Antisemitism - Blog Posts

🇱🇧 Israel BOMBING white phosphorus in its airstrikes on southern Lebanon.

Y'know, it's actually really fucked up that a solid two thirds of the posts I've seen about the DC shooting have been Jews trying to prove that it really was antisemitism, not anti-Zionism, and the guy who killed two people was bad, actually.

We shouldn't have to justify our grief and anger. We shouldn't feel like we need proof that our pain is justified. I think that's one of the most insidious effects of the rise in antisemitism - how we've all gotten used to defending ourselves preemptively, because there are so many people who will attack every weak spot we leave open.

We should be allowed some weakness when our people are dying.

Never will cease to amaze and horrifying how people will regurgitate the same antisemitic conspiracy theories that white supremacists have about Jews but just rebrand it with Israeli and Zionist and still convince themselves they are not antisemitic.

Source

All of you talking about how republicans are literal Nazis sure have been quiet as a literal pogrom is happening in Amsterdam just hours after the commemoration of Kristallnacht

“Again the Jew has the right to say to the Christian, you have no right to laugh over the absurdities and ghost stories of the Talmud and its expounders of the past, when you believe in a personal Satan who tempted and tried the Son of God, absurdity can hardly go beyond this; when you believe the ghost stories and exorcisms of the New Testament, which are certainly glaring enough to defy reason and override all intelligence. The greatest miracles of the Talmud are mere child’s play in comparison to the immaculate conception, the resurrection of the crucified one from death and his post-mortem feats on earth, in Hades and then in Heaven.”

— Rabbi Isaac M Wise (via yidquotes)

Traditionally religious people often claim that the Torah requires them to exclude, exile, or condemn transgender people, but the Torah never commands or encourages that kind of behavior. None of the Torah's laws requires the Israelite community to treat people whose appearance or  behavior doesn't fit binary norms as defiled or defiling.

— Joy Ladin, “The Soul of the Stranger: Reading G-d and Torah from a Transgender Perspective”  

Digimon fans, where you at?

Hey Digimon fans, where are you all at? I feel our fandom has died - especially with fanfic writers and readers and even people who want to discuss it anymore. Like I'm a fanfic writer who knows her writing is not terrible, it's good enough that when I wrote a Harry Potter fanfic, people are constantly reviewing and favouriting it. I've already got 5 reviews on a single chapter.

So Digimon fans, why have you let our fandom die? Our show is so well written for its time.

Where are you guys?

Whether you ship Taiora and Takari or Sorato and Daikari, it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, we both love Digimon. If you agree and wish to connect or if you just agree with this post, send through some likes so I know you lot are alive out there.

Only don't send me a like if you ship gay. Digimon is my childhood and I don't want that tainted like everything else is nowadays. I've seen every season but Ghost Game and the 2020 reboot (because 01 was better and didn't need a reboot) but I'm happy if you would like to ramble about it. I'm also not a huge fan of Tri.

Antisemitism and Islamophobia are very similar (if not the same), actually

So I was scrolling down the #palestine tag for any updates and important information, and I came across this:

And I think we need to sit down and talk about this.

I am a Muslim. I live in Indonesia, a country that is predominantly Muslim and a lot of Muslims here also support the Palestinian cause. Hell, even our government supports it by not only allowing Palestinian goods enter the country without fee, but also taking in Palestinian refugees and even acknowledging the status of Palestine as a state while not having any political ties with Israel. The topic of the Palestinian tragedy has been spoon-fed to us at schools, sermons, media, etc., so your average Indonesian would at the very least be aware of the conflict.

However, there is a glaring problem. One that I keep seeing way too often for my liking.

A lot of them are antisemitic as hell. The sermons I would hear sometimes demonize Jewish people. Antisemitic statements are openly said out loud on social media. Some are even Nazi supporters who would literally go to anime cons and COSPLAY as members of the Nazi party. This is not just an Indonesian Muslim problem, no, but this is a glaring issue within the global Islamic community as a whole. Today, this sense of antisemitism is usually rooted in general hatred towards the Israeli government and its actions against the people of Palestine, but antisemitism amongst Muslims are also rooted in certain interpretations of verses from the Qur'an and Hadith mentioning Jewish people and Judaism (particularly the Bani Israil), but in a way that is more ridiculing instead of life-threatening when compared to how antisemitism looks like in the Western world.

As someone who prefers to become a "bridge" between two sides in most cases, I find this situation to be concerning, to say the least. While, yes, it is important for us Muslims to support Palestine and fight against injustice, we must not forget that not every Jewish people support the Israeli government. A lot of them are even anti-Zionists who actively condemn Israel and even disagree with the existence of Israel as a state as it goes against their teachings. A lot of them are also Holocaust survivors or their descendants, so it is harmful to think for one second that Hitler's actions and policies were justified. It's just like saying that Netanyahu is right for his decision to destroy Palestine and commit war crime after war crime towards the Palestinians.

As Muslims, we also need to remember that Jewish people (the Yahudi) are considered ahli kitab, i.e. People Of The Book along with Christians (the Nasrani). The Islam I have come to know and love has no mentions of Allah allowing us to persecute them or anyone collectively for the actions of a few. While, yes, there are disagreements with our respective teachings I do not see that as an excuse to even use antisemitic slurs against Jewish people during a pro-Palestine rally, let alone support a man who was known for his acts of cruelty toward the Jewish community in WW2. They are still our siblings/cousins in faith, after all. Unless they have done active harm like stealing homes from civilians or celebrating the destruction of Palestine or supporting the Israeli government and the IOF or are members of the IOF, no Jewish people (and Christians, for that matter) must be harmed in our fight against Zionism.

Contemporary antisemitism is similar to (if not straight up being the exact same thing as) contemporary Islamophobia, if you think about it; due to the actions of a select few that has caused severe harm towards innocent people, an entire community has been a target of hate. Even when you have tried to call out the ones supporting such cruelties, you are still getting bombarded by hate speech. It's doubly worse if you're also simultaneously part of a marginalized group like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, etc. as you also get attacked on multiple sides. This is where we all need to self-reflect, practice empathy, and unlearn all of the antisemitism and unjustified hatred that we were exposed to.

So, do call out Zionism and Nazism when you see it. Call out the US government for funding this atrocity and others before it that had ALSO triggered the rise of Islamophobia. Call your reps. Go to the streets. Punch a fascist if you feel so inclined. Support your local businesses instead of pro-Israel companies.

But not at the cost of our Jewish siblings. Not at the cost of innocent Jewish people who may also be your allies. If you do that, you are no different from a MAGA cap-wearing Islamophobe.

That is all for now, may your watermelons taste fresh and sweet.

🍉

Salam Semangka, Penco

A particularly nasty side to antisemitism — it’s been part of Ye’s message recently though it is by no means unique to him — is this implication that they’re just the ones saying out loud what the rest of us are thinking. And I just want to say, unequivocally, fuck you. You don’t get to claim me. You don’t get to use me as a bullet against people I care about. It’s not what I think, and I’m confident it’s not what any of my friends think because if I wasn’t confident, they wouldn’t be my friends. I’m not silently agreeing with you — I’m VOCALLY disagreeing with you. Your beliefs are pathetic. Go fuck yourself.

leftist antisemites are really everywhere on this hellsite making & reblogging their posts like “the Jews have too much power and privilege and actually their very recent genocide was not that bad compared to what my group experiences and antisemitism doesn’t even exist in my country and especially not in liberal spaces”

Do I need to prove this any further….

It’s absolutely mindblowing to me that there are certain people who are more upset over a woman who survived a terrorist attack placing second at a singing competition than they are about Kanye’s latest song.

There is a lot to be said about the murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, but I just can't find enough words.

There is no justification for this horrible tragedy. Absolutely none. This is a man who left his home to go spread light in a new place, and was murdered for it.

His murder is unjustifiable.

This murder turned his legacy into something painful, something to be angry about. The name of a person whose whole mission was to spread light and joy now evokes pain. It's unfair, another thing stolen.

Do not let his murderers take and twist his legacy.

Go out of your way to do a mitzvah in his memory. Maybe light for Shabbat this week, say a bracha over something you eat if you usually don't. Take a few minutes out of your day to read a lesson on this week's parashah. Anything.

They took his life, don't let them take his legacy.

📢📢SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE AT THE BACK!!📢📢

Jessie Gender I don't think your problem is Israel or it's government. I think you are trying be cute about saying you have a problem with the Jews.

The recent additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been steadily falling off anyhow thanks to Disney, so I wasn’t too surprised at this news.

However I’d like to also point out the absolute hypocrisy of this decision:

Sabra was an early character during the beginning eras of marvel, which unlike how black panther was made for the sole purpose of fighting back in a cause, Sabra was and additional character to diversify the many heroes from all over the globe. This component is the key part of Sabra. Taking that away on the mcu’s part not only opposes their modernized “representation motive” while also being antisemetic without making it seem as antisemitism.

As a film major I’m already super disappointed to the direction of modern releases and especially pissed off that Hollywood continues their double standards when it comes to Jewish representation within characters and the stories they inhabit. It’s everything inclusive except for Jews; they are simply not allowed to be in character spaces.

Stories are a part of what makes us human; removing one of many varieties of such defeats this purpose.

My point is, stories are for everyone, including for Jewish people!

So is making her RUSSIAN somehow less controversial than making her Israeli?? Really??

It is absolutely disgusting to erase a character's identity like this. I'm not a marvel fan, but as an Israel-born Jew I was looking forward to on-screen representation and would've loved to see Sabra on screen.

Definitely won't be watching now, what's even the point?

They say art imitates life for a reason.

Very tragic that this case more truer than ever

Let's consider a theoretical scenario where I was consuming some sort of fictional media, such as a book, about a conflict.

And let's just say that, in this conflict, there are two main groups fighting against each other.

The first group, which initiated the conflict, is proud in declaring their goal of destroying the entire people of the other group. They have slaughtered the other group in their own homes, taken them hostage into slavery, raped them, consistently indoctrinate and use child soldiers, admit to sacrificing their own civilians for their cause, violently mistreat their own civilians, use human shield strategies, and seek to maximize civilian casualties for all parties involved.

The other group, meanwhile, is the opposite. They proudly cherish life, protect all civilians involved to the best of their ability, provide medical services even to captured enemy combatants, simply wish to retain the land they are indigenous to, and just want to get their people back, and remove the hateful and violent other group from power (without aiming to take over in their place permanently).

And if, in this fictional media, people would popularly and irrationally deny history and reality in order to skew the morality of the latter group, and the popular stance was to justify and support the former group,

I'd believe the piece of media simply too irrational and too plain in their portrayal of good and evil to be believable.

And yet, that's not a poorly written fictional media. That's our reality, somehow.

I’ll be RIGHT here whether haters like it or not!!

Almost every single time I log on, I see another Jewish blog I follow announce that they're leaving tumblr or going on an indefinite hiatus.

Goyim are literally driving us out of every space, both online and off. It's not safe to be Jewish anywhere. I am sick of this shit. I am sick of being expected to just put up with it. I am sick of watching Jews just disappear from public life and go into hiding.

And it's terrifying because there's no way that the rabid antisemitic freaks on this site are gonna be able to contain themselves and keep it in the digital world for long. There's already random violence against Jews happening everywhere and it is *going* to lead to more pogroms sooner or later.

They're not gonna be satisfied until there is no trace of us left anywhere.

.

As someone heading to the film industry, I can relate.

very tired of planning my career around whether america will be safe for jews in five years actually

Sick to my stomach just reading this!

Hamas is treating the hostages like worthless little playthings that have no other meaning to them.

The fact that the propaganda involved a “guessing game” for the viewers is infuriating especially since SO MANY IGNORANT PEOPLE claim everything but the truth!!

So for all of you reading this reply: let’s get right on to the FACT!!

The FACT is that Hamas is a terrorist organization that does horrid and unspeakable crimes against Israel and its citizens. Hamas ensures that all funding and aid don’t go to the actual people they claim to protect but instead continue to build upon their regime which includes torturing, killing, and holding innocent Israelis hostage for their own evil gains!!

If you’re offended by this, unfollow me right now! I had enough of this! I can’t believe that the internet went feraly rabid to hop on the antisemitism train! I alway see my friends getting harassed and sent death threats online and I will not have any of it! I will not play your game and will reject any death threats on the asks!

I cannot even begin to express how horrifying the lack of outrage about this is.

May anyone who ever claimed "the hostages were treated well" be cursed. Such lies are absolutely disgusting and despicable.

This is not what being treated well looks like. This is psychological torture, abuse, and warfare. This is pure evil.

It's a cruel subconscious ingraining of double standards, really. I absolutely suggest looking into actual, unbiased history of all this and only then can people reach an educated conclusion. But I doubt that many people would take that advice...

This probably won’t be super coherent, because I haven’t slept in 24 hours and I’m basically 80% caffeine, but I’ve been thinking about how western (usually white, though not always) goyim get mad whenever a Jew says “antizionism is usually a cover for antisemitism.” And how their answer is always, “my problem is Israel! Not Jews!”

Because here’s the thing: the west has a long, long history of culturally ingrained antisemitism. You may not think your hatred towards Israel and the diaspora Jews who have any connection to Israel is because it’s a Jewish state. But society has subconsciously primed you from birth to see Jews as inherently shady liars who have all the power and money and control, and who claim victimhood to hide this. You have been groomed to mistrust us, to see us as oppressors, to see us as intrinsically unethical. And you are aware that Israel is a Jewish state, regardless of whether you consciously think it matters. So when literally anything goes down in Israel/Palestine? Your first thought isn’t that these are two marginalized groups of people who were forced into the situation by both the west and the Middle East, then pitted against each other. Your first thought is that of course the Israelis are evil oppressors. They’re over-privileged white colonizers who have all the power and money and control. We need to make sure they all leave Israel, live under a second age of pogroms, or die (which they won’t, according to you, because they’re rich white people with a mansion in New Jersey). And you may believe that you don’t feel this way because they’re Jewish, but you don’t seem to realize that it’s the subconscious, ingrained antisemitism that not only leads you to all of these conclusions, but that also leads you to independently attach historically diaspora-focused antisemitic tropes—tropes that’s existed for thousands of years and have nothing to do with Israel—to Israelis and beyond.

And then you wonder why we don’t trust you.

Shameful that history is repeating itself…

seeing people spread modern day blood libel against the Jewish people is great and by great I mean very distressing and makes me physically sick

Antika Cinayetleri (2) Mücevherin Sırları full

Israel is committing genocide and if you disagree you would've denied the holocaust as well.

No? For the simple reason that Israel was founded (officially and politically) after the holocaust, because we saw the dangers of Jews not having a country. Also, while it’s terrible that so many people are dying, most of the Palestinians killed by Israel have been soldiers, which unfortunately, is just how war works. Most of the civilians hurt or killed were hurt or killed by Hamas.

“ackshuly it’s really antisemitic to say that we shouldn’t hunt Palestinians for sport or wait outside of hospitals to run over the dead’s fleeing loved ones with a tank Pretty fucked up of you to imply otherwise. Also obviously all evidence of these events are lies told by the evil anti semitic brown people media and you should only believe the news provided by the notoriously ethical CIA backed outlets and the testimony of the people who call Palestinians dogs. It’s just self defense after all. Also the thousands of Jewish people against this, and the Jewish people of Palestine are race traitor dogs who should die. Hooray ethnostates (but woke)”

I have so many questions. Where are you getting this information? Fun fact: Israel has gone to insane lengths to not injure civilians. We don’t want Palestinians killed. But alas, it is a war. People are going to die, unfortunately. The weird thing is, though, that most of the Palestinians dying are…soldiers? Strange. And most of the Palestinian civilians that er dying were killed by Hamas-the current government in Gaza. There’s no such thing and pro-Palestine or pro-Israel. There is pro-death and anti-death. I’m anti-death. So is the idf and all of Israel. Hamas is pro-death.

Nothing can compare to the Holocaust. Nothing. Ever. 6 million. That's more than most of the 27 year old white kids who only know about this war from TikTok can count to. It's absolutely insane to minimize our expieriences like that. Gaza is a city. It couldv'e been a massive tourist location if Hamas hadn't spent all of the money on underground tunnels to keep babies in. NEVER compare Gaza to Auschwitz.

seriously don’t know how you do it. i’ve been trying to document and archive the wide range of antisemitism in every space since october 7th and…i still get shocked at seeing shit like this. this is a screenshot of a leftist’s instagram story. i follow a lot of leftists in order to document the antisemitic shit they say every second and to keep up with the tropes circulating. this is just one small example.

i can’t imagine saying shit like this and thinking it’s normal. like the level of cruelty is something i can’t fathom.

Tell friendly neigborhood comrade that Lovely is a misogynist neo nazi who thinks women shouldn't vote and thinks babies were at the nova festival and not stolen from a bomb shelter, tell comrade not only did they agree with nonsense but they agreed with a known nazi and are not complicit in fucking nazism

that is how I cope by knowing that I deal with people morally bankrupt and unhinged by showing them who they really are like that mirror of clarity from Harlan Ellison stories

I was saddened by every hostage death. But this… this just hit me differently. It’s the fact that the world could look into the face of a literal baby, and collectively decide that someone so purely innocent was not human and deserved what happened to him all because of where he was born.

It’s the fact that the children’s father was released and did not know if his wife and children were alive, having hope that he would be reunited with them again.

So much pain and grief these past 500 days… but this, I feel like has pushed me over the edge.

That’s my everyday experience. It sucks.

tfw you love being in fandoms, but you're also Jewish and scared to interact with anyone because "what if they want me dead?"

I shouldn't have to feel this way, but I do.

ok yay this is not what I want to be doing with my time rn, but alas, it’s gonna happen when you trash on my homeland. First things first. I live in New Jersey. I’ve lived here for about nine years. But before that, I lived in Israel. I love Israel more than anything. Stop calling it Genoc!de. Start calling it “oh shoot our citizens are in tunnels and a terrorist organization is bombing us almost every day, we can’t just do nothing.” There is nothing, and I mean nothing, worse than seeing your family and friends fighting in a war. You know there has been a pattern of heart attacks in family members of soldiers and hostages? Hamas’s attack was fully based off of hate. Hate for Jews, hate for Israel. Not politics. Yes, the Israeli government sucks and treats innocent Palestinians very poorly. It’s gonna continue to suck for as long as Bibi is the prime minister. But that’s not the fault of the people. Just like how nobody is blaming innocent Palestinians for hamas’s behavior. There is a difference, though. Only Israelis are blaming Hamas. Everyone else is yapping about how Hamas is ok and that the idf is the terrorist organization.

a large part of the lgbtq+ community is anti-Israel. Frankly, that’s irrational. Israel has a huge pride parade every year. It had one last summer, too, even when being bombed relentlessly. Israel is an amazing place to be out. I myself am aro ace. I’m out as aroace in Israel. No one’s shot me. If you come out to a Hamas soldier, they’ll be like: “ok. Imma shoot you know.” KABOOM. now you are no longer out. You’re in. In a grave. However, there is a chance that Hamas will steal your body and keep it from your loved ones for 423 days. (See: Omer neutra)

I just wanna say that I am very liberal, very left leaning. I am a huge advocate for the trans community and lgbtq community for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been a climate activist, probably started being climate aware in like second grade. Trump’s what, 78? And he still isn’t. You can still be liberal and progressive even if you support Israel.🇮🇱 on a final note, I don’t share ANY opinions with the kkk. If you’re antisemitic, you do. Xoxo, a gay Jew.

wait that was awesome I should end all my posts that way

It’s 2020, so of course there’s sexy Holocaust fic on AO3

If you know me, you might know I’m a huge a/b/o fan. I love the trope in all of its variations, I’ve led panels about it at cons, I read a/b/o as my comfort food. My academic background is (among other things) in sociology and a/b/o is basically like a marriage between my academic and fannish interests. It’s so versatile, it’s so different in every fandom, it contains so many different takes on power dynamics and oppression. There’s fluffy a/b/o and fucked up a/b/o and I will read and enjoy pretty much any flavor. 

This might seem like an odd intro, but I wanted to give this as context for how I stumbled on the fic we’re about to discuss. One of my favorite places on AO3 is the “original work” tag, filtered by the a/b/o tag. When I have nothing to read, that’s where I go to find new stuff. There’s so many interesting, innovative takes on the trope there, it’s great. 

But three days ago, when I filtered by those tags, at the head of the results page was an original story set during the Holocaust. 

I’ve made the decision not to link to the fic directly, I’m sure you can find it very easily on AO3. But I want this to be, above all else, a record of what happened, and I don’t want anyone to claim I was trying to drum up outrage to attack the author directly. Even though their fic is publicly posted, and as you’ll see they have absolutely no qualms about anything they’re doing.

So, a screencap of the header of the fic:

(Edit: ugh, I see tumblr is resizing the images to an unreadable level, so you can click here for a larger version of the image where the text is legible. For every other screencap in this post I’ll also offer a transcript.)

In the past the fic used to have more tags, including one for “inaccurate history”. I didn’t think things were going to unroll as they did, so the screencap is from the time of writing this post, not from when this all started. 

The story, very broadly, is about a romance between an SS officer who runs  “a small Polish death camp” and an American officer who comes to liberate that camp (US forces never liberated camps in Poland, hence the “inaccurate history” tag, according to the author. Yes, that’s why that tag was there.) The “twist” is that the SS officer is secretly a traitor who’s trying to save some of the inmates. 

Now, look, it’s debatable whether it’s possible to write Holocaust a/b/o porn about completely made up characters, with a list of kinks and focusing on hunt/comfort and porn, in a way that does more good than harm to the general population of ao3 users. For many people from backgrounds affected by the Holocaust, just seeing that on the results page makes them feel unsafe and unwelcome in fandom. 

But there’s an argument it’s possible to have about whether it can be done “right”. 

I’m not going to have that argument, because any way you slice it, if the author of a fic like that isn’t from a family that was directly affected by the Holocaust (as this author has confirmed that they’re not), their primary goal has to be to make sure their fic - which they’re writing for their own enjoyment - doesn’t harm people whose family history they’re borrowing for drama. 

It means the author has to actively seek out those opinions prior to and during the writing process, be willing to listen, and potentially scrap the whole thing even after it’s up, if it’s clear it’s doing damage to the people whose personal traumas (and ongoing oppression because antisemitism, for example, and nazism are still very much a thing in 2020) the author decided to borrow for the sake of their story. 

Instead, the author of this fic decided that anyone who came from a family that was affected by the specific real life tragedy they felt like using as a backdrop for their porn could STFU.

Specifically, whenever someone was critical of the fic in the comments, the author would (1) ignore them (2) send friends and followers to confront them (I assume by posting about each critical comment on the author’s public twitter, but I don’t really know).

After 3 pages of mostly adoring comments, with every bit of criticism shut down by the author’s friends, I honestly thought there would be absolutely no effect to another comment by the descendant of Holocaust survivors, but for some reason that day 2020 had just been Too Much and I decided to leave a comment anyway and take the abuse that would surely follow. 

If things had ended in some ugly responses from the author and their friends, you probably wouldn’t be reading this post. But that’s not what happened. 

So, this is the initial comment I left: 

Larger image of the screencap

Transcript:

“Hi! I’m sure your readers will quickly respond to this comment to tell me how wrong I am, but while I’ve heard of this happening in fandom I’ve never just casually stumbled on it while looking through tags on AO3 before, so I guess I felt compelled to leave a comment despite the fact that you probably profoundly don’t care how many people are made to feel unsafe and unwelcome in fandom through fics like this.

For the record, since I’m sure it’s the first thing people will wonder about: I’m Jewish, my grandparents either survived the camps or died in them. I grew up with first person accounts in my family, my parents grew up with parents who were survivors.

Look, there are a billion powerful fictional stories you can tell by using the holocaust as a setting/prop. SO many powerful, amazing, emotional, fucked up, sexy stories. I can tell you about the actual, historically accurate fucked up, hilarious, sexy stories that actually did occur during that time in that setting. This isn’t about things being black and white or only a certain tone being appropriate.

I’m also basically the biggest a/b/o fan on the planet. It’s my favorite trope. I’ve done panels about it at cons. I read tons & tons of it, of all kinds of tones and flavors.

It’s really fucked up that you wrote this fic and posted it publicly. It’s really fucked up that I feel gross about ao3, myself, the world right now, just from seeing that it exists. It’s really fucked up that you haven’t offered any explanation to any of the people from backgrounds who were affected by this history and complained about this fic in the comments, especially since if I understood correctly from the things you did respond to, you yourself are not from a family that was directly affected by this tragedy.

It’s gross, how many people who lost family members and face discrimination in various forms themselves are going to scroll by this and feel like fandom doesn’t see them and doesn’t care about them.

It’s 2020, you know? I guess it makes sense that this is the year I casually come across a sexy holocaust fic tagged “inaccurate history” like that’s totally acceptable.

It’s not acceptable. I’m sure it won’t matter, but in the spirit of the history this fic “inaccurately” relies on for angst and drama, I guess I just needed to say that for the record, no matter how little change it affects, and how many “stfu” responses it garners from your readers.“

Apparently in response to this the author screencapped my comment and posted it on their public twitter (I’m not going to screencap those tweets, you’re welcome to think this is untrue) and of course the next day I woke up to find confrontational comments from the author’s friends in response. 

The author themselves initially responsed with this succinct gem:

Larger image of the screencap

Transcript:

“You got all the way to Chapter 5 before you wrote me a 429-word thesis about a single tag on my fic.“

It was… pretty much the reply I would have expected. I knew this author gave not a single flying fuck who their fic caused damage to, even as they were borrowing real, painful history, from people who faced oppression that the author themselves did not. (In multiple comments the author confirmed they were not Jewish and their family had not been directly affected by the Holocaust.)

I decided to respond to this extremely disingenuous pretense that this was just about an incorrect use of an AO3 tag. This was my response, which the author later deleted:

Larger image of the screencap  

Transcript:

“lol yep it’s definitely about that one tag and not literally everything else that I wrote.

I guess it hit a nerve since you actually replied to me, unlike the unworthy AO3 users who told you about their trauma and how gross this fic is before and you ignored them and let your readers respond to them instead.

Some of your readers asked me to engage further, I can believe some of them did it in good faith, but since you’re clearly adamant to not give a single fuck about the real harm you’re causing to real people (because what harm could be worth taking down a fic you’ve actually received kudos and comments on???) I’m not going to waste my energy on this anymore. I mean, I knew I wouldn’t have time/energy to engage anyway, but certainly not with an author who’s so desperate to pretend people are just uptight or not into their kink that they’re not even asking questions. lol yes this is DEFINITELY just about that one tag, and all “offensive” content is like all other “offensive” content and everyone is just out to attack you for no reason while you’re bravely breaking down the censorship barriers lolol“

At this point the author, who remember was claiming this was all about the use of a tag (which they indeed removed because apparently removing “inaccurate history” from inaccurate Holocaust porn made it accurate?) responsed with this amazing piece of writing:

Larger image of the screencap  

Transcript:

“How many other authors have you guilted into burning their own books?

The reason I’m not really concerned about this is that I can’t really tell why you’re mad. Is it the sympathetic Nazi? Does it harm you to know that Germans were real people and not just vague shadows of evil? Making humans into monsters allows people to distance themselves from that evil. Those who want to consider the horror of the Holocaust as the work of monsters removes the darkness in the heart of humanity and makes it impossible to fathom that it might happen again. Humanizing Nazis is how you remind yourself that the Holocaust is not a singular isolated and solitary event and is not trapped in the realm of history.

My degree is in History and I took specific courses in 20th Century Europe and Germany Post-1919. Every piece of reading you are given defines the reasons why NORMAL people turned into Nazis. Because there are reasons. Because it could happen again. Because it could happen to you. Darkness is not foreign to humanity and to pretend that it is is foolish.

You don’t even realize the irony here. You want to be on the council that gets to decide which books to burn. And you think you want to burn mine. And that makes you righteous.

Now I know you didn’t read it. Because I wouldn’t have had to say any of this if you did. When you’re out there trying to get authors to delete their works, you think about this. How big is the pile of burning books behind you, marina? Did you do good?“

I… was not surprised, I guess, that an author who thought their desire to write fic set during the Holocaust trumped any harm to anyone whose family was actually affected by the Holocaust would think it was cool to turn criticism of their fic on AO3 into “you’re the REAL nazi who’s trying to BURN BOOKS!” on someone whose grandparents lived through the actual camps. 

The thing about history courses on “post-1919 Germany” was also pretty amazing, I’m not gonna lie. 

How would we know Nazis were real people and darkness is in all of us, if this fic wasn’t here to tell us, in the midst of a/b/o and kink tropes?

Anyway, aside from reacting to this snarkily in my own head, I knew I wasn’t going to respond further. I was out of energy and out of mental resources. Arguing with someone who thinks my family history is theirs to exploit for kudos and comments is devastating, and I personally certainly can’t sustain it for long. I wanted there to be a public record of how this fic was affecting at least some families of survivors, and I’d done that, it wasn’t surprising the author didn’t want to listen and came up with increasingly ridiculous justifications.

There were a few other threads where people tried to explain what was wrong with this fic, how harmful it was, and of course they were shouted down as well. In one of those threads the author compared writing about SS officers to writing about “sympathetic sex offenders”. I explained the difference between writing about social ills that have existed in every human society and can affect any person on the planet, and writing about a specific historical event that affected specific people (who are not the author).

But then, the author started deleting comments.

They deleted my explanation about the difference between this fic and fic about “sex offenders”. They deleted my initial response to their “this is just about a tag!” comment, they deleted their OWN comment in which they boasted about their history degree, explained that they were just trying to educate people about real nazis and besides, I was the real book burner here. 

Honestly, I wanted to believe that somewhere in the process of sharing these comments with their followers to get sympathy and attention, the author had received negative responses as well, and realized fucked up their behavior was. If they’d just deleted their own comments and responses, I would have understood them not wanting to have things they regret saying being up anymore.

But that isn’t what happened. Instead they left some of their own comments up, but deleted my responses. 

I knew they were probably not going to allow any further criticism of their fic (an amazing stance for someone who’s supposedly so committed to freedom of expression), but I had to try and leave at least a record of how much they’d deleted and effectively silenced their critics. 

So, I left this comment:

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Transcript:

“Oh wow, you deleted every comment I’ve made in this and other threads, except the original one that started the thread. That’s certainly a sharp turn from the “I’ve done nothing wrong and YOU’RE the nazi here!” tone of your now deleted comments to me. I mean, I say tone but you did literally say I was asking you to “burn your book” just like the nazis did, which honestly, if that’s your response to the grandchild of Holocaust survivors telling you your Holocaust porn is doing harm to real people living today, I would urge you to swiftly return the history degree you boasted about in your now deleted comment.

For the benefit of anyone who might be reading this in the future (although of course, you’ll likely delete this too, since I guess you realized it makes you look bad, but not bad enough to actually do anything to mitigate the harm you’re causing), in a different sub-thread you compared writing about the Holocaust, a specific historical tragedy you’re not personally affected by, to writing about “sex offenders”, and when I explained why those two are the same you deleted that as well. 

So let’s just keep the first line of my original response to your comment above, back when you were pretending you didn’t understand what the fuss was about instead of writing long explanations about how you’re just trying to humanize nazis for The Greater Good, which you’ve now deleted. I guess criticisizing fics on “like book burning” but silencing critics by deleting their words and pretending nothing was said is just a brave act of anti-censorship:

lol yep it’s definitely about that one tag and not literally everything else that I wrote.“

That comment got deleted within a few minutes of me posting it. 

I also responded to the author’s friends who’d left comments that I didn’t engage with, to let them know the reason I wasn’t engaging was because the author was deleting comments and clearly wasn’t interested in learning or changing their behavior, so I didn’t feel it was worth my good faith efforts to engage. Here’s an example of a comment like that:

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Transcript:

“FYI, the author is deleting replies in this thread, including several of the ones I wrote, including things that were not responses to things the author later regretted saying. I was already over-extending myself to try and explain, in good faith, why this fic was fucked up. I’m sure it won’t matter to you, but I’m just putting here as an explanation for why I’m not going to engage with commenters when the author of the fic, the only person who has the power to mitigate any of the damage it’s doing, it actively disinterested in listening or changing their behavior in any way, and is in fact happy to delete comments so it looks like they don’t care/had the last word. More about this here, unless the author deletes my reply there as well: [link to now deleted response]

This is just a “FYI this is the person you’re defending and this is why investing effort into this in good fath is more than a reasonable person who’s affected by this harm would be capable of. I’m not going to engage further, for the reasons I stated.“

Those comments were also deleted within minutes of being posted. 

At this point, it was pretty clear the author was trying to silence and cover up any criticism of their actions because defending themselves was no longer sustainable and I assume (although I don’t know, this is all speculation) they were getting negative responses from their own followers the deeper they tried to go into the battle of “telling descendants of Holocaust survivors that they’re the REAL nazis for criticizing my fic” and pretending their fic was a necessary educational tool for demonstrating the darkness of the human soul. 

But the true cherry on top of the “desperately trying to appear like I, the author, is the victim here” cake is the end note the author added to the fic the next day, to explain, I assume, all the whispers about them deleting comments. 

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Transcript:

“As a Note, this story has produced some strong reactions and sometimes the comments to this fic contain elements that some folks might not want to see. It is one thing to read fiction about making a traitor-Nazi cry, it is another to read death threats and graphic depictions of real events that commenters have decided to share for shock value in my comment sections. I have deleted some comments but I have left some others up that might be uncomfortable for readers to see. There are no graphic written depictions of any prisoner abuse in this fic but there ARE in the comments. Please be careful and use your own discretion when reading the comments.“

So, the author is now claiming the comments they deleted contained “death threats” and “graphic depictions of real events” that they were just trying to spare their readers from having to experience. (The irony of doing this on a fic that uses the Holocaust as a backdrop is truly too exquisite.)

As you can see, my comments didn’t contain any death threats or graphic descriptions of anything, and still were all deleted, just to prevent any criticism from appearing on the fic. 

To recap: author writes Holocaust porn, gets criticized for it, claims to not understand what the fuss is about, then claims the fic is educational in how nazism can happen to anyone + they’ve taken some courses on Germany + the critics are the REAL nazis asking for a book burning! then deletes all those comments and claims it’s because they contained “death threats” and “graphic descriptions”. 

So, this is hopefully the end of my engagement. I wanted to make it known that this shit is not ok, that it hurts people, that it causes real harm. Apparently the author was not OK with having that information available in the comments, or rather, were only OK with leaving up the parts that they felt didn’t make them look bad.

Finally, I’d like to say that this is not about purity politics or even “cancel culture” (I don’t believe in that term but maybe some people will try to throw it at this). We’re all people who are on a journey, learning and changing all the time. I am not some saint, the author is not some villain, I’m not doing this to score likes or followers from this drama (I haven’t even been on tumblr in years before this). We all fuck up and we all get up again and the only factor is how willing we are to learn and improve and make amends. 

Writing fictionalized porn about the Holocaust is, imo, fucked up by definition. But even if you don’t think that’s true, the minimum requirement is to make sure that when you borrow someone’s dead grandparents you don’t cause living people harm in the process. That’s important, and I wanted there to be a record that Jews and anyone else whose family was directly touched by the Holocaust deserves that basic respect.