Origen of Alexandria and the History of Racism as a Theological Problem
“Earlier scholarly accounts that portray Origen as a champion of human equality and as engaged in anti-racist efforts therefore cannot stand up to scrutiny. Origen disparages certain ethnic groups and develops arguments that connect ethnic identity and geographical location with various degrees of sinfulness. His work offers clear evidence that theories of ethnic inferiority have a long history within the Christian matrix that stretches considerably beyond the modern and medieval periods.”
Matthijs den Dulk, Origen of Alexandria and the History of Racism as a Theological Problem, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 71, Issue 1, April 2020, Pages 164–195, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flaa025
#Image attribution: Luyken, Jan (1649-1712), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OrigenStudentsLuyken.jpg
Remembering the ethnic cleansing, massacres and Zionist terrorism that lead to the creation of #Israel which remains to this day a pariah state and a plague on the Middle East and the world.
Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two schools.
CNN reports from Shenandoah County, where the schools were renamed four years ago. "That 2020 move was part of a resolution condemning racism and affirming the district’s 'commitment to an inclusive school environment.'" None of the 2020 board members still serve.
NEW FAVORITE HOBBY JUST DROPPED! Watching Marylanders lose their shit over the mere suggestion of maybe NOT naming the replacement for the Francis Key Scott bridge after the slaver who openly thought of black people as inferior.
Hey Maryland. It's a bridge. Scott took a British song and put new lyrics (including racist ones, see 3rd verse) on it.
@nerd4cities
Great video (20 min.) now on the YouTubes examining the travesty that was and is I94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and what this area could become. https://youtu.be/iCoKySjY_ug?si=ddx_i6Tn49Ce9mME (sorry Ray, I’m not nebulized…yet)
Displacement after displacement...the displacement of hundreds of families from eastern Rafah following warnings from the occupation army to evacuate immediately.
"The term “eugenics” (from the Greek for ‘well born’) was birthed here in Cambridge by Trinity’s own Francis Galton in 1883. Galton was inspired by his cousin Charles Darwin and adapted the idea of natural selection to presuppose that the survival of the fittest had been distorted by social welfare policies."
Today in Labor History April 27, 1882: Jessie Redmon Fauset was born. She was an African-American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Her emphasis on portraying an accurate image of African-American life and history inspired literature of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. In her fiction, she created black characters who were working professionals. This was inconceivable to white Americans at the time. Her stories dealt with themes like racial discrimination, "passing", and feminism. From 1919 to 1926, she was literary editor of The Crisis, a NAACP magazine.
Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Their Voices for Palestine, Oppose the “False Idol of Zionism” (Democracy Now!, 2024-04-24)
Zionism as another golden calf. A strong message from Naomi Klein.
(Video with transcript)
"Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a «Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel» on the second night of Passover..."
"What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again... And that false idol is called Zionism."
Thanks for posting this very important event which of course is not being reported about in big German media
where they always are convinced to be first and best in solidarity with Israel, but certainly not with non conforming and dissenting Jews.
"At the core of the Passover story is
We cannot be free until all people are free"
says Beth Miller from Jewish Voice for Peace at the Seder in the streets of New York City
A moving speech or even prayer from the ecofeminist heart of #NaomiKlein
just hours before the senate approved 14 Billion dollars for weapons and security tech for Israel
was fervent in the rejection of Zionism.
Klein, who is of worldwide prominence as author and #climate activist, today is rejected even by German climate justice movements because of her stance against #genocide in #Gaza
The more important it is to make her words heard everywhere especially in the heart of darkness, the false celebration of ethno nationalist #colonialism and #racism
These unifying words were at the end of her impressive speech against the "false Idol of Zionism":
What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say, “Let our people go.” We say, “We have already gone, and your kids, they are with us now.”
I understand it's easy to blame Hamas and the Palestinian resistance for Israel's disproportionate and genocidal response, but the second Nakba was long coming.
Today in Labor History April 21, 1910: Mark Twain died. William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature." He grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” He apprenticed with a printer and worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later worked as a riverboat pilot before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. Twain was famous for his wit and brilliant writing. However, he also had extremely progressive politics for his era. Later in his life, he became an ardent anti-imperialist. “I have read carefully the treaty of Paris and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem… And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” During the Boxer Rebellion, he said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success." From 1901, until his death in 1910, he was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the U.S. He was also critical of European imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold II of Belgium, who attempted to establish colonies in African. He also supported the Russian revolutionaries fighting against the Tsar.
Many people have criticized him for his racism. Indeed, schools have banned “Huckleberry Finn.” However, Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and said that the Emancipation Proclamation “not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also." He also fought for the rights of immigrants, particularly the Chinese. "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible... but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him." And though his early writings were racist against indigenous peoples, he later wrote that “in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "whites" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey."
Twain was also an early feminist, who campaigned for women's suffrage. He also wrote in support of unions and the labor movement, especially the Knights of Labor, one of the most important unions of the era. “Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.”