Vermicious Yid

I’m not a leftist or a liberal. I’m someone who is actually getting shit done. Inevitably, the people making decisions have no idea what is happening and cause people like me unending problems.

But you know who causes the most problems?

Fucking Republicans.

When Republicans win, poor people start dying. They lose their Medicaid and their food stamps and their kids starve. They get turned out of institutions, go off their meds, and incur hideously violent consequences.

We CANNOT work with them. That's the entire point. They're not Democrats. They're a racist, antisemitic, sexist white grievance movement that has openly admitted they want to be the next Tea Party.

You can't kumbaya with that shit.

They are doing this because their leadership are bigots who are benefitting personally and financially from a GOP presidency and majority and they realized they can offload hatred onto acceptable minorities just like MAGA does.

I've belonged to only two nationally organized left-wing groups in my life: the first, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for just over a year; the second, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for 41 years. My membership in SDS ended in 1969, when I was 18 years old, without any input or agency on my part, when the organization collapsed around me in a chaotic maelstrom of rival manifestos, mass walkouts, fervid chanting, and a few fistfights, all of which scattered the group’s thousands of members to the winds. My membership in DSA ended with considerably less drama last week, when at a somewhat more advanced age I resigned from the organization via an e-mail. I left to protest the DSA leadership’s politically and morally bankrupt response to the horrific Hamas October 7 anti-Jewish pogrom that took the lives of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and saw over 200 hostages carried off to Gaza, both groups of victims including children and infants. Whether DSA will now follow SDS into political oblivion is for the future to tell, but one thing a lifetime of studying the history of American radicalism suggests to me is that, as a rule, there are rarely second acts in the lives of organizations captured by left sectarian “entryists.” What do I mean by “entryists”? In left-wing parlance, the term refers to tightly organized groups who, without sharing the beliefs of larger and more loosely organized bodies, join and proceed to either wreck or, where possible, capture them for ends at odds with the spirit and purpose of the original members. Without descending too deeply into the weeds of sectarian history, entryism has been a recurring phenomenon on the American left since the 1930s.

Can you guys not understand how every single Democrat centrist feels like Republican-lite to a huge segment of the population? It’s not a conspiracy that they appealed to a large segment of voters and those voters are not evil for feeling that appeal.

If you want those voters to choose not the things they have been choosing, they have to feel welcome making different choices. You are not doing that. The fuck do I care about the rich people who are the purported leadership? Politicians don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a feature of the job.

And I am just as mad at the exclusionary policies from the centrists too. This party loves to divide itself into “pure” and “worse than the enemy” and I’m not here for it.

We're doomed either which way. But if the Democrats have the house and the senate, a lot less people go down with us then if the Republicans keep the house and the senate. And hey, only getting fucked over 4 ways is still better than getting fucked over 7. No?

The vast majority of Americans think the Democrats are already too Left.

every single Democrat centrist feels like Republican-lite to a huge segment of the population

Like...this isn't actually a huge segment of the population, it's a segment of hyper-engaged Stalinists.

19 down could be "Propaganda," but then I have no idea what 22 and 23 would be.

14 down is probably "Genocide;" it fits if I swap both 17s for Genocide too. But fuck, that's even more depressing than when I realized I'd forgotten the H in Apartheid and 11 across was actually another Genocide.

And answer key, as promised.

Liberalism believes that certain values are universal, and strives as much as possible to treat everyone equally. Illiberal leftism, on the other hand, is based in its core on dividing people into categories and treating them differently. Proletariat and bourgeoisie. Kulak and Bednyak. White and black. Oppressor and victim. Ally, and enemy.

Which leads us to the shock that liberal jews worldwide felt after October 7th. Because while we assumed that leftist would apply their values equally to us, in reality they were never going to, because we were never part of the good groups. We were not, in their eyes, deserving of the same values. And even though we had always been their allies, they saw us as enemies.

um it’s really not considering that jews make up less than 2% of the global population at less than 16 million

Judaism is a foundational religion. There are fourteen offshoots, including but not limited to Islam, Christianity, Baha'i, Druze, and Rastafarian. Very literally half the world is Christian or Muslim. Islam is just over 25% and Christianity is almost 29%.

It's a form of supercessionism.

Also I regret to tell you we're not 2% of the population. We're 2% of the American population.

There are 14,000,000 Jews. Million with an M

That means there are 860,000,000 more Muslims and 860,000,000 more Christians.

Because Christians and Muslims murdered us.

So now on a planet with 9,000,000,000 people there are 8,860,000,000 (billion)Gentiles and 14,000,000 (million)Jews.

That’s what 0.02% means.

1,000,000,000-14,000,000 is not "860,000,000"

0.2%, not 0.02%.

1,000,000 is million, not billion.

There are about 16,000,000 Jews, a couple million more if you include people who are Jewish and something else (which is how many children of intermarriage identify, meaning this number especially undercounts American Jews)

This means that 1 in 500 people is a Jew, roughly. So if 3 school busses is 100 people, that's 15, not 150 school busses.

Just say "elemental construct" or something.

Magic caster created golem? That's a magical construct.

Naturally occurring golem? That's an elemental.

-

A setting without Jews by definition cannot have golems.

In the present the reader is introduced to Alice Cohen as she receives her inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother. This inheritance consists of a lone house in an area of Brooklyn where all the other buildings have been torn down. One of the first things that Alice discovers is a walled off section in the basement from which a voice calls to her to read stories. Alice's first choice for this is her grandmother's diary.

^ small excerpt

It just fucking fits. It’s so easy. I’m not remotely Jewish by any definition of the word, so I cannot speak for anybody, but instead I offer you this very practical taken on “golem.”

Let’s say you hear conflicting takes by Jewish folk on whether or not you can use “golem.” Some say you can, some say you can’t.

Rather than making it a moral matter — consider, some folks asked you not to and said it sucks, and you know they’ve got a fair argument even if you don’t agree with it. Since it’s so easy to not do, why not just, not be a dick?

If you want to look at it not as a moral matter, but look in purely practical terms, by refusing the request to call it anything else, it’s bein’ a bit of a dick.

Not because I have anything against Judaism in particular.

Not because I'm particularly attached to "golem" as a term.

No, it's because this is a stupid hill to die on.

Fantasy steals. It appropriates. It uses familiar terms so that people don't have to check a glossary to keep track of a bunch of terms that they won't remember because every piece of media out there is suddenly making up their own words for shit. And you know what? Fantasy steals from everyone, without prejudice. The only qualifier is that the word be well enough known that people will know what you're talking about.

So, if anything, having your word used as a general fantasy term means that your myth was considered recognizable enough to be used for clarity.

I am lending flightyquinn my hereditary Jew card to block your extremely irresponsible accusation of anti-semitism.

Golems are cool, especially because of their heritage which comes with thematically powerful stories. They aren't just a robot, or just another Frankenstein, but the idea of unleashing a force that does exactly what you ask of it but too much. Jewish mythology has wrestled with "do these things have a soul" in a way much more interesting and complex than "of course not" and "of course it does." They're a unique idea and calling them equivalent to "elemental construct" (what an awkward phrase) is the actual simplification of a real minority culture.

So don't reference them stupidly, but if you're knowledgable about them and using their real themes, you don't need to be able to trace your maternal ancestral line.

"omg, she's such a girl boss"

She kills babies like it's her job, if that's a girl boss?

"I'm a witch and my patron is Lilith"

She's a rape/SIDS demon. You actually do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to her."

Like, bluntly, it's not just that Lilith isn't a misunderstood girlboss goddess who was tarred with an association with rape and SIDS. It's that it's literally the opposite of that. Lilith was the mythological embodiment of rape and SIDS, and her association with feminism is entirely due to a misogynist in the Middle Ages claiming that feminism was bad and should therefore be associated with the rape and SIDS demon.

Claiming that Lilith is your feminist girlboss patron is like claiming that your biggest personal inspiration for the fight for trans rights was the totally 100% true story of the "down with cis" bus, which btw wasn't actually about people committing violence, it was instead the heartwarming story of how people wearing "down with cis" t-shirts drove a bus to Washington and convinced Congress to give trans people equal rights. Like 1) that's absolutely nothing to do with what the "down with cis bus" story was about, and 2) the "down with cis bus" story was an obvious lie which was created by someone who was trying to discredit the movement you claim to support.

It's not actually particularly feminist to claim that the an anti-feminist screed is true and real and important (they just got some little details wrong).

Like it's really really important to recognize that!

She was not subsumed into/incorporated into Christianity at all, and so she cannot be a subversion of "Judeochristian patriarchal mythology."

Judeochristian is a highly problematic term for a VARIETY of reasons, and people shouldn't use it (outside of, perhaps, the first three centuries CE, where Christianity was still defining itself as a unique religion) because they will inevitably say/imply some shit that just isn't true! Like suggesting that Lilith is a part of Christian mythology in any way. She isn't.

Like @penrosesun mentioned, the idea that she was Adam's first wife is from a deeply misogynistic text. She's not really a girl boss there. She actually leaves and is told if she doesn't return 100 of her demon children will die every day. And she agrees to that and declares she was basically made to bring pain and death and likes this. So. Not exactly a good thing.

Things associated with Lilith in various jewish texts:

Tragic death of infants / committing infanticide (particularly of disabled, unhealthy, or "strange" children)

Birthing demon babies that will die in the hundreds (possibly even killing her own children)

Miscarriage (especially with genetic defects)

Giving children epileptic fits

Causing death in childbirth

Having hundreds of agents of like...evil and badness

Being the partner/consort of a demon prince/king (Samael/asmodeus)

Nocturnal seminal emissions

Adultery

Possibly the first mention of Lilit is just referring to a screech owl/night bird. She does show up in the talmud (predating the alphabet of Ben Sira, aforementioned misogyny text) but all of those earlier mentions seem to be limited to her being a horrifying demon.

Ex: shabbat 151b:

Rabbi Ḥanina said: It is prohibited to sleep alone in a house, and anyone who sleeps alone in a house will be seized by the evil spirit Lilith

Niddah 24b discusses miscarried fetuses that resemble the form of "a Lilith", who appears as a woman who has wings. But this suggests it's a category of creature, not a singular woman.

It. Literally. Doesn't. Matter.

Spoiler alert: trans people can be antisemitic!

Franz Kafka was a real person who died not too long ago, and just because a trans person relates to his writings doesn't mean they can claim he's trans. It's not the same as relating to a fictional character. You can't 'headcanon' an actual person. I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman. He was an actual person, not a fictional character you can project on. An treating Franz Kafka like a fictional character you can project any label onto and separate him from his actual life is dehumanization and *also* antisemitic.

It's no different than queer people co-opting Anne Frank's memory and erasing her story to just herald her as a "bi icon" when she never had the chance to live long enough to label herself. Queer gentiles need to stop dehumanizing Jewish people and turning them into blank slates they can project onto.

I don't care how much you relate- he wasn't trans, don't call him a woman.

At some point relatively recently, people seem to have come to the conclusion that you can't empathize with a character (or real fucking person, in this case, and I cannot stress how gross that is) unless you're just like them. "Oh, I, a nonbinary person can identify with this cishet man? He must actually be nonbinary!" "Oh, I, an autistic person, can identify with this Ambiguously Quirky™ person? She must actually be autistic!"

Being able to relate to a person--real or fictional--who isn't just like you is a good thing. It's good that you see yourself in the writings of a cisgender man! Maybe it will teach you that cis people aren't the enemy. It's good that an autistic character resonates with NT people! Maybe they'll gain new insight into their autistic friends and family!

It's called empathy, and it's so important to understand that you are going to see your experiences reflected in people who are unlike you. Those connections are important. Deciding that Kafka must be a trans woman because you're a trans woman is missing the entire fucking point. It means that you do, in fact, have some things in common with a cisgender man, and conversely, it means that cisgender men have things in common with you. To flatten them out so they're just like you is missing out on so much of what they have to say.

People are beautiful and rich and layered and the fact that we can connect with other people and share experiences despite how different we are? That's the whole fucking point. That's what makes life worth living.

Because we've seen that before. We see it very often because it's a fundamental premise of some incredibly antisemitic forms of Christianity, and when it turns out that we're real people with real opinions and real beliefs and real feelings who don't just exist to validate someone else's perception of who and how we could be, people don't just abandon their pretense at allyship, they get violent.

It's also a common failing in how the Holocaust is taught. People like to present this lens of "it was random violence that came out of nowhere and could've happened to anyone. It could've happened to you! Imagine if you'd been one of the victims! That would've been a tragedy wouldn't it?" And the thing is, that's bullshit. If you were just a random German citizen at the time? You would've been one of the perpetrators. And it was a tragedy in and of itself; it doesn't become a tragedy by imaging a scenario in which people who were perfectly safe would've actually been potentially in danger (never killed, of course, because Holocaust education is also commonly sanitized, which is a different rant).

Edited to take out a rant that was in drafts and got added to this by mistake, but. Well, the Tl;dr, since that's been reblogged

No, but everything in his writing that gets commented on is something that speaks to feeling out of place in society, or something that conveys emotional or social vulnerability.

So for someone to say “because of these things I think she was a trans woman teehee!” they are implicitly 1) denying that any other aspect of identity might cause these feelings, and 2) asserting that if someone feels these things, they must be a woman.

Ignoring his Judaism AND implying that men can’t feel alienated or vulnerable and if they do they must actually have been a woman. Doesn’t seem very respectful or deconstructing of gendered norms to me.

In England, during the lifetime of William Shakespeare (and beyond, I don't know how long it lasted though), it was, legitimately, the majority belief that Jewish men menstruated.

Ah yes some totally hinged thoughts from the anti-genocide crowd

And I think, possibly, (this is not an official “stance” or something I think is definitely the case, but as a thought that’s developing, maybe it needs more time to percolate idk), we are going to see both: there’s going to be more polarization, people in their own streams of thought (that part is less prediction that observation), as antisemitism gets more or more extreme, especially around politics. but I think (I hope) we’re also going to see a lot of people recognizing how weird all of this is, who will not necessarily push back hard against the mob or be willing to hide us or anything like that, but will disagree.

Considering just how ridiculously well documented October 7th was, I would genuinely, truly, be interested in a comparison between the evidence for the Simchat Torah pogrom vs, like, the existence of Alexander of Macedon. Or the entire Umayyad Caliphate. Or Lichtenstein. How does the evidence in favor of Lichtensten's existence match up here? If there is more evidence in favor of the existence of Lichtenstein, then by how much?

We know more about any singular 24 hour period during WWII than we know about the entire Roman empire. Using the standard of evidence that (at least according to these people) the Simchat Torah pogrom is insufficiently evidenced, can we prove that Karl Marx was a real person who ever actually existed, and not some kind of mythological figure without historical basis?

They literally livestreamed themselves murdering people, went on the news saying how great it all was and that they'll do it over and over again, and just this month released yet another manifesto talking all about how awesome it was. And yet morons all around the world either deny it happened or say Israel did it.

[Image ID: comment from @dougielombax asking simply "Strasserites?" presumably to ask after my usage of the word in the OP. Description ends.]

The original Strasserites were the smaller of the two major factions in the 1932 NSDAP, with the larger being the Hitlerites.

In theory, they should have been unable to work together. The Hitlerites were, after all, generic fascists with all of the anti-socialism that implies. The Strasserites, by contrast, were fairly hardline socialists who even specifically advocated an alliance with Stalin's USSR.

And yet, they were a crucial part of the Nazi electoral coalition. What could unite them?

Easy. They agreed on the fundamental cause of all of their problems: Jews. Where the Hitlerites blamed the Jews for inventing communism and the defeat of the German Empire in 1918, the Strasserites blamed the Jews for inventing capitalism and the defeat of the German Revolution in 1919.

"We have so much in common!" they both said, "We should do brunch!"

Either way, The Jews were nefarious puppet masters responsible for all stubbed toes (who, inexplicably, really couldn't manage to maintain any type of discipline in their ranks of minions, considering the existence of the other half of the NSDAP).

Ultimately, the Strasserites were socialists because they hated Jews, who they believed to control the banks and the businesses and all the capitalism stuff. As such, their socialism was innately subordinate to their hatred of Jews, and was quick to be cast aside if it should ever interfere with the Higher Objective. Hence, the alliance with the Hitlerites.

Thus, just as the Hitlerites famously prioritized Hating Jews above more practical concerns (like trying to stop the Soviet advance in 19-fucking-45), the Strasserites also prioritized their Judenhass above more practical concerns. Concerns like, say, protecting their vulnerable backs from the Long Knives of their allies.

As a random, non-specific example.

I use the word also to refer to the movement of wildly antisemetic Leftists, "Antizionists," who surged to such prominence after during the Simchat Torah Pogrom. These Leftists, to my surprise at the time, were fast to abandon any and all other principles they claimed to hold, from gay rights to saying-rape-is-bad, the very moment one of those supposedly-deeply-held-principles conflicted with the higher order objective; Hating Jews.

"Antizionists" were and are quick to make their common cause with groups that, objectively, embody everything they claim to oppose; from Hamas, to the Islamic Republic, to actively working to return Donald Trump to power in 2024. That this last would, of course, directly lead to Trump cracking down on everything-antizionists-claim-to-support, seems to have occurred to these laterday Strasserites just as little as it did to their forebears in the thirties.

Because, of course, all of those supposed principles of theirs aren't actually primary.

Modern Strasserites don't denounce the Patriarchy because they have any per se objection to misogyny. They do it because they think the Patriarchy is run by Jews. They don't rally against Colonialism because they have anything against, y'know, colonialism. They do it because they think The Jews are behind colonialism. They don't dislike racism, or homophobia, or transphobia, or any other tool of oppression on any objective ground. Ideologically speaking, they just happen to blame all of that stuff on The Jews, so they're against it.

If hurting the Jews means standing side by side with people who rape women to death, people who throw gay people off of buildings, people who literally enslave ethnic minorities... these Strasserites have proven time and again that if that's what it takes, then they will support all of those things to the hilt.

Thought grew from there into the following exaggerated, black-humor "What If?":

Israel: "In recognition of the traumatic period of the conflict, we are now giving each Palestinian a therapy puppy in the hopes that this will help them heal."

And here's what the reactions would be:

JVP: "Israel is intentionally extending their occupation by threatening Palestinians with animal bites."

NYT: "Israel burdens Palestinians with untrained animals, should have given them fully trained working dogs."

Amnesty International: "Israel engages in empty gesture towards Palestinians by giving them puppies while continuing occupation and limiting their Liberties, and denying them their right to self determination, especially since pet dogs are haram."

WOL: "The Zionist Entity exiles entire population of traditional Palestinian dog breed, which are heroically rescued by the struggling but stalwart Palestinian people, who will restore this endangered dog breed back to its rightful place with the dissolution and destruction of the Zionist occupier."

Al Jazeera: "Israel forces Palestinians to feed additional mouths in the hope of fomenting famine."

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese: "Zionist cannibals are genociding hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and feeding to the dogs the Palestinian corpses that they refuse to eat themselves."

BBC: "Israeli forces deploy canine unit to oppress Palestinian militants, who are forced to resort to eating dog food."

Middle East Eye: "Israel forcing Palestinians to eat dog meat in the hope to make them violate halal!"

Wall Street Journal: "Israel gives Palestinians therapy dogs in an effort to smooth out the peace process, but we ask: do the Palestinians deserve such kindness?"

The Guardian: "In an act of blatant hound-washing, Israel gives Palestinian children puppies, weaponizing antisemitism in an attempt to legitimize the Israeli regime."

Tiktok and Tumblr: "The settler-colonialist apartheid genocidal European White Capitalist Zionist Entity is sexually assaulting indigenous Palestinians with the-rapy dogs!"

Iranian RGC: "Israel deploys trained Mossad dogs to spy on Palestinians and attack militants."

New York Post: "Israel distributes trained therapy dogs in a naked attempt to court weak Leftists who think that therapy fixes everything and who aren't strong enough to face reality."