they need to come up with more words like necrosis and miasma and mausoleum and cadaver and morose and decrepit and stuff like that just so metal bands can expand their vocabulary
In case anyone isn’t aware, connections like that are literally called ‘illegal’ techniques in LEGO parlance.
Illegal building techniques are ones that aren’t allowed in official LEGO sets, which always use building techniques designed for and intended by LEGO. The reason they’re called illegal is because they stress the blocks in a way they weren’t intended for, causing various kinds of material failure overtime.
As an example, the blocks in the example above slowly deform over time because, slowly warping until they don’t connect very well to other blocks or each other.
Hey non-Jewish leftists and progressives who consider yourselves allies to Jews or, at a minimum, not antisemitic: now is an exceptionally great time to step up
This is shockingly similar to Henry Ford — i.e. an automotive mogul seen as an innovator in the general public uses his fortune and outsized influence to establish a large media presence and spread antisemitism.
There are some important distinctions, but nothing that makes me feel better about the situation.
1. At its height, Henry Ford’s publication, “The Dearborn Independent,” had a circulation of 900,000. The largest circulation in America at the time was 950,000.
While it was certainly influential, it wasn’t unmatched. In comparison to Musk’s 140 million followers, Ford reached a relatively small number of people.
2. Ford marketed explicit antisemitism, which eventually led to the downfall of his publication — you’ve probably heard of “The international Jew” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
However, as with most antisemites (on both the right and the left), Musk hides behind the thin veil of dog whistles and oversights, leaving a layer of barely-plausible deniability.
3. Ford was eventually forced to publicly apologize after he made the mistake of attacking Jewish attorney Aaron Sapiro for more than a year, until Sapiro eventually sued Ford for libel (i.e. he fucked around and found out lol). Ford eventually lost the case and was forced to publicly apologize (his apology was written by associates and his signature on it was reportedly forged). The magazine was shut down soon afterwards.
While I can’t predict the future, something tells me Musk’s obfuscations and the current political climate will allow him to continue to operate with impunity. Dancing around the issue allows at the very least for greater longevity of your bigotry (say it with your chest you coward).
Despite everything, Ford was able to secure his position in history, albeit with some, um, unfortunate footnotes and the occasional caveat being mentioned.*
All in all, this feels very similar to Trump copying David Duke’s run for the Louisiana legislature, but that’s a story for a different day.
* some additional footnotes and caveats:
- Hitler quoted Ford in his infamous book
- Ford was a notorious union buster
- Ford received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle in 1938, the highest honor a foreigner could receive from Nazi Germany, with personal congratulations from Hitler
- After issuing the aforementioned “public apology” in 1927, Ford said that he would like restart the publication of “The International Jew.” In 1940. 13 years later.
- It’s just my personal opinion, but we probably shouldn’t honor literal nazis, but whatever
- To this day, no one at my synagogue will buy a ford car. I don’t know if this is the norm in other places, but I imagine that it’s not uncommon.
- Yes, I’m aware that nobody explicitly praises Henry Ford anymore, and everybody knows what a shithole he was. While “Henry Ford hated the Jews” is a common refrain, specific knowledge of his hatred is lacking, and I think it’s important to point to explicit hatred in the past, because hatred is normally hidden nowadays and needs to be identified outside of the group receiving the hatred.
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So I’m a historian who works particularly on the relationship between trauma, national memory, and childhood. The focus of my research is not the Holocaust, but it’s a subject upon which I’ve taught, mused, written, and examined. A few years ago, I was a TA in a class on the Holocaust (cross listed in the History Department and the Department of Judaic Studies) at a US University (a pretty prestigious one). Most of the course focused on the realities of the Holocaust: what happened? how? why? Now because of my areas of expertise/interest, I was invited to give a lecture to the entire class as opposed to teaching my particular subset of students each week. The subject of the lecture? The Holocaust in US education and children’s/YA literature.
The thing that I found most distressing about this lecture? The fact that only about nine state in the US require that students learn about the Holocaust in classrooms. Among those only a few require it as a part of history or social studies classes, the rest require it as part of language arts. And, the way that students actually learn about this subject is determined at the discretion of the school district, which means that, as long as students meet the general requirements of standardized tests, they don’t have to learn particular details. So, let that sink in. Even more distressing? The states that “require” students to learn about the Holocaust, have only done so since (at the earliest) the 1980s, and far more likely the 1990s and 2000s. This means that there is an entire generation whose knowledge of the Holocaust comes from popular media and triumphant narratives about US involvement in WWII: these narratives are hugely false, and what I call the “Punching Hitler” story after the iconic image of Captain America socking Hitler in the jaw. In the US the general shared narrative about WWII is that the US went over the Europe, lost a lot of boys, but killed Hitler, won the war, and saved the Jews. o__O That’s…not what happened.
In a class of 200 students, only about 10 percent knew anything about how the Holocaust happened. They didn’t know about the groups that were targeted, the way that anti-semitism and opportunistic nationalist politics helped make it happen, they didn’t know about complicity or bystandardism. They knew nothing. They didn’t know that US officials were aware of what was happening and refused to get involved in the war. They didn’t understand that there was concurrent anti-semitism and racism in the US. They were taught none of these things. And that is actually terrifying, not only because it means that these kids have no idea about the past, but because they can’t see the giant flashing warning signs in our current socio-political world.
ALT
