need to be American or have direct ties to the U.S. to be settlers. Settlers do not need to be American for their colony to be a proxy state for imperial interests, as has also been seen in, say, South Africa.

When you do this shit you're also erasing millions of Arab, Persian, Amazigh, Kurdish, Ethiopian, Indian, Bukharan, and other Jews from outside of Europe who have largely ended up in Palestine as settlers due to colonial and imperial destabilisation of Asia and Africa and a racist "Western" agenda to keep African and Asian refugees of all religious backgrounds outside of "Western" countries as much as possible.

You're also erasing how much xenophobic anti-migrant policies contributed to "Allied" countries after WWII using Palestine as a means of removing Holocaust surviving refugees from mainland Europe without also themselves taking large numbers of refugees into their own countries.

Palestine has been at the centre of displacement of Jews from around the world through a process of ongoing genocide of Palestinian people. This is backed by "Western" not only to create or maintain white Christian hegemonic authority in their own countries, but also as part of a Cold War agenda to destabilise Asia and Africa and eliminate anti-imperial and communist movements.

Israel is a genocidal, fascist country propped up by the US, the UK, and other "Western" imperial powers while its settlers are largely from continental Europe, Asia, and Africa.

There's such an intricate interplay between antisemitism and islamophobia from the slacktivist left. For every reason they can think of to delegitimize the Jewish People's connection to Eretz Yisrael, it's propped up by some Noble Savage presumptions about Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims.

Since Jews in America are seen as a model minority, seen as having accessed whiteness and privilege, and "antisemitism" is at worst having to explain what Hanukah is to clueless Christians, the Left is confused as to exactly why Jews care about Jerusalem and the Land of Israel so much. Shouldn't they be above such petty and barbaric and outdated concerns such as a dusty old book from 2,000 years ago?

They should be more enlightened than that. They're all rich suburban secular Democrats. They're the leftist religion, according to bloggers on this very platform. There is no room for Judaism to be a religion, there's no acknowledgment of ancient customs, rituals, and the deep mysticism that's still alive and well in the Jewish community. There's no attempt to understand Jewish history and culture and why a group of people you think shares your vaguely atheistic vaguely liberal (and not in the Tankie sense) vaguely smug detached Western worldview... is more complex and unique than that.

Jews should be happy living in Diaspora because clearly the problem of antisemitism is fixed now, and never really was a problem in America. There must be something sinister behind a desire to reestablish a country by and for Jews. There must be something colonial, oppressive, European and White about it. Because why else would they do it? They have it good here. And no we won't acknowledge where Israelis primarily descend from because that requires us to do research and have a shred of nuance and integrity when it comes to Jews. No thanks!

A lot of the modern left is nonconsensually dragging Jews kicking and screaming from their own unique demographic toward the banal Norm. To themselves. But not totally. See they think they relate to Jews and vice versa, but not enough that when they think Jews should "know better," or haven't "learned their lesson," from the Holocaust, it engenders a deep seeded disgust and mistrust and rage that's not felt for actually privileged mainstream dominant society.

Conversely, the slacktivist Left sees Arabs as savages. Silly desert people who eat sand and worship a big black cube and cover every inch of their bodies for some reason. How quaint! When the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim cause explains that Jerusalem is important to them, the White Western Leftist nods sagely and says "Your culture is so valid queen," because they don't care. They just accept that Muslim society would be willing to fight over an ancient city proscribed as holy in dusty old tomes. Because that fits the narrative already surrounding Muslims.

They're seen as backwards, but the Left, reacting to their conservative parents and the Bush era, see "Muslims are backwards," and says not "No actually they're modern groups of people with practical geopolitical goals," but instead "Yeah and that makes them better than us!" Especially with this new crop of baby Leftists who think Islamo-Fascist "Feudalism" or whatever the best term would be, is aspirational or at least harmless... because it's not capitalism :)

So Muslims are infantilized and condescended to because the Western Leftist is still just as racist as their parents, but they feel guilty about their parents without considering their contribution to White Supremacy and the Post Bush surveillance state. And all the while Jews are reprimanded and held to an impossible standard because the Western Leftist, again, rejects their conservative parents' philosemitism, and decides that Jews Must be Punished when they step off the pedestal that Suffering the Shoah placed them on.

Jews should be above nationalism, Jews should know that demurely suffering pogroms and ethnic cleansing and genocide and general inequity and humiliation will earn them their divine reward in the end. Muslims should not be above nationalism, because they're not capable of being above it, and can't we throw them a bone, after all Obama was the worst president in history because of the Drone War and let's not mention George W Bush at all :0

Hot take, but I believe this is an essential underpinning of where the average disaffected White millennial/zoomer Leftist's head is at with regard to Israel and Palestine. They won't acknowledge it of course, but I can generally see through things like this.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are very similar (if not the same), actually

So I was scrolling down the #palestine tag for any updates and important information, and I came across this:

And I think we need to sit down and talk about this.

I am a Muslim. I live in Indonesia, a country that is predominantly Muslim and a lot of Muslims here also support the Palestinian cause. Hell, even our government supports it by not only allowing Palestinian goods enter the country without fee, but also by taking in Palestinian refugees and even acknowledging the status of Palestine as a state while not having any political ties with Israel. The topic of the Palestinian tragedy has been spoon-fed to us at schools, sermons, media, etc., so your average Indonesian Muslim would at the very least be aware of the conflict while non-Muslims would hear about it from their Muslim friends or through media.

However, there is a glaring problem. One that I keep seeing way too often for my liking.

A lot of them are antisemitic as hell. The sermons I would hear sometimes demonize Jewish people. Antisemitic statements are openly said out loud on social media. Some are even Nazi supporters who would literally go to anime cons and COSPLAY as members of the Nazi party. This is not just an Indonesian Muslim problem, no, but this is a glaring issue within the global Islamic community as a whole. Today, this sense of antisemitism is usually rooted in general hatred towards the Israeli government and its actions against the people of Palestine, but antisemitism amongst Muslims are also rooted in certain interpretations of verses from the Qur'an and Hadith mentioning Jewish people and Judaism (particularly the Bani Israil), but in a way that is more ridiculing instead of life-threatening when compared to how antisemitism looks like in the Western world.

As someone who prefers to become a "bridge" between two sides in most cases, I find this situation to be concerning, to say the least. While, yes, it is important for us Muslims to support Palestine and fight against injustice, we must not forget that not every Jewish people support the Israeli government. A lot of them are even anti-Zionists who actively condemn Israel and even disagree with the existence of Israel as a state as it goes against their teachings. A lot of them are also Holocaust survivors or their descendants, so it is harmful to think for one second that Hitler's actions and policies were justified. It's just like saying that Netanyahu is right for his decision to destroy Palestine and commit war crime after war crime towards the Palestinians.

As Muslims, we also need to remember that Jewish people (the Yahudi) are considered ahli kitab, i.e. People Of The Book along with Christians (the Nasrani). The Islam I have come to know and love has no mentions of Allah allowing us to persecute them or anyone collectively for the actions of a few. While, yes, there are disagreements with our respective teachings I do not see that as an excuse to even use antisemitic slurs against Jewish people during a pro-Palestine rally, let alone support a man who was known for his acts of cruelty toward the Jewish community in WW2. They are still our siblings/cousins in faith, after all. Unless they have done active harm like stealing homes from civilians or celebrating the destruction of Palestine or supporting the Israeli government and the IOF or are members of the IOF, no Jewish people (and Christians, for that matter) must be harmed in our fight against Zionism.

Contemporary antisemitism is similar to (if not straight up being the exact same thing as) contemporary Islamophobia, if you think about it; due to the actions of a select few that has caused severe harm towards innocent people, an entire community has been a target of hate. Even when you have tried to call out the ones supporting such cruelties, you are still getting bombarded by hate speech. It's doubly worse if you're also simultaneously part of a marginalized group like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc. as you also get attacked on multiple sides. This is where we all need to self-reflect, practice empathy, and unlearn all of the antisemitism and unjustified hatred that we were exposed to.

So, do call out Zionism and Nazism when you see it. Call out the US government for funding this atrocity and others before it that had ALSO triggered the rise of Islamophobia. Call your reps. Go to the streets. Punch a fascist if you feel so inclined. Support your local businesses instead of pro-Israel companies.

But not at the cost of our Jewish siblings. Not at the cost of innocent Jewish people who may also be your allies. If you do that, you are no different from a MAGA cap-wearing, gun-tooting, slur-yelling Islamophobe.

That is all for now, may your watermelons taste fresh and sweet.

🍉

Salam Semangka, Penco

sometimes i see people say stuff like "personal spirituality is fine but organized religion is bad" and like do y'all understand the importance of spiritual community to people. and why some people enjoy partaking in communal rituals. it's honestly fairly individualistic to imagine that you can so easily divide everyone's personal spirituality from community. the way to dealing with abuse in any kind of communal space or organization is not "don't let anyone form an organization" that's just fatalistic. i know it's like so so hard but maybe instead of trying to get rid of The Concept of Communal Structured Spirituality we should idk try working on our conflict management skills and stuff. because fun fact im pretty sure if we get rid of organized religion all the abuse and control and awful shit is still going to occur because it's not something inherent to spirituality its a human problem we need to deal with. also if you say this i need a 4 page essay explaining your knowledge of spiritual systems that aren't mainstream western christianity before i trust you know even the slightest bit about what organized religion can look like

I mean fundamentally the thing about Israel/Palestine that makes people uncomfortable is not that "it's complicated" it's that it's extremely fundamentally morally simple, it's just difficult

there is not a morally acceptable solution that will be accepted by the expansionist Israeli government or its allies in Europe and America

the balance of power has remained basically the same since Balfour handed the country over. Israel has the power to displace and kill Palestinians without accountability because it's backed by the majority of major world powers. there's fundamentally no back and forth of power. Palestine and its people were sold from the control of the British to the control of Israel for the political convenience of a bunch of people on different continents. there's no retribution or wrestle for power. Israel has had power over Palestine for decades and Palestine, despite Palestinians occupying the land for millennia, has never had power over Israel.

the fundamentals of the situation are discomforting because Israel is in many ways the last surviving bastion of the type of turn-of-the-century colonialism which the contemporary economy of Britain, America and much of the West is rooted in.

that's why the media and political classes are so invested in the Israeli party line - not because Israel ~controls the media~ or whatever but because the fundamental existence of Israel is the interests of the British ruling class, for example. It is in the interests of the British ruling class that we accept as a basic precept that there are Civilised and Uncivilised nations, and that it is right and good and natural that the Civilised nations should be able to decide the fates of the Uncivilised nations, for their own profit, without brooking any complaint from the Uncivilised Peoples. The structure of Western capitalism requires, as well, that we accept that any number of deaths and any amount of suffering among the Uncivilised Peoples is an acceptable price to pay for the comfort of Civilised Peoples. That's why the media classes are more interested in pearl clutching that somebody slashed up a hack painting of a famously antisemitic and genocidal British lord than in the loss of swathes of priceless and irreplaceable artworks, historical relics and Human Fucking Lives in Gaza.

it isn't complicated. it's just uncomfortable because fundamentally it lays bare the basic reality of colonial capitalism, and generally we in the UK are sort of trying to pretend we're over that whole thing even though we're obviously not, politicians just try to be a bit less obvious about it. so it's discomforting to people to be faced with the rawness of Israel's open colonialism, and so those who can't or don't want to divest from Britain's own ongoing colonial endeavours end up tying themselves in knots trying to justify why it's Fine Actually.

while obviously Israel is a Zionist project so it can no more be decoupled from Judaism than the British empire is decoupled from Christianity, the conflation of Jewishness and Israel is a mostly irrelevant (and harmful) distraction from the underlying Problem With Israel, which is that it's an incredibly 19th century European style of colony in 21st century Asia, and the nature, consistency and ferocity of its colonial project has been pretty unchanged for like 3-4 generations.

but it's a very successful distraction because

a) a lot of people do actually hate Jews a whole bunch so yeah antisemitism is a genuine and legitimate fear, but it doesn't connect to the core issues of genocide, oppression and colonialism (and conflating Israel with Jewishness does play into existing antisemitic ideas of the Jewish perpetual foreigner and perpetual dual loyalty)

b) people want it to be complicated. They don't want it to be simple in a way that would create discomfort for them. We don't want to acknowledge that to free Palestine we'd have to take a hit to our own economies by not selling arms to Israel. We don't want to acknowledge that what's practiced openly in Israel is the same structure of systemic injustice underpinning almost all British and American foreign affairs, but with more of a veil over it. We don't want to challenge the underlying assumption that there are those who should rule and those who should be ruled over. But with the assertion that Israel=Jewishness, and the rewriting of history to say there's an Endless Cycle of Violence on Both Sides, Who Can Say Where It Started Really, you're off the hook! It's Complicated! Who Can Really Say?

(this Who Can Really Say thing is fascinating in itself. It's not like it's ancient history! it's been slightly over a century since the birth of the Israeli project! you can look it up! we have the news articles! we have the correspondence! this is my grandparents' generation not the distant mists of time!)

but yeah like fuck 'Israel controls the media' bullshit. It does not require a Shadowy Jewish Cabal of Puppetmasters to create mass appeasement from the media and ruling class, and if you think that's the best explanation you're fucking gross. The media and political establishment of Europe and the US are not being Controlled By The Wicked Jews. They are colonial projects. Israel is a colonial project. Their interests are aligned. It's not complicated it's So Fucking Simple. Our ruling classes, whether in Tel Aviv, Washington, Westminster or Berlin, are enthusiastically invested in the project of global apartheid. It makes them money. It maintained them power. It is in their interests to preserve the impunity of the occupying state where it shores up the civilised West vs barbarian East paradigm. It is not "too complicated" it's just huge, implacable and miserable to recognise.