Conservatives, especially on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, have long framed George Soros as a “puppet master” and a “globalist” who controls the government with his “tentacles.” Sam Bee explains that type of language didn’t come out of nowhere.
Rose Mallinger, who was killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue yesterday, was 97 years old. 97 years. She lived through the Holocaust, was on this earth, a young woman as 6 million Jewish people were killed for being Jewish. Spent her whole life surrounded by people who looked at the atrocities of the Holocaust and said “never again.” Lived 97 years and died at the hands of a gunman who killed her for being Jewish.
okay wendy stans i have a question. How does it feel stanning the erasure of Romani and Jewish Representation in Marvel?
@starkwayne, I will never tell you that your anger at a removal of a character’s heritage is invalid or baseless; but I will invite you to consider where you are directing that anger, and whether you are venting it at an appropriate target.
Fans did not decide to leave out Wanda’s heritage in her screen adaptation. The studio – its screenwriters, its directors, its executives – did.
Now, I get that it’s easy to lash out at fellow fans. Punching laterally on a platform where you are heard and get responses (even if they aren’t always the responses you hope for) gives you a lot more power than railing at institutions and corporations with actual control. Blaming fans and getting them to feel crappy at least makes you feel like someone is being punished for the thing you’re upset about, since there’s no way any of the rich guys in charge at Marvel Studios or Disney are listening to any of us.
But you’re lashing out at people who are not actually responsible for what you’re angry about. Heck, a lot of them are also upset about the same thing – they’ve just chosen to respond to it differently. You may decide you just don’t want to consume media that has MCU Wanda, and that’s perfectly fine. You don’t have to like her, you don’t have to read fic about her, and you certainly don’t have to spend time in the pro-Wanda tag. I think I saw you mention elsewhere in a conversaiton with @essayofthoughts that you like Comics!Wanda, and I 100% get that it’s frustrating when an adaptation or version of a character you like isn’t specifically tagged for to differentiate from the version you don’t like (I can’t count the times I’ve flinched at the sight of HYDRA!Cap in the Steve Rogers comics tags), but the best way to deal with that is selective tag and user blocking, and sometimes taking a step back from tumblr for while until you can deal with seeing the content you don’t like without feeling the need to respond.
I won’t criticize you for your frustration or for your preferences; everyone is entitled to those. But what I will criticize is your decision to police and condemn everyone else’s interactions with the character that differs from yours.
Some people enjoy MCU Wanda because they feel represented by her in different ways than the comics. The comics representation still exists; now the MCU representation does too, covering a different demographic (refugees, eastern european displaced persons, trauma survivors, etc). Some people like Wanda for characteristics that are not explicitly tied to her origins (such as being a strong woman who has endured a hell of a lot while still retaining her compassion and exhibiting profound courage) and feel that the parts of Wanda they loved in the comics weren’t defined by her ethnic heritage. A lot of people are upset, just like you, about the failure of the MCU to incorporate and represent Wanda’s jewish and roma heritage – but you can be critical of aspects of a piece of media or a character or a story while still enjoying its merits.
And a lot of fans have also responded by compensating for that erasure in their fanworks, deliberately writing/drawing/roleplaying MCU Wanda with her comic book background. Personally, I love both comics and MCU Wanda, and where I find the removal of her heritage to be frustrating and problematic and I really wish the MCU had incorporated it, my response hasn’t been to hate the character, but to embrace the aspects of her that I love and then draw her as explicitly jewish.
I will also point out that I happen to know a number of MCU Wanda Maximoff fans who are jewish themselves. Before you attack these fans, it’s worth asking yourself; what is your prioritization between the accurate adaptation of a fictional jewish character, and the wellbeing of actual flesh and blood jewish people? What is your prioritization between condemning an imperfect depiction of a female character, and attacking femme-identified people for enjoying one of the painfully few powerful female superheroes we’ve managed to get on the big screen? I’m not saying there’s always a cut and clear answer, because representation for a larger whole is important, but it’s worth considering your impact and how much good vs. how much harm your actions specifically do with your platform and your reach. Are you genuinely working toward fixing a problem? Or are you just making people feel bad on the internet for kicks and some nebulous sense of superiority?
If you want to increase Jewish/Roma representation, I would recommend starting a letter campaign or petition to Marvel or other studios to do better moving forward. Hell, if you do, send me the link – I’d be happy to sign and signal boost!!! But tagging hate in a place where people who don’t have a lot of social power go to share their enjoyment of a strong, compelling female character isn’t activism.
It’s just kinda being a jerk.
And I don’t know you, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I’d like to believe that you’re better than that.
comic maximoff twins: explicitly jewish-romani and the children of holocaust survivors, has fighting discrimination and racism and what it means to be heroes in spite of oppression as an integral part of their narrative
movie maximoff twins: white, volunteers for and gets their powers from a neo-nazi organization
joss whedon: NAILED IT
M.I.A. shitting on ignorant opinions
This isn’t a Nazi Swastika what so ever, as a JEW I can recognize this unlike some people.
Gonna quote straight from wikipedia here.
It is a symbol among the ancient Celts, Indians, and Greeks,[2]as well as in later Buddhism,[4]Jainism,[5]Hinduism,[6][4]and Nazism,[3][4]among other cultures and religions.[4][2]
The word swastika derives from the Sanskrit root ssu(“Good”),asti(“to be”),[4][6]andka(making)[6]The older term gammadion cross derives from its appearance, which is identical to four Greek gamma letters affixed to each other.
What I find interesting is that this is actually a very very good representation of what can happen when white people culturally appropriate something.
The Swastika, long before the Nazis came about and started brandishing their own bastardization of it, had a strong religious and cultural significance to a LOT of people.
It didn’t represent anything evil, it didn’t represent a dictatorship that perpetuated one of the most well known genocides taught today.
It only started having this horrible association in the 1920’s when the Nazi party appropriated it as for their logo.
White people, white supremacists, taking something with an already well established past and meaning; and placing their own over it.
Because of these people, swastikas that do not have anything to do with the Nazi party are demonized in most people’s eyes because they don’t know any better, because white people wiped out it’s original meaning in white culture.
People seriously need to learn some history.
THIS is the sort of damage that cultural appropriation can do in the long run.
because a lot of people dont seem to get this:
- golems are from jewish folklore. dont treat them like a generic fantasy creature, thats appropriative
- kabbalah is a specifically jewish religious tradition. dont practice it if youre not jewish and dont use kabbalah symbolism as generic occult stuff, thats appropriative
- for the record if it has hebrew on it and it doesnt have anything to do with judaism its probably appropriative
- dont wear a magen david if youre not jewish, its used as a symbol for judaism so wearing it if youre a gentile is appropriative
- while im at it heres a rundown of some terms you should know
- goy: hebrew and yiddish for non-jewish person, it literally translates as “nation.” the plural form is goyim. goy is not a slur.
- gentile: english for non-jewish person
- anti-semitism: you probably know what this means but i just want to point out that the word anti-semitism was NOT coined by jews but by a german anti-semite who wanted a more scientific-sounding alternative to “judenhass,” which literally translates to “jew-hatred” so please shut up about how arabs are also semites. we know.
- if you’re not jewish you should also avoid using the word “jew” since many jewish people are uncomfortable with it (though i personally am fine with it). use “jewish person” instead if youre a gentile
please reblog this if you’re not jewish, i almost never see gentiles acknowledging cultural appropriation of judaism and anti-semitism on tumblr, even among people who otherwise pay close attention to such issues
We the undersigned Palestinian individuals and groups express our solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, a young unarmed black man gunned down by police on August 9th in Ferguson, Missouri. We wish to express our support and solidarity with the people of Ferguson who have taken their struggle to the street, facing a militarized police occupation.
From our families bleeding in streets of Gaza, Hebron, Jenin, Jerusalem; from the Zionist prisons overflowing with our political prisoners; from our endless refugee camps, ghettos and Bantustans; from our indigenous people living as second-class citizens in what became “Israel” in 1948, and our dislocated diaspora: We send you our commitment to stand with you in your hour of pain and time of struggle against the oppression that continues to target our black brothers and sisters in nearly every aspect of their lives.
We understand your moral outrage. We understand your hurt and anger. We understand your impulse to burn the infrastructure of a racist capitalist system that systematically pushes you to the margins of humanity; we support your right to rebel in the face of injustice.
And we stand with you.
The disregard and disrespect for black bodies and black life is endemic to the white supremacist system that rules the land. Your struggles through the ages have been an inspiration to us as we fight daily for the most basic human dignities in our own homeland against the racist Zionist regime that considers us less human. As we navigate our own struggle against colonialism, ethnoreligious supremacy, capitalism and tyranny, we find inspiration and strength from your struggles and your revolutionary leaders, like Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Kwame Ture, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Bobby Seale and others.
We honor the life of Michael Brown, cut short less than a week before he was due to begin university. And we honor the far too many black lives who were killed in similar circumstances, motivated by racism and contempt for black life: John Crawford, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tarika Wilson, Malcolm Ferguson, Renisha McBride, Amadou Diallo, Yvette Smith, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, Kathryn Johnston, Rekia Boyd and too many others to count.
With a Black Power fist in the air, we salute the people of Ferguson and join in your demands for justice.
LemonGrenade 
