[pretend this is the wittiest name ever]

Earth was doing just fine with a mostly nitrogen/carbon dioxide atmosphere and everyone was happy to go on living in anaerobic bliss and then cyanobacteria suddenly hit the scene, altered the atmosphere composition so that there was a ton of oxygen gas and killed practically everything (97% or more of all species on earth).

Anybody who holds up the JAO as some kind of ethical alternative to zionism-- which focuses on an actual historical homeland, not some random patch!-- just does not give a fuck about actual settler colonialism. If anything they endorse it when their preferred leviathan does it.

because when you're jewish and the nazis come by and you have somewhere else to go YOU GO THERE.

In light of everything that's happened in the last few days—namely Netflix releasing its first teaser for Stranger Things Season 5—many are returning to Stranger Things spaces online here and elsewhere for the first time in months. Maybe years. So, it's time to have this conversation again, because many people weren't here when some of us were having this conversation in the lull between content; and we're due for an update.

Buckle up—this is going to be long. I intend for this to be a mega post on the whole situation in so far as I can cover it, with receipts and screenshots.

The Conversation Around Noah

Put bluntly—the vitriol around Noah Schnapp has become dangerously insane. It's been that way for 2 years, but the renewed spotlight on Stranger Things, especially as Noah is set to take center stage in a Will Byers-centric season, has revived some of the worst elements of the conversation.

"What do you mean?", you may be asking. Well, I think it might just be better to show you:

This is just a sampling. If I showed you every tweet — every post — every video I've seen with this rhetoric, I'd need another medium to do it. A tumblr blog alone couldn't contain it all. But I take it you see my point now.

How Did Things Get This Way?

There are people on this app and on #that app who will say this behavior/treatment is warranted. They'll tell you that Noah is a "genocide supporter." That he "cheered for the deaths of Palestinian babies." That he "celebrated as people were being murdered." But none of this is true.

As a reminder, this was what Noah actually said—his very first comments on the matter—right after the Hamas attack that happened on October 7, 2023:

Important to note:

"...we will hope and pray for safety, justice, liberation, and self determination in Palestine."

and

"...we will say a Jewish prayer for peace for all Israelis and Palestinians."

That is the literal antithesis of support for a genocide or the wholesale slaughter of anyone.

The very next thing to happen was the infamous "sticker video" about which the most lies have been told, so let's debunk them one by one:

He did not make the stickers.

He did not wear the stickers.

He did not hand out the stickers.

He did not hold up the stickers.

He did not even touch the stickers.

He did not post the video on any social anywhere.

I've posted a pair of screenshots here that give you the gist in lieu of the video itself, but you can Google the video and watch the entire thing to see that I'm telling the truth.

What actually happened was that Noah was taken to a restaurant by a pair of influencers who were his guides while on a school-sponsored trip to Israel. Both were significantly older than him, were responsible for the video in question, were the only ones in it (aside from the waitress) to actually touch the stickers in question... and yet? Noah bore the brunt of the hate that ensued. When the backlash came, they abandoned him and left him to the wolves. (And perhaps because of that, he no longer associates with either one of them, nor follows any related social media accounts—all of which he was required to follow in the first place as terms of going on the trip through his school.)

Noah had just come out of the closet earlier that year and was 18 years-old. He would only turn 19 years-old in the ensuing weeks.

He has addressed these events several times. Most famous was the TikTok that he made explaining his actual position (that he doesn't want anyone, Palestinian or Israeli, to die). Less famous were remarks he made to fans on Snapchat:

I'll post his remarks here for those who can't read the text:

Hey guys! I appreciate you reaching out. To give you context, I did not post this language or sticker. I was at breakfast with friends, it happened to be an Israeli cafe, and a girl was handing out stickers. Someone photographed me and posted and tagged me. As you guys know better than most people, social media can be used however people want to use it. I understand the weight of the situation and take it very seriously. I have friends of friends who are currently being held hostage in Gaza right now. My friends kids were killed in the massacre at the Israeli music festival. Standing up against this terrorism is important to me and why I made my statement after the attack. As one of the only few Jewish people with a platform, I absolutely think it's important to share my message about hatred for Jews around the world right now. However, everyone online is obviously twisting everything and saying I support genocide and am Islamophobic which is obviously entirely false and never have I stated either of those things. Seeing what is happening to the innocent people in Palestine pains me so much and I wish it would stop. I fully support everyone in Palestine as I said in my post on Instagram. One of my best friends in college is Palestinian and we talk about this issue allllll the time and agree on most things. I think people on social media are just animalistic right now so it's hard to even chime in because they just rip me apart so now I'm staying out of it.

I'll let that stand on it's own. I think it provides the context behind his remarks, the situation with the video/stickers, and his actual views versus how social media portrays his views. It also explains why he hasn't said anything else in almost 2 years.

The key takeaway: He was speaking out against antisemitism and the attack on Jewish people on October 7 and he supports an end to what is happening in Gaza and fully supports Palestinians. He literally says it.

And this support, by the way, has been corroborated by his own actions and the word of mouth from Palestinian organizations he has contributed to:

What Has Happened Since?

It would be easier to list the things that haven't happened; but I'll try anyways:

Noah has been called antisemitic slurs; gay slurs and targeted with gay stereotypes; been compared to antisemitic caricatures; he's been threatened with death and had posts go viral fantasizing about his brutal murder; his family has been threatened; he's been threatened with rape and sexual abuse; there are massive accounts on Twitter that doxxed his location while he was filming Season 5—particularly targeting him when he was alone; he's been hacked, had personal pictures leaked; he's had lies spread about his treatment of his cast mates (all of whom have spoken out and said that they've loved him at some point since, making these claims unequivocally false.

Here are a few examples:

Again, I can only post a sample. I hope that sample is enough to get the message across.

It's hard to overstate how cataclysmic this has been. Obviously, he's recovered and healed a lot since the initial incident; but the damage done needs to be acknowledged. These attacks drove him into a dark place by his own admission. He talked about needing therapy on his (now deleted) private spam TikTok account. And they are starting up yet again.

And Then There's the Fandom

The Stranger Things fandom in the wake of all this has been an irritating place to be. Not just because of the above behavior but because of the blanket hypocrisy.

The shipping sub-fandoms in particular have been rank with antisemitism and homophobia—even the Byler fandom, which is predominantly queer. People have:

A) Taken pre-Stranger Things photos—like his baby pictures or pictures with his family—to use as part of their content, their profile pictures, their banners, their fan art, their fan edits, etc.—violating his and his family's privacy for "Will" all while calling him "ugly," a "fag," and lobbing the above-listed threats at him. B) Tried to recast him with a fan cast. These fan casts are almost never Jewish actors, you'll notice. In fact, there's someone on this very app that recast Will Byers as himself. This is gross and absurd. Will Byers is intrinsically tied to Noah Schnapp. Tied to his identities as a Jewish person and a gay man. Tied to his experiences being a character he helped bring to life during his formative years. C) Persist in stanning or support his cast mates despite the fact that they continue to associate with him. This, in particular, is gross hypocrisy. If you're going to be mad at Noah Schnapp for being in a restaurant around stickers you object to—guilt by proximity/association, in other words—those SAME standards should apply to his cast mates, who continue to hang out with him outside of work, state that they love him, and post him on their social medias. I have a whole post about that here.

Instead, the cast is continually afforded blanket immunity while he is singularly targeted for continued abuse and harassment.

It should give the fandom some pause that openly pro-Palestine actors like Maya Hawke not only continue to hang out with him; but in her Instagram story, even stated that she misses it (check the link above for a screenshot of said story). She wouldn't do that if she thought he somehow supported mass-murder; and she knows him way better than any one reading this blog. That goes for the rest of them, too.

They know him better than you. They know his moral compass and what he believes. And they haven't abandoned him and obviously aren't going to. So, are you going to stick to your guns and apply your anger evenly; or maybe consider that you don't have the full picture?

So, Why Care?

I get this in my Asks so often. "Why do you care?" "He's a celebrity." "He don't know you." "He's not your pookie."

I know. It's not about that.

Yes, full disclosure, I am obviously a fan of Noah's. Have been since the show started. And no it's not because I'm gay and he's gay or because he plays my favorite character in Stranger Things.

Like many of his fans, I've spent the last decade seeing his lives on Instagram and TikTok, seeing his fan interactions, watching his vlogs and videos, and I've come to respect him as a human being quite apart from Will Byers or his role as an actor. Fundamentally, I really believe he is a kind and caring human being. The word of mouth from everyone who knows or has met him bares this out—and, yes, he's even been kind to me in the few conversations we've had.

This is only one example from Instagram during The First Shadow premiere this year; but I think it encapsulates what I like about Noah most. He's kind. He goes out of his way to be kind. He does things he doesn't have to do, contractually or just in general, for the sake of being kind. He always has been.

He's also stood up for a plethora of causes. Black Lives Matters, trans rights, the rights of women. He's known to be his cast mates' biggest supporter—and they'll tell you as much, too.

But quite apart from my personal feelings about him and more importantly: this is wrong.

Antisemitism is wrong. Homophobia is wrong. Both kill. Still, to this day. As I am sitting in my kitchen writing this, the news just broke that an Indigenous gay man and a celebrity was shot dead in front of his husband—after having his home burned down and dogs burned alive—in the United States. Yesterday, news broke that a gathering of peaceful Jewish protesters (which included children and the elderly) demanding the release of hostages still held by Hamas was firebombed in Colorado. Luckily, they all survived, but six people were injured in that attack.

Violence and bigotry are ascendent everywhere right now. Minority communities are being targeted. Normalizing the behavior I've described and shown above kills marginalized people. Regardless of your feeling about Noah as a person or celebrity, normalizing the violent and bigoted remarks, tweets, and behavior towards him harms Jewish and LGBTQIA+ people—all of us.

And just as an example of that, I give you the treatment Finn Wolfhard is now receiving just for the "crime" of shaving his head and being deemed no longer conventionally attractive by the fandom:

Yes, the general audience found out about Finn's Jewish heritage and now he's a target, too.

And this fandom is at fault for it.

You cannot normalize bigotry towards one person and expect it to stay contained to that one person. It will always harm everyone in that community. Finn Wolfhard—or any other actor/actress—being your favorite is not going to spare him from the consequences of a discourse you started.

ALL antisemitism and ALL homophobia needs to be called out. The people who insist it's okay that they do that for ANY reason—regardless of if they themselves are LGBTQIA+ or not—need to be ejected from the fandom and never let back in.

Noah Schnapp is a human being. He does not deserve this treatment. No one does. No one is saying you have to like him or even care about him. But you SHOULD care that this is how he's being treated and the impact it is having on others. The impact on Jewish people. The impact on queer people. Standing up and saying that does not mean you support genocide or murder or bigotry of any kind. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I am a person with left-leaning values. I'm tired of those values being spat on and dragged through the mud by people who think THIS is activism or is in any way helping a cause. It's not. All it is doing is perpetuating harm on a real person and real communities—queer and Jewish alike. And it needs to stop.

Related Blogs:

I've compiled some related blogs that expand on other elements of the situation that I've mentioned above in greater detail. This post was already long enough. I'll be updating this as more content comes out.

Examples of Noah’s Support for Gaza and Palestine (by @nymphus-fan-account)

The Evolution of a Lie

No, the Stranger Things Cast Does Not Hate Noah Schnapp

Lyric Vault’s Obsession with Noah Schnapp

Yup, definitely sounds like death cult behavior.

Weird obsession with male savior-knights on horses too.

Anyway now's as good a time as ever to repost this old chestnut:

Myths of a Tranquil South

The long-standing myth of a tranquil Southern plantation society, where loyal slaves lived in harmony with paternal masters, bears a striking resemblance to the enduring image of the happy Jewish dhimmi in the Islamic world. This “teary-eyed vision” of an antebellum Southern “Happy-Happy Land” took full form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[1]

Southerners viewed their social system—based on white supremacy and the heritage of slavery—as the “summit of human achievement.”[2] This notion led planters to press for the annexation of large portions of Mexico, in order to transform them into slave states.[3] Southerners viewed Northerners as dangerous intruders who did not recognize the necessity of maintaining blacks in their inferior status.

A large proportion of American historians and political scientists before the 1950s described master-slave relations in the antebellum Sough as largely amicable.

After the Civil War, white Southerners made a determined effort to control how the American public viewed the South’s “peculiar institution,” and until the mid-twentieth century they largely succeeded in convincing the authors of textbooks and the mass media to emphasize slavery’s “benevolent features.”[4] Northern publishing houses made sure textbooks did not contain passages that might offend Dixie’s whites. A large proportion of American historians and political scientists before the 1950s described master-slave relations in the antebellum South as largely amicable.[5] John W. Burgess, a prominent political scientist, complained that after the mid-nineteenth century the North had regarded slavery “too much in the nature of a crime.” He insisted that plantation aristocrats considered “their relations to their slaves as a grave trust to be faithfully discharged, rather than an opportunity for exploitation.”[6] In 1941 W. J. Cash, a leading cultural critic, concluded that the South—and its apologists—had “shut away” its record of “hate of and brutality toward the black man: ... ‘The lash? A lie, sir; it had never existed. The only bonds were those of tender understanding, trust, and loyalty.’”[7]

For a century after the Civil War, the “happy darkey” fable provided Southerners with a foundation to justify their Lost Cause. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) sponsored essay competitions on the topic of the “Faithful Slave” and called for memorials to honor slave “mammies” for their alleged deep devotion to their owners’ children.[8]

Myth of the “Happy Relationship” Between Muslims and Jews

From the time of the Balfour Declaration (1917) Arab political and religious leaders and commentators wove a web of myths about the conditions of Jews in the Muslim lands of the Middle East over the last fourteen centuries. As one “leaps through the pages of Middle East history and surveys many eras of civilizations,” they maintained, one finds only “the same story of mutual respect between Arabs and Jews.” It was there—only there—that the Jews “could pursue their daily lives in perfect freedom and equality.” And virtually all attributed the “peaceful coexistence” to “Islam ... a most tolerant faith.”[9]

This paradise was lost, many Arab/Muslim leaders proclaimed, only upon the invasion of the foreign ideology of “political Zionism.” The concept of Jewish nationhood, they claimed, was only fashioned at the end of the nineteenth century in response to the travails of European Jews, and had no relevance—and was allegedly of no interest—to Jewish people who dwelled in Muslim lands.[10] They contended that “the fact that a Jew is a Jew has never prejudiced the Arab against him” and mocked that “the people of the Jewish religion ... are now called the Jews.” As early as 1921, some insisted that it was only “England who created” the idea of a “National Home” for them, and they found it absurd that “England [could] conclude a treaty with a religion and register it in the League of Nations.”[11] Others denounced the “Zionist chauvinists,” who “use their well-placed influence” to promote their ideas “throughout the world,” and warned that they were “spreading the Jewish problem to ... Muslim countries, where it had never existed before.”[12]

Many Arabs stressed that even before “Zionist ... pretensions” threatened the “happy relationship” between Muslims and Jews, it had been disrupted by the imposition of European colonial rule.[13] They informed their Western audiences that Jews had “enjoyed all the privileges and rights of citizenship” before colonialism introduced an “artificial separation” between Muslim and Jew. A Moroccan political leader insisted that for this reason the Jews had “welcomed” the overthrow of colonial rule and the return of “Arabization” and the establishment of the independent Muslim nation.[14]

Contrary to the Arabs’ contentions, however, it was the colonial powers that had extended citizenship (e.g., Algeria in 1870), equality or near-equality (e.g., the French Protectorate in Morocco, 1912–1956) to the Jews, liberating them at last from their status as subjugated, humiliated dhimmis, and ending the oppressive jizya, the tribute always exacted by the Muslims. Thus Jews had strongly endorsed the colonial presence, generally embracing modern European education and culture.[15] It was under British occupation (1882–1922) that Jews in Egypt felt safest. Notably, under Islamic rule, it was only the Ottoman Empire that, in an effort to secure European support—and modern weapons—issued an Imperial Edict (1856) that, in theory, extended equal rights to all its subjects. In practice, however, Ottoman governors (pashas) confined themselves to collecting taxes, while local rulers and the populace—for example, the Mamluks in Egypt—continued to persecute, pillage, and impose additional “heavy levies” on the Jews. Thus most Jews not only supported European colonial rule, but feared the independence movements, with the threat of return to their earlier subordinate “social, political and economic” positions.[16]

You do not get to profit, financially or attention wise or another way, off of a *potentially* queer jew whilst we are banned from pride events.

We do not know if she was questioning her sexuality but ultimately straight or if she was actually queer because she was killed for the crime of existing as a jew before she could come out. Queer rights obviously matter. Anne Franke is not the person you should be using.

You need to protect alive queer jews. You need to love all jews, not just the dead ones.

"But they banned zionists not jews", they banned jewish organizations, who refused to say they disavowed israel. That's like asking a local Chinese diaspora group to disavow the CCP or they can't be at pride.

Yup, definitely sounds like death cult behavior.

Holmemes pt 44

Holmemes pt. 53

[Sherlock talks about their father's girlfriend]

11 year old Sherlock wants to drive just like his big brother. He steals Mycroft’s car keys, thinking how impressed his brother would be when he saw him driving.

Sherlock gets into the car, starts driving and immediately hits a parked car. Horrified, he desperately tries to think of a way to keep Mycroft from finding out. But Mycroft, who heard the crash, is already emerging from the house.

Years later, adult Sherlock still vividly remembers having to face an extremely displeased Mycroft.

Sherlock : I'm sorry I wrecked your car, Mycroft. I felt very bad about that. But you were so hard on me! I mean I deserved that, but it broke my heart. I did that because I was trying to be like you - which is so hard because you're so perfect and extraordinary - and I wanted to impress you and spend time with you. My eleven year old mind thought you'd see me driving and decide we should go on a road trip together. I love so much, and I hate it when you're angry with me.

Mycroft : Oh Sherlock, I'm not perfect at all. And you're an extraordinary man - you're so brave and clever and you're always doing everything you can to help people. You've always been a clever, wonderful boy and I'm very proud that you're my brother. And I wasn't angry because you wrecked the car - it was because when I heard the crash and got out of the house I saw you in the car, and for a moment I thought you might be seriously hurt, or worse! I was terrified! I love you more than anything in the whole world, and I always try to do everything I can so I won't lose you. Do you still want to go on a road trip?

He is however going to hear them brag about each other repearedly, get shut down by the other who them brages about the other, and so on so forth.

11 year old Sherlock wants to drive just like his big brother. He steals Mycroft’s car keys, thinking how impressed his brother would be when he saw him driving.

Sherlock gets into the car, starts driving and immediately hits a parked car. Horrified, he desperately tries to think of a way to keep Mycroft from finding out. But Mycroft, who heard the crash, is already emerging from the house.

Years later, adult Sherlock still vividly remembers having to face an extremely displeased Mycroft.

Sherlock : I'm sorry I wrecked your car, Mycroft. I felt very bad about that. But you were so hard on me! I mean I deserved that, but it broke my heart. I did that because I was trying to be like you - which is so hard because you're so perfect and extraordinary - and I wanted to impress you and spend time with you. My eleven year old mind thought you'd see me driving and decide we should go on a road trip together. I love so much, and I hate it when you're angry with me.

Mycroft : Oh Sherlock, I'm not perfect at all. And you're an extraordinary man - you're so brave and clever and you're always doing everything you can to help people. You've always been a clever, wonderful boy and I'm very proud that you're my brother. And I wasn't angry because you wrecked the car - it was because when I heard the crash and got out of the house I saw you in the car, and for a moment I thought you might be seriously hurt, or worse! I was terrified! I love you more than anything in the whole world, and I always try to do everything I can so I won't lose you. Do you still want to go on a road trip?

He is however going to hear them brag about each other repearedly, get shut down by the other who them brages about the other, and so on so forth.