Meanwhile, understanding the history and reality of Hamas seems to uninterest the western left. It doesn’t matter that Hamas released a press conference explaining their cause and that they are not hurting children and women — further clarifying that such acts would go against Islam. It does not matter that despite the western world calling Hamas “terrorists,” that the UN has never classified Hamas as a terrorist group and that Netanyahu has funded ISIS and has labeled human rights organizations as terrorists. It doesn’t matter that Hamas is one of many political organizations in Gaza fighting for sovereignty and liberation. It doesn’t matter that Hamas was elected by the people. It doesn’t matter that Hamas’s charter explicitly states that they do not seek war with Jewish people, but rather Zionism as a settler-colonial project. It does not matter that Hamas has agreed to a two-state solution and has tried peace talks, which Israel rejected and sabotaged.
When the western left vaguely acknowledges these facts, they scoff: how can you believe what they say? They’re lying! I answer that, if Hamas was a terrorist group, they would have no need for slight-of-hand trickery or double-speak. Terrorist groups terrorize. They don’t water down their tactics because that would defeat the purpose of terror. Terrorists make videos that are meant to invoke fear, not reasonable calm press conferences, detailing how they are committed to treating the Israeli hostages with humanity.
The reason these details and facts don’t matter is because the western left suffers from a condition I call flat earth thinking. Flat earth thinking is a kind of cognitive dissonance, where the power dynamics of a political landscape are flattened, the historical context and facts are erased, and it is driven by the belief that the truth is always found by identifying the two binaries of any situation and seeking the middle ground. This is how people make conclusions about “both sides” being wrong. This is how people make perfunctory statements like “why can’t humans just get along.” This is how the left can make historically inaccurate statements like, “this war is just about religion.” This is how the western left functionally supports war and genocide under the guise of nuance.
– The Grief Witch, What is the Ethical Way to Climb Out of Hell?
Do you think Palestinians do not feel their own grief? Are not in touch with or aware of the sacrifices that need to be made to protect their culture, land, homes, families, children, and future? Palestinians are demonstrating the deepest act of love we can know: the willingness to sacrifice their immediate safety for the future, the land, and the children.
Their bravery is a lesson to the world: if we want to save the people and the planet from the existential threat of imperialism and settler-colonialism, we must be prepared to fight. As Frantz Fanon writes in The Wretched Earth: “Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”
– The Grief Witch, What is the Ethical Way to Climb Out of Hell?
Fake moon landing: “I don’t trust the government” and “I’m dubious of what is scientifically possible”- Frustrating, but understandable. 7/10.
Roswell aliens: “I dont trust the government” and “I enjoy scientific discoveries”- Palatable. No racist undertones. 9/10.
Bigfoot: “Lack of evidence is not proof of nonexistence”- Palatable, understandable, flawed, weird in a fun way. Kooky more than harmful. 8/10, would buy them bumper stickers and novelty T-shirts for Christmas.
Nessie: Bigfoot with a European maritime twist. 8/10. Taking full advantage to encourage a Scotland vacation. Edit: I just remembered young earth creationists were a thing. If this is a “dinosaurs are still around and earth is 6,000 years old” deal it’s a 2/10.
Moon is fake: “I don’t trust anything I can’t touch”. Aggravating. Probably doesn’t wash hands, either. The annoying uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. Amusing to watch as long as you don’t get invested. 4/10
Earth is flat: Trendy but stupid. “The government and science are both liars”. Half points for being half right, but docking more for being basic as hell. 2/10
Hollow earth: Points for creativity. Loses a few for, again, being dumb as hell. An intriguing Brendan Frasier-esque sense of whimsy and adventure. 5/10, would take the opportunity to go spelunking on long weekends.
Advanced Atlantis: Doesn’t sound racist at first but definitely branches out into racism. If it’s surface-level “Atlantis existed and had cool stuff” it’s a 6/10, but if it’s “Atlantis still exists in a bubble at the bottom of the ocean and had flying cars and shit” it’s a 2/10.
Pyramids built by Napolean: Racist and dumb, and probably too dumb to realize it’s racist. Not sure if that’s better or worse. 0/10
EgyptianMummies are fake: Dumb. Never heard of it before but refuse to validate it with research. Either very dumb and also racist or just very dumb. We literally have Egyptian mummies. Rich white people used to eat them for fake medicine. What are you talking about. -5/10
I was sincerely torn between aliens and bigfoot before reading this.
I feel validated.
I have no idea how Atlantis is a road to racism (it’s simply asserted above), but then my knowledge of Atlantis solely comes from:
Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water,
the Disney Atlantis movie, and
The Stargate SG-1 spin-off.
Was it because Colm Meaney was a damn scary Irishman in the latter?
In 1882, the maverick US congressman and popular writer Ignatius Donnelly published Atlantis: The Antediluvian World which argued that a highly complex, sophisticated culture had been wiped out by a flood 10,000 years ago and claimed that its survivors had spread round the world teaching the rest of humanity the secrets of farming and architecture. Sounds familiar.
Colonialism is Good, Actually
Then there were the Nazis. Many swore by the idea that a white Nordic superior race – people of “the purest blood” – had come from Atlantis. As a result, Himmler set up an SS unit, the Ahnenerbe – or Bureau of Ancestral Heritage – in 1935 to find out where people from Atlantis had ended up after the deluge had destroyed their homeland.
The Nazis ruin everything, of course
But Hancock – who describes himself as a journalist presumably to avoid being called a pseudo-scientist – takes the story to a new controversial level in suggesting that survivors of such a deluge were the instigators of the great works of other civilisations, from Egypt to Mexico and Turkey to Indonesia. As Dibble states, such claims reinforce white supremacist ideas. “They strip indigenous people of their rich heritage and instead give credit to aliens or white people.” In short, the series promotes ideas of “race science” that are outdated and long since debunked.
The biggest name in Atlantis bullshit (I checked, but also didn’t check too hard, but he was the guy Netflix hired) keeps saying the good parts of “other civilizations” are actually just because of Atlantis.
Many writers on the subject—including Hancock back in the 1990s—spoke of the “white” skin of the Atlanteans, who were a kind of master race tutoring benighted brown people in the divine art of piling rocks.
Atlanteans are White, obviously.
(apparently he recently decided they weren’t white and were actually all indigenous now, which…raises other questions).
OMFG someone couldn’t find themselves an all-white progenitor race to be the source from which all good things flow, so they made one up? That’s grand.
And here I was thinking Atlantis was Plato making up a story about the Minoan eruption.
IMHO it’s hilarious how Disney’s Atlanteans are clearly nonwhite (and the demolitions guy was named Santorini) and in Nadia they’re multiracial. Like nobody wants Donnelly’s bullshit.
Yeah, basically.
“Making up a German race in history” was a pretty significant Nazi undertaking, to be fair, so I’m not exactly surprised by it. Plato himself was likely referring, directly or indirectly, to that eruption but since when did fascist (adjacent) fucknuggets actually read?
