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Japanese Frieren fans ask themselves what Himmel would do.

American Frieren fans ask themselves what Himler would do

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    23 days ago

    clearly explaining why demons need to be killed on sight whenever possible

    Yeah because they’re hell bent on genocide, conquest and their mana farming obsession prevents them from seeing humans as equals, sound familiar? The Demons are the bourgeois, not minorities

    Everything is European-coded, the entire setting is deutscheaboo as fuck and wears that on its sleeve! It’s not like this is a Japanese setting and then in pop these Germans, everyone is German!

    German AND aristocratic, German and genocidal, German and obessed with status, German and convinced of their manifest destiny. The German-ness of the Demons isn’t their only attributes and I never claim it was and you know I never claimed that. You’re simply cherry picking my words and ignoring anything I say that contradicts your claim

    My central claim is not that it’s antisemitic and I am explicit that I’m mainly using antisemitism as an example

    You claim it’s not antisemitic, then you send three paragraphs outlining how it Actually is antisemitic (while butchering and ignoring the actual narrative of Frieren)???

    You’re waffling and you can’t have it both ways, saying “yes this is exemplary” of antisemitsm while at the same it isn’t really antisemitic, is just an untenable and contradictory position

    Either the Demons of Frieren are an allusions to Jewish people or some other marginalized group or they’re not, it’s not a claim you get to waffle on, make up your mind

    Is Frieren antisemitic or not?

    If its not then you wasted your time on those paragraphs and you need to substantiate what’s actaully wrong with the series without ignoring the subtext and narrative

    I just think it’s the sort of attempt at interpretation that goes too far in picking out details to make an interpretive narrative while ignoring the actual events of the story.

    Yeah I’m the weird one for paying attention to details, subtext and how they connect to the narrative, meanwhile my take is repeated and comprehended wholesale even by libs on the massive Frieren subreddit, while everywhere else people (chuds and pop leftists alike) who are claiming Frieren Demons = Jews, are ruthlessly made fun of

    Even libs understand the Demons = The rich

    It would be so easy to make them an actual political faction and not a 2000 IQ allegory for how this child is really a personable diplomat who must die, so let’s kill the kid

    But that wouldn’t capture the totalizing nature of colonialism and the brutal realism that manifested as a result of those conquests though deception, again you may not like the presentation of specific scenes. But calling Frieren nazi propaganda is such a radical violation of the “Be Normal” and “Touch Grass” clause most leftists understand is important to our appeal and worst of all its not supported by the narrative or the subtext that the narrative explicitly outlines while it’s explaining the nature of Demons;

    they’re descended from monsters who cried help

    they don’t give dignity to those with little mana

    "They’re individualists who form the barest connections necessary to fight humanity

    Hello, that’s how the narrative outlines the subtext, this isn’t nazi dogwhistles, this is a fictional partially essentialized version of the capitalist class tearing its way thru a feudal world

    COOL

    I guess the claim is “colonizers are tricky, so it’s a metaphor for how the colonizers will always trick you.”

    Yeah colonizers never engaged in tricky shit, never used deception, never broke treaties, never made false overtures of peace, never engaged in Genocide

    No the only people who were accused of doing deception in world history were the Jews, so obviously anytime someone writes about a species of man-eating monsters they must be talking about Jewish people, great take

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      23 days ago

      While I’d certainly humor an argument about antisemitism, I don’t think there’s that much reason to render such an accusation except for the deutscheaboo thing, which I think is not enough reason. My specific point in using it as an example is that I’m pretty familiar with it and hope that I can either use it as a common reference point or at least that you can pretty easily find what I’m talking about. My general point in using it as an example is that it functions as a counterexample to your inferences, that x set of traits precludes them being about y subject (some scorned race), so here’s an example of an ethnic group about which all of these things were said, demonstrating that your inference is inadequate, and also that your claim that it’s not about Jews is so far inadequate (which is not proof of the antithesis, just a disproof of your proof).

      If you claim that P -> Q, me arguing that P does not imply Q does not say anything about whether or not Q is actually the case, just whether your inference is false. One way to disprove it would be to establish that Q is not the case even though P is, but that’s just one way and I don’t think there’s really adequate evidence for making that argument. If you want my feeling about Frieren’s demon depiction, it’s that it isn’t about any particular race/ethnicity, but is evidently informed by some underlying element of chauvinism because it’s still a pogrom fantasy even if it doesn’t correspond to any race and isn’t meant to either.

      I’m sure we can agree that this conversation is a poor use of time, so we can stop here, I just wanted to explain that one point because you asked.

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        23 days ago

        If you want my feeling about Frieren’s demon depiction, it’s that it isn’t about any particular race/ethnicity, but is evidently informed by some underlying element of chauvinism

        But what are you basing this claim on besides vague intuition? The Demons in the setting are the chauvinists, their entire society is stractured around elitism and domination, they’re not a put upon minority ethnic group

        The concept of monsters or even races of monsters is not inherently tied to real world realities concerning race and ethnicity, you need the allusions that actually form that connection to make that claim, and you can make those claims about AOT and some other suss anime, but not Frieren

        The allusions that define the Demons of Frieren are those of imperialist Europeans and the deprivations of European nobility, that’s why the Demons are always ridiculously dripped out, they’re what the rich in the real world want to be, their ideal platonic form

        because it’s still a pogrom fantasy even if it doesn’t correspond to any race and isn’t meant to either.

        The Demons are the ones committing pogroms, they explicitly genocide the elves because the Demon King ordered it, Frieren is literally a victim of genocide, that’s the source of her hatred, her character has more in common with the popular imaginary of a post war Nazi hunter than some Gestapo thug looking for “demon” girls hiding in an attic