Okay so apparently people don’t believe me or others when we say that the First Order are basically space Nazis. Here is a link to a direct quote on the subject.
Are we good now? Can you understand why people don’t want these Star Wars villians being treated as misunderstood babies?
And since people keep being gross about this anyway: JJ Abrams is Jewish. Lawrence Kasdan is Jewish. They are unreservedly allowed, as Jewish artists, to write and design stories that are analogs of Jewish experience and use the fantastic to symbolize their own oppressors. They have every right to be as overt or subtle as they want, too – and they went explicit as fuck, so stop ignoring/minimizing their intentions.
They knew what they were doing when they wrote Phasma and Kylo leading stormtroopers in a pogram against an impoverished village of religious outsiders.
They knew what they were doing when Hux gave a Space Nuremberg Rally.
They knew what they were doing doing when, instead of showing their Space Genocide from outside, we watched the Hosnian victims’ dying, horrified faces – unnamed and unknown, but important.
They knew what they were doing when they decided Kylo’s prize trophy was human ashes.
Furthermore, none of the major actors playing FO characters (Driver, Gleeson, Christie, or Serkis) are Jewish, so regardless of fictional Ben Solo’s fictional heritage – which was an intentional choice on the part of his creators when they wrote him as a poster-boy for the FO/gave him a fucking templar cross for a lightsaber – you’re never “calling a Jew a Nazi if you compare Kylo/Hux/the FO to neo-Nazis!!1!”
Denying Jewish artists the agency and legitimacy of their own stories is gross. Don’t do it.
Don’t talk over Jewish fans who keep fucking pointing out that they’re overtly Nazi allegories.
And for FUCK’S sake, stop stanning fucking Nazis.
(I’d also venture to say – the reason JJ and Rian view Kylo so differently is because, as far as I know, Rian is the goyest of goyim.)
[image description: a tweet by @jessewente that says, “colonial states separate children from parents because they know it works. it destroys and traumatizes for generations. it’s an attack on the future as well as the present. it’s not a partisan issue, it’s a colonial one.” end id]
* Hiding the children with Christian families, to be fair, helped save their lives but the intent to erase the children’s Jewishness after the danger had passed is also clear–the Vatican literally said baptism “cancels the Jew,” holy shit
[I don’t understand why some people act so scandalized by Dukat/Kira. How is it any worse than popular ships like Spuffy or Reylo? Shipping the hero with the villain is nothing new.]
If someone is against Kira/Dukat, odds are they’re also against Spuffy and Reylo. Because those relationship dynamics are horrifically toxic and abusive and the majority of the people who are shipping them are doing so non-critically, with no acknowledgement of the fact that they are abusive and toxic, and also against the characters actual characterization – generally, the male characters are written as conflicted and pained and hurt, in need of love and forgiveness to achieve their redemption, and the female characters are reduced to a prop to advance his arc, giving her none of the characterization that she has in canon.
Kira/Dukat is among the worst of the worst, because of that horrible dynamic – at any given point in the show’s run, within the previous decade, Kira lived at a time where if Dukat demanded it, he could fuck her and she could only say no if she was willing to be executed. Kira lived through a time where literally, she had no option of consent had any Cardassian approached her and demanded that she sleep with them.
Dukat wanting to fuck Kira is, to a Bajoran, equivalent to Hitler, somehow surviving WWII, telling a survivor of Auschwitz that he would fuck her. And I’m not citing Godwin’s Law here, Dukat was literally compared to Hitler by the show’s producers. To the Bajoran people, Gul Dukat is their answer Hitler. The fact that people look at the dynamic between them and say ‘yeah, they totally should be together’ is horrifying, because those people are literally saying that an abuse victim and her abuser should be paired up, generally on the idea that “she’ll make him a better man.”
It is not the victim’s duty to ever be personally responsible for their abuser’s redemption. Ever. And I say this not just to the Kira/Dukat shippers, but the shippers of the above mentioned ships and the ones like it throughout media. These are toxic and abusive relationships when they are about the actual characters in canon. And if you’re making up characterizations wholesale to justify your ship, maybe you shouldn’t even be shipping this one, because it means you don’t actually want these particular characters together, just characters who look like them, but are not based on the actual canon characters.
It really should take only half a second of critical thinking to realize that Luke couldn’t have made Kylo evil–that Kylo was already consumed by it when Luke looked into his mind. Kylo then slaughtered Luke’s students and took his already-turned friends in what was clearly a premeditated attack. JJ had better make that clear in IX.
I think JJ will. Plus I can see a way he can make it reasonable that neither Luke nor Rey killed him without turning him good or, like Gollum, save the story, detracting from the heroes. (Yes I always hated the ending of LotR, it’s cheap imo.)
Anyway.
Here’s how: Mark likened the whole thing to the theoretical question, “if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you?”.
But to Jews that was always a nonsense question.
Why? Because it wouldn’t have made one lick of difference, WWII would still have happened, the Holocaust would still have happened. Because Hitler was only one guy, he alone caused NOTHING to happen. The forces that made the Nazis try to exterminate Jews and Romani people, with the applause of most of Europe and the rest of the world, was already moving. It would all have happened anyway. And with someone more competent than Hitler possibly have been much, much worse.
So why didn’t Luke kill Ben? Because he realized that it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to what was going to happen. Heck it’s not even sure that his school and the rest of the students would have survived even if he hadn’t done that lightsaber check next to his nephew. Because Kylo/Ben is just one man. Even if removed, he’d still have his hangers on that could act without him and it looked like was ready to.
And in the longer term, what then? Remove Kylo and what happens? The exact same damn thing. Because Snoke still exists, Hux still exists, Starkiller Base is already being build and will be completed, the whole of the First Order is already on the rise and the Republic will do nothing.
Kylo or no Kylo, it changes nothing, this goes far beyond just one man. Only difference is that Snoke might have found a different apprentice, possibly one who’s more competent and less self-absorbed and arrogant, and everything would then have been so much worse. The story, our story, could have been over before it even started.
And again in TLJ. Even if we take the nonsense reason that the novel supplies for Rey not killing Kylo on face value and JJ decides to go with that.
Again it wouldn’t make any difference. Only change is that someone else, possibly a more competent commander would take the reigns of the First Order. Hux might be a conservative and unimaginative by-the-book commander who’s very bad at dealing with unconventional tactics and innovative strategies, but at least he knows the book. Kylo on the other hand is a lets-antagonize-all-of-Europe-and-then-invade-Russia-in-winter style of commander.
Yes the Force still needs him, because his lack of competence gives the Resistance and the Light side a chance that would be snuffed out with a more competent guy at the helm.
People – and by people I mean goydje – forget that the Nazis were largely incompetent and that neo-Nazis are really no better. What made and makes them so terrifying isn’t that they’re competent, but that the could do what they did because the majority of people in Europe agreed wholeheartedly with their agenda. They only opposed it when they too became a target.
Which is really no different from what has been happening in a Galaxy Far Far Away. On the whole, no one gave a shit about the genocides and general abuses the First Order were committing as long as they themselves were not its target, a lot even supported it. And now everyone has to deal with that.
Am I the only one who liked the LotR climax 😂 Also omg the Hitler comparison! Kylo does remind me of him, especially the dramatization in the 2004 film Untergang. And that’s not a commentary on mental illness; Hitler’s evil was not caused by mental illness (link if anyone wants support for the obvious, some ableism at link). Rather, the behavioral similarities arise from their shared sense of entitlement and their fundamental dishonesty about the world.
You’re right, if Luke had killed Kylo someone else would have been Snoke’s apprentice, likely one of Kylo’s school buddies. And look, no one’s going to convince me Kylo was the sharpest knife in any drawer. I can easily believe, however, that he was the most powerful Force user and the most violent in action and temper. If his interactions with Hux are any indication, Kylo became the ringleader of their group by choking and intimidating the hell out of any dissent. I bet there is or was a far smarter Knight of Ren who was either forced to fall in line or was killed by Kylo. If Luke had killed Kylo that person would have been the Master of the Knights of Ren and a far more dangerous foe.
Worse, Luke would have been vilified as a murderer who killed his young nephew in his sleep while Kylo would have become a junior martyr alongside Vader. The aforementioned smarter Knight would have been savvy enough to effectively use the memory of the hated dead asshole.
If Rey had killed Kylo Ren, Hux would have laughed his ass off to find his job done for him. The FO would have gone away and regrouped, likely with Hux at their head, with Ren again a martyr before he could expose himself very publicly on Crait for the ridiculous flop he was. And Ren will continue to flub and make mistakes and throw embarrassing tantrums because, again, he is self-entitled and dishonest.
Denialism can also create an environment of hate and suspicion. Forms
of genocide denialism are not just attempts to overthrow irrefutable
historical facts; they are an assault on those who survive genocide, and
their descendants. The implacable denialism that has led the Turkish
state to refuse to admit that the 1917 Armenian genocide occurred is
also an attack on today’s Armenians, and on any other minority that
would dare to raise troubling questions about the status of minorities
in Turkey. Similarly, those who deny the Holocaust are not trying to
disinterestedly “correct” the historical record; they are, with varying
degrees of subtlety, trying to show that Jews are pathological liars and
fundamentally dangerous, as well as to rehabilitate the reputation of
the Nazis.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
^^^Just in case someone gets confused from the way this is formatted in the notes, the above is a quote I have argued against and does not represent my opinion.
Not to be offensive, but I really wish people would stop bringing up Carrie Fisher‘s religion. Carrie and Leia still are two different people and their heritage didn’t have anything to do with the movies.
And the destruction of Alderaan was a horrible genocide and war crime, and the Empire attacked them because the planet had indeed been conspiring against them Empire.
The death Star had been a secret weapon, no one that was supposed to know about it.
That’s why in Rogue One so many planets were against helping the R1 squad retrieve the plans to the Death Star, because it would expose them as a threat to the empire and paint a target on their back for the planet destroying weapon
Bail and Leia Organa took the risks anyway to help the R1 squad.
But unfortunately they hadn’t been aware that Tarkin and Vader would also be trying to prevent the plans from being stolen and had witnessed them stealing the plans.
What happened to Alderaan wasn’t a holocaust. Genocide yes, The movies and books made it pretty clear that Alderaan’s destruction was the Empire’s Monstrous punishment for the planet conspiring against them, something both Vader and Tarkin suspected even before the events of ANH.
The Empire and First Order might be metaphorically inspired or based off Nazis, and essentially they can be called space Nazis just like the Jedi can be called space monks, but they still are not the same nor can the fictional events of a science-fiction movie be compared to the real life horror’s people had to go through. They are indeed fascists though who’ve committed war crimes.
But I myself am not Jewish, just Africa and Brazilian, so I might not be the best person to talk about this and I apologize if I got anything incorrect.
I think you hit on another reason the Holocaust and the destruction of Alderaan are in no way comparable, and in fact should not be compared. Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people? That was not true at all of Jewish people toward Germans (other than there being Jewish Communists or some shit, but given sheer numbers there had to be vastly more goyim Communists), but was actually kind of true of Alderaan, or at least their leadership, when it came to the Empire. So there’s an argument to be made that equating the two genocides indirectly validates a major piece of antisemitic rhetoric, which is obviously not cool. European Gentiles hated Jewish people for racial/ethnic reasons, and made up an imaginary threat to validate that hatred. The Alderaanian genocide on the other hand was a vastly disproportionate and murderous–monstrous, as you put it–reaction to an actual threat.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
holocaustˈhɒləkɔːst/noun1.destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.“a nuclear holocaust"synonimy:cataclysm, disaster, catastrophe, destruction, devastation, demolition, annihilation, ravaging;
Holocaust written with a capital letter is the destruction of Jews and Roma. I never said it aint. But the word was “normilized” and gained another meaning – after all, it used to mean something completely different and wasnt associated with Shoah.
Yes, I am from Poland – do you have a problem with that? Just like millions of Jews who considered themselves Poles as well. Wanna walk about wartime trauma in Central and Eastern Europe? Because, you know, we are still affected deeply by the shit that happened 70 years ago. The slaughter of Jews and destruction of their heritage is simply unbearable to me thus my interest in Jewish culture – they were an integral part of Poland for over a millenium. Their suffering is undenialable – but it doesnt give their descendants the monopoly express war trauma. Sure, The Holocaust is “theirs” – but its not the only mass slaughter and genocide during the war and not only Jews died in concentration camps – other groups also have the right to use similar symbolism. Nazis targeted not only Jews. The slaughter of Poles, Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians and others was horrific and unimaginable as well – millions of people died, cities were destroyed, whole villages were wiped out.
Who has the right to take our right to cope with trauma? We also “have the right’ to be victims of Nazis. My grandfather liberated Berlin and avenged the dead and suffering – no Westerner is going to take away “the heritage” of being both the victim and the victor of Nazism.
Za głód, za krew, za lata łez.
Im still sick and tired of antisemitic bullshit going on in Poland. But Im also sick and tired of blatant antislavic or antipolish sentiments that are tolerated online. You dont want your communities belitteled and generalised because of some assholes that bring you a bad name, so… Maybe antipolonism is acceptable on tumblr, who knows? Apparently using someones nationality as an argument is OK here. How ironic.
Yes, I know her mother was Jewish and that “makes you a Jew” technically, but Im talking about cultural heritage, not biological (lets say). Unless she didnt identify as such, I dont think we can really call her Jewish – she still had that “goyim” part in her. I’ve just never read anything about her embracing Jewish identity, but maybe I missed something.
So… it doesn’t actually mean a genocide in small-h, and we’re actually in agreement about what it means in large-H. The original ask capitalized the word, you can see it for yourself, so there was really no point of contention (link).
I’ve already talked about the “normalization” aspect in my previous addition so I won’t repeat myself.
No, I don’t have a problem with Polish people in general. I do have a problem with Polish Gentiles who seem to have no self-awareness about their country’s historical role in the Holocaust and seem to believe they have a say over Jewish people in how it is discussed. For that matter, I have a problem with anyone who plays Oppression Olympics against a marginalized group. First of all who said Jewish people had a monopoly on suffering, and second of all who would want such a monopoly? Nobody said no other group but Jewish and Romani people suffered from the Nazis or that only Jewish people could use Nazi imagery, holy shit. We were literally talking about the proper usage of a word?
And please don’t assume I would react like you are right now, not everyone gets hyper-defensive about the crimes of their ancestors. If someone told me I as a non-Vietnamese Korean have no right to talk over Vietnamese people in discussing the Vietnam War, especially given Korean military forces’ crimes against Vietnamese people, I would entirely agree. I’m certainly not going to go on a rant about how the Vietnamese people were not the only ones to suffer because that’s just embarrassing lmao.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
L.J.'s Obsessions 