One thing the guys who criticise Netflix for its racial diversity in The Witcher always seem to forget

Had this discussion with this guy on Reddit again, always the same arguments, of course, the lore allegedly is all Slavic/white European. And then they pretend to care for the identity of other cultures and that they should be preserved and distinguishable and that there's Zerrikania on the continent for black people. Yes, Zerrikania, featuring so prominently in the books, right ...

What they totally seem to overlook, humans came to the continent through the Conjunction of the Spheres about 1,500 years before the events of the novels. They did not evolve on the continent through survival of the fittest. The distribution of skin colour on the continent ought to be mostly random. Yes, people who came from hot places in their original world and have a very dark skin colour as adaptation to the climate in their lost sphere of origin might prefer to settle regions like Zerrikania with a similar climate. But why wouldn't they settle in Toussaint, for example? Fringilla being dark skinned does not have to mean she has ancestors from Zerrikania and does not need to be explained in any way. Same with culture, people from all kinds of different cultures have very likely landed on the continent together and mixed their cultures while they were helping each other to survive in a totally new world. Why should there be distinct cultures related to skin colour and climate after only 1,500 years of populating the continent? A mix makes a lot more sense under these unique circumstances.

There was also a very funny thing one guy asked me when I wrote something like: Oh yes, the Korath desert is very Eastern European.

Did you know there's a desert in Poland? Yes, there actually is. We also have several "deserts" in Germany, but they are all so small, even a toddler would have difficulty getting lost in one of them 😂. Of course Sapkowski was exclusively thinking of this miniature Polish desert when he created the Korath 😂.

its 12am

Atrocities US committed against AFRICA

In early 2017, the US began conducting drone strikes in Somalia against Al Shabab militants. An attack on July 16th killed 8 people.

In 1998, the US bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, killing one employee and wounding 11. It was the largest pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, producing medicine both for human and veterinary use. The US had acted on false evidence of a VX nerve agent from a single soil sample, and later used a false witness to cover for the attack. It was the only pharmaceutical factory in Africa not under US control.

In June 1982, with the help of CIA money and arms, Hissene Habre , dubbed Africa’s Pinochet, takes power in Chad. His secret police, use methods of torture including the burning the body of the detainee with incandescent objects, spraying gas into their eyes, ears and nose, forced swallowing of water, and forcing the mouths of detainees around the exhaust pipes of running cars. Habré’s government also periodically engaged in ethnic cleansing against groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and the Zaghawa, killing and arresting group members en masse when it was perceived that their leaders posed a threat to the regime. Human Rights Watch claimed that Habre was responsible for thousands of killings. In 2001, while living in Senegal, he was almost tried for crimes committed by him in Chad. However, a court there blocked these proceedings. Then human rights people decided to pursue the case in Belgium, because some of Habre’s torture victims lived there. The U.S., in June 2003, told Belgium that it risked losing its status as host to NATO’s headquarters if it allowed such a legal proceeding to happen. So the result was that the law that allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad was repealed. However, two months later a new law was passed which made special provision for the continuation of the case against Habre. In May 2016 he was found guilty of human-rights abuses, including rape, sexual slavery and ordering the killing of 40,000 people, and sentenced to life in prison.

In the 1980s, Reagan maintains a close relationship with the Apartheid South african government, called constructive engagement, while secretly funding it in the hopes of creating a bulwark of anti-communism and preventing a marxist party from taking power, as happened in angola. Later on, in the wars against Apartheid in South Africa and Angola, in which cuban and anti-apartheid forces fought the white south african government, the US supplied south africa with nuclear weapons via Israel.

In 1975, Henry Kissinger launches a CIA-backed war in Angola, backing the brutal anti-communist leader of UNITAS, Jonas Savimbi, against Agostinho Neto and his Marxist-Leninst MPLA party, creating a civil war lasting for 30 years. The CIA financed a covert invasion via neighboring Zaire and a drive on the Angolan capital by the U.S. ally, South Africa. Congress continues to fund UNITAS, and their south-african apartheid allies until the late 1980s. By the end of the war, more than 500,000 people had died and over one million had been internally displaced.

In 1966, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows he widely popular Pan-Africanist and Marxist leader Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, inviting the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to take a lead role in managing the economy. With this reversal, accentuated by the expulsion of immigrants and a new willingness to negotiate with apartheid South Africa, Ghana lost a good deal of its stature in the eyes of African nationalists.

In 1965, a CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko, described as the “archetypal African dictator” in Congo. The hated and repressive Mobutu exploits his desperately poor country for billions.

In 1962, a tip from a CIA spy in South Africa lead to the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, due to his pro-USSR leanings. This began his 27-year-long imprisonment.

In 1961, the CIA assists in the assassination of the democratically elected congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, throwing the country into years of turmoil. Before his assassination the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the Congo carrying “lethal biological material” intended for use in Lumumba’s assassination. This virus would have been able to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the Congo area of Africa and was transported in a diplomatic pouch.

In 1801, and again in 1815, the US aided Sweden in subjugating a series of coastal towns in North Africa, in the Barbary Wars. The stated reason was to crack down on pirates, but the wars destroyed the navies of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, and secured European and US shipping routes for goods and slaves in North Africa. US Representatives stated: “When we can appear in the Ports of the various Powers, or on the Coast, of Barbary, with Ships of such force as to convince those nations that We are able to protect our trade, and to compel them if necessary to keep faith with Us, then, and not before, We may probably secure a large share of the Meditn trade, which would largely and speedily compensate the U. S. for the Cost of a maritime force amply sufficient to keep all those Pirates in Awe, and also make it their interest to keep faith.” Thomas Jefferson echoed and carried out the war, saying that war was essential to securing markets along the Barbary Coast.

entertainment business makes bad castings (race swaps) on purpose. this provokes people and the project gets instant attention without putting much effort into marketing. they are able to create entertainment which can't be criticised without you being branded as a bigot for not liking it. the audience has to love it. we have to stand up and clap.

especially black women are often used as objects for virtue signaling and marketing boosters but it's branded as "diversity" and "representation" - but they are also the ones who are put in the spotlight for people to verbally abuse them online. I think all of this is racist itself.

Hank

"Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.

The reaction to the attacks—from outwardly pro-Hamas protests to the mealy-mouthed statements of college presidents, celebrities, and CEOs—has exploded the comforting stories many on the center-left have told themselves about progressive identity politics. For many years, they opted for the coping mechanism of pretending that the institutional capture of universities, corporations, and media organizations by the woke mind virus was no big deal. “Sure, students shutting down events they disagree with is annoying,” they would say, “but it’s just students doing what students do.”

October 8 was a wake-up call for those who didn’t appreciate that the ideology of the campus has spread to our cities, supercharged by social media.

We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists. 

In London, where I live, we watched the mayor deliver glib assurances that “London’s diversity is our greatest strength” in the midst of a wave of antisemitic attacks, and as Jewish schools were forced to close because of safety concerns. 

Across the West, we noticed that our representatives refused to condemn Hamas’s kidnappings, and that the legacy media was all too eager to swallow and regurgitate Hamas propaganda.

Prior to the October 7 massacre, many students, alumni, and donors with the “unconstrained vision” trusted that the university—for all its many problems—remained the West’s best environment for civil discourse. 

But then they watched university presidents who were quick to issue statements condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the killing of George Floyd fall silent, or offer the most slippery, equivocal statements carefully crafted to avoid offending anti-Israel groups. They watched an Israeli at Columbia get beaten with a stick, and heard reports about the physical intimidation of students on campuses across the country. They read about dozens of student organizations at Harvard signing a letter holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre of Israelis. 

The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree."

-Konstantin Kisin

Liberals are not leftist

dear conservatives, im not "woke" i'm actually very sleepy and eepy

Organizing Tip: Don’t talk down to normies

I love my theory and politically driven discussion with comrades who I know I agree with. But outside of my Socialist sphere, in the workplace and among family and friends I work with a whole host of other people. Some conservative. Some liberal. Some progressive. And I like to get into political conversations with each of them and there is one universal theme I get:

Don’t be an ass.

No one wants to feel like they are being scolded or yelled at for having the wrong opinion. People are terrified of being yelled at for “having the wrong opinion” and are wary of the stereotype of the angry leftist that they saw on the fear mongering news.

Now for the case of the average worker who isn’t a die-hard far-right reactionary, does that mean you should just let them say problematic things? No.

But it does mean you should respond to them slowly and thoughtfully. Ask them why they think what they do. The vast majority aren’t saying what they are out of some deep understanding of the issue. They haven’t read liberal or conservative “theory”. They are rehashing something they saw on the news that they think meshes with their values of being a good person. When someone thinks that you are both intelligent on a subject and respectful, they will want to hear more of your side in the future. That’s how you open pathways to radicalizing your “a-political” or moderate coworkers friends and family.

If we want to organize the masses we have to be among the masses of non-socialists. We have to educate them. And like very good teacher, we meet them where they are at respectfully and as fellow proletarians to pull them over to our side over time.

Now for the obvious final point. Yes, if someone is delving into some deep and heated bigotry, definitely call them out. What I’m saying is that when someone is saying things that don’t reach that level.

the parents of trans kids are actually sacrificing their children on the altar of wokeness