ANTISEMITIC BIAS

Many antisemites don’t consciously dislike Jews. They might even think highly of Jews. For example, they might believe “positive” stereotypes of Jews, such as that Jews are good at business or good with money. They might have Jewish friends. They might like “some” Jews. But they still cause tremendous damage to the Jewish community.

“Biases” can be defined as “an inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group.”

Unconscious biases are known as implicit biases. We all have implicit biases (whether negative or positive) in the way that we interpret the world around us. Conscious biases (such as, for example, the Nazis outwardly believing that Jews were “the inferior race”) are known as explicit biases.

Because antisemitism is everywhere in our world — in our cultures, our languages, our folklore, our literature, our entertainment, our media, and more — it’s impossible for us not to internalize at least some antisemitic biases. These biases, however, exist on a spectrum: from unconsciously assuming that most Jews are wealthy (implicit bias) to believing the white supremacist conspiracy theory that Jews are enacting a “white genocide” (explicit bias) to everything in between.

Because antisemitism is so old and so deeply embedded into our society and institutions (e.g. religion, language, literature, education, and more), that means that there is a lot of antisemitic bias in our world, most of which you might not even be able to see. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

ANTISEMITISM IS A CONSPIRACY ABOUT THE JEWS

Antisemitism can be tricky to spot because it works very differently than every other form of bigotry. While other bigotries see their victims as “inferior,” antisemitism sees Jews as both “inferior” but also “superior” or all-powerful, capable of causing every calamity from wars to natural disasters to diseases to controlling the weather.

Societies project whatever they dislike most onto the Jews. In the Middle Ages, Jews were Christ-killers. In Nazi Germany and McCarthyist America, Jews were communists. In the Soviet Union, Jews were capitalists. In Nazi Germany and during the rise of the scientific racism period, Jews were the inferior race. To white supremacists, Jews are not white. To left-wing anti-Zionists, Jews are white. For centuries in Europe, Jews were untrustworthy foreigners from Palestine. But today among anti-Zionists, Jews are Europeans colonizing Palestine. We are whatever makes us the perfect scapegoat at any given time.

It’s no coincidence, then, that antisemitism tends to surge most when societies are in upheaval. After all, the leaders need someone to blame. Examples of this include the Germans’ blaming Jews for Germany’s suffering post-World War I, as well as the rise of the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy which blames Israel for police brutality in the United States, following George Floyd’s murder.

Antisemitism moves through conspiracy theories. Most notably, since to the antisemite, Jews are all-powerful, the most prevalent and deeply ingrained antisemitic conspiracies have to do with Jews and wealth and power. In the Middle Ages, for example, Europeans believed that Jews aimed to subvert Christendom. Since the 1920s, antisemitic leaders in the Arab world have rallied their followers behind the conspiracy that Jews intend to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque and usurp Islamic lands. White supremacists — and far left anti-Zionists — today believe the “Zionist Occupied Government” conspiracy, which accuses Jews of controlling and manipulating the American government for their benefit.

Given the pervasiveness of conspiracies regarding Jews and power, antisemitism is nearly impossible to address without triggering more antisemitism. If an antisemite faces consequences for their actions, antisemites will use this as “proof” that it’s the all-powerful Jews that have imposed these consequences. This makes antisemitism a self-fulfilling prophecy.

BIGOTRY WON'T ALWAYS BE OBVIOUS TO YOU

Most of us want to do the right thing. The problem is that bigotry — whether antisemitism or something else — doesn’t come with a flashing neon sign that says “this is bigoted! Call it out!” Instead, bigotry persists because entire societies convince themselves that their bigoted worldview is somehow justified. This is especially true of antisemitism. Antisemites throughout history have long persecuted Jews under the guise of seeking justice.

For instance, since the Middle Ages, Jews have been periodically persecuted on the accusation that they killed a Christian or Muslim child for ritual purposes. In other words, antisemites were seeking “justice” for these children that the Jews allegedly killed. This antisemitic trope is called “blood libel” and has led to the deaths of millions of Jews. It’s safe to say that these murderous antisemites fully believed that they were doing the “right thing.” Some examples of historic blood libels that have resulted in violence against Jews include the William of Norwich blood libel (1144), the Damascus Affair (1840), and the Kielce Pogrom (1946).

During the Bubonic Plague, Jews were persecuted under the false accusation that they were “poisoning the wells” and sickening the gentile population of Europe. Once again, the persecution of Jews was seen as just.

During the Nuremberg Trials, high-ranking Nazi officers testified that they believed that Jews were a danger to the safety of the German people and the German nation. In other words, they justified their mass extermination of Jew under the guise of “protecting” the people of Germany.

The list goes on and on. Is it possible that today you too have been made to believe that violence against Jews — Zionists, Israelis — is a just cause?

THE NAZI FALLACY

A few years ago, the notorious antisemite Shaun King argued with a Holocaust survivor on Twitter. When accused of antisemitism, he retorted, “I can’t be an antisemite. I fight Nazis every day!” But anyone even remotely familiar with antisemitism or Jewish history will know that Nazis were far from the Jews’ only historic oppressors. You don’t have to be a Nazi to be an antisemite. In fact, most antisemites are not Nazis.Not even close.

Nazism is just one manifestation of antisemitism. It’s a deadly one, certainly, but it’s also far from the only deadly manifestation of antisemitism. Jews have been killed by the thousands — sometimes by the millions — by a multitude of other oppressors. Some, like the Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacists, are far-right. Others, like the Soviet Union, are far-left. Others are somewhere in the middle, and others oppressed us so long ago that their ideologies long predate the left-right political spectrum as we know it today.

The horrific images of Nazism and the death camps are seared in the world’s collective memory. It’s easy to think that if it doesn’t look like Nazism, if it doesn’t look like Auschwitz, then it’s not actually antisemitism, or perhaps it could be antisemitism, but it’s not serious antisemitism. In reality, though, antisemitism doesn’t go from zero to Auschwitz. Instead, antisemitic tropes, conspiracies, and stereotypes fester and proliferate, operating under new euphemisms and adapting to whatever society they’re in. Many of the same antisemitic conspiracies that drove the Nazis nearly 100 years ago are the exact same conspiracies that are driving “protestors” to violently harass Jews in the streets of New York City today.

For many years before the gas chambers, antisemitism in Germany, which once was home to the most assimilated, well-integrated Jewish community in the Diaspora, proliferated in university lecture halls, justified and explained away in academic language. It wasn’t deadly yet, but it soon would be. When you dismiss any sort of antisemitic rhetoric because it doesn’t mirror the deadliest days of the Nazi regime, what you are actually doing is that you are contributing to the sort of hostile, conspiratorial environment that eventually made the Holocaust possible in the first place.

THE GASLIGHTING

Antisemitism and the gaslighting of Jews go hand in hand. If an antisemite faces consequences for their antisemitism, it simply reinforces their antisemitic beliefs. Because antisemitism always places Jews in the role of oppressor, it’s nearly impossible for Jews to seek accountability or justice without being accused of exaggerating, crying wolf, playing the victim, or otherwise having nefarious intentions.

After the Holocaust, for example, the second in command at the Red Cross, Carl Jacob Burckhardt, decried the Nuremberg Trials, calling them “Jewish revenge.” Others, like the Palestinian newspaper Falastin, did so as well.

Antisemitic bias oftentimes makes it impossible for some people to see Jews as victims. If an antisemite loses their job for espousing antisemitism, they will then blame the “powerful” Jews — or Zionists, or another euphemism — for taking their job. In that way, they turn the victim into the victimizer. This is a classic gaslighting tactic, which creates a catch-22 and is one of the reasons antisemitism can be so hard to combat.

For example, in the lead up to the Holocaust, American isolationists of various political persuasions accused Jews sounding the alarm on the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany of trying to instigate a war with the Germans.

Sometimes we are even accused of provoking or exaggerating antisemitism for our own benefit. There are a number of conspiracies, for example, that the Zionists worked with the Nazis to instigate the Holocaust to justify the creation of a Jewish state.

An example of the accusation that Jews play the victim is when we are told that we talk about the Holocaust “too much” — contrary to the statistics that demonstrate people are woefully misinformed about the Holocaust — or that we should move on because we “got reparations” (not exactly true, but that’s a different topic).

Then there are the accusations that we brought antisemitism or antisemitic violence onto ourselves — something that we’ve seen on a grand scale following the Hamas massacre on October 7.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

(1) Listen to Jews. I don’t mean just listen to your Jewish friends, or to the Jews you personally agree with. I mean listen to the Jewish community as a whole. Jews don’t often agree on much, but at the end of the day, we are a community, and only the Jewish community can fully describe our own experience.

Don’t listen just to the Jews who validate your views. Listen to the Jews that challenge you. Don’t shut yourself off from learning because it might contradict whatever ideology you follow. Learning is a lifelong process. I promise you you don’t know everything there is to know about antisemitism (I don’t either! I’m always learning). But it’s your responsibility to open yourself up to new information so that you can do better.

(2) if Jews are telling you something is antisemitic, then your first instinct should never be to distrust us.Can Jews weaponize accusations of antisemitism? Sure. Anyone can weaponize anything. Is it likely that that’s what’s happening? No. Antisemitism worldwide has skyrocketed to the highest levels since the end of the Holocaust. It’s a very real threat taking lives. You should take accusations of antisemitism just as seriously as you take accusations of other bigotries…even if initially you don’t see it.

(3) I can’t stress this enough: do your best to educate yourself about antisemitic conspiracies, stereotypes, and tropes throughout history. The euphemisms may change — sometimes we’re “globalists,” other times we’re “Zionists” — but the formula remains the same. To be able to spot antisemitism, you have to learn to spot it. I recommend reading my post “The World’s Oldest Hatred” for more.

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The people who are with Arthur in Avalon or are in a Cave alongside him:

(Disclaimer: Not including Morgan, the other fairies and/or Merlin)

La Bataille Loquifer: Gawain, Ywain, Percival and Guinevere (Guest Star: Roland from the Charlemagne series)

Lanzelet: Lout (Loholt)

Craig-y-Ddinas: Ywain, Kay, Bedivere, Gawain, Percival, Geraint/Erec, Tristan, Culhwch, Yder and Calogrenant (Source: The Welsh Fairy Book, by Willaim Jenkyn Thomas)

Sewingshields Folklore: Guinevere

Tally:

Queen Guinevere: 2

Sir Gawain: 2

Sir Ywain: 2

Sir Percival: 2

Sir Loholt: 1

Sir Kay: 1

Sir Bedivere: 1

Sir Geraint/Erec: 1

Sir Yder/Edern ap Nudd: 1

Sir Tristan: 1

Sir Culhwch: 1

Sir Calogrenant: 1

In the end, Arthur won't be alone...

Of course, none of the later French characters - Lancelot, Bors, Galahad, Palamedes, Dinadan, etc. - made it to Avalon or the Enchanted Cave. It's the older tradition characters who have a chance.

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king arthur He is not alone... There's also Ogier the Dane one of Charlemagne's paladins and one of Morgan's boyfriends avalon

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taliesin-the-bored

1 year ago

Dindrane: claimed I could remember my unborn sibling from Heaven, then gave a description of said sibling which turned out to be accurate

Taliesin: went outside during a lightning storm and tried to fly away by using a Mary Poppins umbrella to catch the wind while making dramatic poetic declarations (I got about two feet in the air)

Sebile: tried to practice necromancy to talk to a dead Monarch butterfly

This isn’t something I did, but an evangelical organization once showed up at my family’s house to see whether one of us was the Messiah, and that seems pretty Galahad-esque.

arthurian legend characters as weird things i did as a kid

Arthur: created clubs for the sole purpose of making myself in charge of them

Guinevere: played barbies, but the plot of the game was that they were fighting in world war iii

Lancelot: pretended to be an exterminator by spraying actual hornets with a hose, and somehow not getting stung, against all odds

Gawain: held stair-jumping competitions, and regularly jumped down around 10 stairs at a time

Merlin: designated a particular tree branch for reading and refused to let anyone climb this branch

Gaheris: held ‘screaming contests’ in my backyard to which invited my friends (this is exactly what it sounds like and it was banned by my mother immediately)

Dinadan: eaten spaghetti while riding a bike

Galahad: made a graveyard for bugs

Morgana: recruited a friend’s little brother to spy on said friend because she wasn’t talking to me

Mordred: accidentally made a gallon of poison

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merlin Lancelot king arthur mordred arthuriana Guinevere taliesin gawain dinadan galahad dindrane morgan le fay I also did the bug graveyard thing sebille tristan gaheris

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taliesin-the-bored

4 months ago

....They're COUSINS!!?!

(Source: Dream of Rhonabwy)

(Source: A Welsh Classical Dictionary)

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king arthur arthurian families I never made the connection that it was That March king mark

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taliesin-the-bored

1 year ago

The back of my Siege Perilous

Going from left to right and down, the symbols stand for Galahad, Percival, Ragnell, Blanchefleur, the Grail Heroine, the Lady of the Lake who gives Arthur Excalibur, Guinier, Gawain, Dinadan, Ector de Maris, Morgan le Fay, Caradoc Briefbras, Griflet, Isolde, Vivian, Taliesin, Tristan, Brunnisend, the Nine Witches, Laudine, the Three Queens or Morgause, Kay, Dagonet, Merlin, Palamedes, Sebile, Guinevere, Igraine, Melora, Yvain, Mordred, and Arthur.

If you’re confused about some or all of them, here’s my rationale/what the symbols are:

Galahad and Percival have slightly different Grails. I think Ragnell is found sitting under a tree, and another story has Gawain in a relationship with the queen of Avalon, isle of the apples. Blanchefleur means “white flower”. The square with the spiral in it is the Grail Heroine’s box of hair. The sword under the wave is fairly obvious. That is the drinking horn from Guinier’s chastity test. Gawain’s is a SGatGK reference. Dinadan’s is an aro ring. Ector de Maris, Griflet, Kay, and Palamedes all have symbols or patterns from their attributed arms. Morgan le Fay takes Arthur to Avalon on a boat. Caradoc has to be saved from a serpent which is wound around his arm. The torch is a Wagner reference. Nimue traps Merlin, whose symbol is the bird who shares his name, so she is represented by a birdcage. Taliesin got his wisdom from a cauldron, and there’s a cauldron in the Preideu Annwfn. Tristan plays a harp. The formation of the relationship between Brunnisend and her eventual husband is defined by their dire yet mutually exclusive needs for a good night’s sleep. The Nine Witches’ symbol seemed cool and has a threefold element. Laudine has a magic fountain. The evolution of the nature and deeds of Anna/Morcades/Morgause/etc. seemed to sort of go with the Maiden, Matron, Crone archetype and I really couldn’t think of anything else. Dagonet eventually became a jester. Yblis, who has a magic mantle, is Sybil scrambled, and there is a strong modern association between magic and capes. Guinevere is sometimes given authority over the knights of the vergescu. My justification for Igraine’s is particularly weak and would take too long to explain. Melora wields the Lance of Longinus. Yvain befriends a lion. Mordred has a broken table because he helped break the Round Table. Arthur is King.

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original art this took forever arthuriana chairs arthurian legends The Siege Perilous Yes this is at my dining table There are a few things in life that I unabashedly brag about. This is one of them.

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taliesin-the-bored

1 year ago

The Death-song/Elegy of Uther Pendragon: New Translations

(Credit to @wandrenowle (awesome person) who gave me this excerpt from a recent translation of The Book of Taliesin)

A few points to make:

There's a certain ambiguity about whether or not the narrator here really is Uther Pendragon himself.

The part where Uther is named "Shining Armor" - I believe this is the translation for the original word in the poem, "Gorlassar". From what I can research online, "Gorlassar" could also mean "Bright Blue/Very Blue" or even "Higher than the sky". I've heard some theories online before that Geoffrey of Monmouth created the character "Duke Gorlois of Cornwall" from this epithet of Uther's.

If so, that means the possibility of Igraine always having been Uther's wife and Igraine only ever had one husband. Huh.

Wow, apparently Arthur is not as badass as his dad, being only a ninth of Uther's prowess. This is the very same Arthur who, in Welsh Myth, can destroy armies by the hundreds, go toe-to-toe with giants and is the standard of comparison for warrior excellence ("...although he was no Arthur"). This elegy implies Uther is leagues more powerful than that.

It reminds of Sir Branor, the Dragon Knight, from Palamedes, a 120-year old knight of the Round Table from Uther's era. When he shows up to Arthur's court, he challenges everyone in Camelot, including Lancelot, Gawain and Tristan, and soundly kicks their asses. The general impression is that however OP King Arthur and his knights are, Uther and his boys are waaaaaay more OP. Very Anime.

(It also has shades of Nestor from the Iliad, talking about how the heroes of the "Seven against Thebes" would kick anyone's ass in the Trojan War)

The part where Uther boasts of his Poetic Prowess - "as great as that, of seven score poets". This, in particular, fascinates me. See, in an older translation, that particular segment is phrased as such:

There is a tradition Uther Pendragon really does magical abilities:

In the new translation, Uther is primarily hyping his skills in the Bardic arts, but personally, I think that doesn't preclude Uther's magic powers.

In Celtic Myth, Bards, because their status as lore-keepers, often had magical powers, like Prophecy, shapeshifting (Taliesin and Myrddin/Merlin) or having the power to harm and curse using satires:

I believe there's even a term for Bardic Prophecy in Welsh: "Canu Darogan".

This sort of loops back to "Uther>Arthur" again, seeing as how Arthur is one of "the Three Frivolous Bards of the Island of Britain"

Jeez, can imagine being at your death bed, and like, decide " I'm gonna write an entire poem about how awesome I am and how my prophesized, magic son ain't shit compared to me"

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medieval literature uther pendragon arthuriana welsh literature the book of taliesin

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taliesin-the-bored

6 months ago

That is very relatable because I did the exact same thing. Here's a partial list of my own awful ideas:

It started with Marianne Le Fay (I didn't like the name Morgan, so I renamed her) being so called because she was friends with fairies in the French Alps, then shifted to her being a changeling child who was raised by fey beings after Uther and the rest of his hunting party was killed while hunting a wild boar in Broceliande. No adequate explanation was given for why a three-year-old princess was taken along to hunt a wild boar.

Camelot was actually named Caramel-Not. Bors told people in the foreign countries he was in while he had amnesia that he was from a camel-lot and it stuck. (Also, Bors converted to Hinduism, regained his memory, and decided never to go back. All this was mentioned offhand--he hadn't lived in Camelot for years and never showed up in the story).

Prior to the start, Mordred somehow drove every human apart from him and Arthur, who he kept mostly unconscious, out of Camelot through wild goose chase quests, falsely tarnished names, and more creative but always nonlethal methods.

Mordred isekai'd Guinevere to a world made of clouds. The first part of the plot was just her trying to get back.

Mordred stuck Agravaine, Gareth, and Gaheris on a boat and set it adrift so that listening to Agravaine singing "The Ballad of the Pickled Cabbage" would eat away at the others' sanity.

Gawain and "Gallahad" were best friends. Gallahad was kind of a rustic himbo, in contrast to Percival, who was older and had found the Grail before he showed up (I actually like the last bit's angst potential).

Lancelot was really evil and in league with Anna (who was evil). Guinevere, Gawain, and Gallahad all hated him.

Mordred was a sorcerer and had a strix named Deluge who wanted to be named Norman as his familiar. (I know it makes no sense but I still have a soft spot for corny socially awkward evil wizard Mordred).

Arthur and Guinevere were going to get their marriage annulled, then eventually remarry, because the marriage was arranged and also because when they first married, Guinevere was under a curse.

The whole thing began with a seventh-grade assignment to write an alliterative paragraph, so a weird number of words in the prologue started with the letter G. Thus, we have Gawain grappling a ghastly green ghoul over a golden grail (not THE Grail, apparently, but that isn't clear until much later) at the very start.

Pendragons could turn into literal dragons. Mordred, as Uther's grandson, could turn into one despite lacking the Pendragon name, since it was genetic, but Guinevere could also turn into one because she was a Pendragon by marriage. (The lore was a bit spotty). The climax of the book was going to be an epic dragon battle between Mordred and Guinevere.

There's a bit more of that sort of thing, but I'll leave it there for now.

so a few years ago, before I realised that there was such a thing as an Arthuriana fandom on Tumblr that I could mine for resources, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to start writing a novel.

now where this goes off the rails is the fact that I a) did no research and b) had some pretty unusual ideas about the characters I was going to be using. having since found out some actual, concrete information on these characters, I thought it would be fun to go through my old ideas and see how fucking wild they are in comparison to what I now know the characters are actually like.

Kea's list of awful ideas:

morgan le fay was going to be a werewolf

king arthur was going to be colourblind and have a peanut allergy as his only identifying traits

lancelot was going to murder his abusive merchant father by staging a cart crash in the middle of the woods, then stabbing him in the confusion. for plot reasons

Nimue/lady of the lake and Lancelot were going to be adoptive siblings who were raised by the wild hunt (still kinda fuck with the siblings idea tbh)

Kay was going to be Arthur's dog.

Guinevere x Lancelot? nah, Guinevere x Lancelot's sister (also still kinda fuck with this, give that woman some lesbianism she deserves it)

the main villain was going to be some random ass faerie assassin called the Shrike, so called because it skewered knights on trees (I used to listen to far too much hozier, if you couldn't guess)

Arthur, Lancelot and Merlin were going to be in a polyam relationship and Guinevere, Nimue and Morgan were going to be in a polyam relationship, which, if you consider the two pairs of siblings in that collection, means that the family tree of these characters is literally a circle.

the Fae were going to have big fuckass bird wings for no particular reason other than I thought it would be cool

I have so many more of these, if this breaches containment I'll make another

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writing arthuriana dubious ideas

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taliesin-the-bored

3 months ago

The hero tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters in New York City, NY

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art king arthur arthuriana tapestries

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taliesin-the-bored

1 year ago

One I didn’t like at first but which really grew on me as I read more of his poems is Edwin Arlington Robinson’s characterization of Gawain. He appears in Tristram, Merlin, and Lancelot, always as a side character who’s only there for a fairly short time, so you have to fit his arc together from the fragments. At the start, everyone sees him as cheerful and careless—he’s called “gay Gawaine” in the old sense of the word more than once—but he’s more insightful than most of the others give him credit for, and, after his brothers are dead and he becomes unhinged in his quest for revenge, you realize that he was already unhinged and his cheerful flippancy was a coping mechanism/mask. He also has a delightful way with words. In Tristram, he tells Isolt of Brittany that he isn’t sure whether he’s hitting on her or not but it doesn’t matter because “Tristram, off his proper suavity, has fervor to slice whales, and I, from childhood, have always liked this life.” During his last conversation with Lancelot, Gawaine tells him, “A gloomy curiosity was our Modred, from his first intimation of existence. God made him as He made the crocodile, to prove He was omnipotent.”

Tell me about the best modern characterization of your favorite Orkney brother(s).

Pick and choose from whatever adaptations or retellings you know of, they don’t all have to appear in the same story. No wrong answers. :^)

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arthurian literature arthuriana gawain king mark sir gawain These might be slight misquotes but l can't find my quote journal so they're from memory A lot of EAR's characterizations are good His versions of Isolt of Brittany and Dagonet are exceptionally good gawaine

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taliesin-the-bored

1 year ago

If one-appearance knights are allowed, then Tyolet (from the Lai of Tyolet) has a similar but superior skill set to Percival’s. He too grew up in the forest and he can control wild animals to some degree, like a Disney princess. If he got the mockingjays and/or the mutts on his side, he’d be a force of nature.

Come to think of it, Disney princesses would do really well in the Hunger Games.

Ok if characters from arthuriana were placed in the hunger games arena who do you think would make it out? My controversial opinion is that Perceval would do well because of his survival skills (grew up in forest) and his javelin throwing would give him an advantage

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hunger games arthurian legend arthuriana arthurian legends Tyolet obscure knights

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taliesin-the-bored

1 month ago