• Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 hours ago

    The Israel-Palistinian affair reflects the larger dichotomy of principle vs. loyalty.

    The enlightenment values behind the US and French revolts and transformations are propped up by the principles that everyone is entitled to equal regard by the society, are endowed with the same rights, are treated equally by the justice system in so on.

    (Mind you, both of these nations failed to embrace these principles fully, still don’t, and progress towards this ideal is slow and meandering — to say the least.)

    Of course the challenge, then, is extending that degree of citizenship to the worst wrongdoers, even after they’ve profiteered on war and drug addiction, wrecked the economy through financialization and turned entire government institutions against the people they were supposed to protect sexually assaulted kids or killed with intention.

    We don’t like giving our criminal suspects their day in court. When convicted, we don’t like to consider that they were, wrongfully, and in either case, we want them to suffer not just incarceration, but to languish in squalor, abuse and neglect. We want them afraid to reach for the soap. We don’t like extending rights to those we regard as outcast.

    But if we don’t, we dip into the other side of the coin, in which criminal is not defined by what you did, but who you are. Feudal society is structured based on contracts of loyalty. If you are born of the better blood (monied, ethnically pure, faithful to the orthodox) then you deserve all the benefits of the doubt. Whereas if you are alien or other, you deserve to be outlawed.

    And this applies when the good guys fuck children, murder with intent, profiteer on war and drugs, wreck the economy though financialization and capture government institutions so they don’t protect the people. And yeah, at it’s worst, we see things like genocide and torture become controversial because the heroes are doing it and the goblins are on the receiving end of it.

    So not just the US and Israel, but the entire world needs to reflect on what kind of society they want to be. Unlike economic structures that can be blended, guiding ideology tend to be a slippery slope. Once it is established that some people can be denied rights and regard by fiat because they’re of the wrong faith or the wrong blood, or aren’t rich enough, then that refusal of access can extend to anyone else, and eventually everyone else.

    And we’re seeing this develop in the US, as MAGA circles talk about liberals in blood libels and calls to hunt and execute them. In this case liberals includes anyone who isn’t MAGA.

  • LazyBaby@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    I watched Louis Theroux in Israel recently and it amazed me that like 10 minutes into the mini documentary he hadn’t talked to a Palestinian at all yet, only Israelis, but it didn’t seem at all like it was biased TOWARD the Israelis because they did SUCH A GOOD JOB acting like evil religious zealots all on their own. They were so mask-off it was nuts.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Normally I would call bullshit, but I just played first dnd session of my life few days ago and already met 2 hardcore zionists there (one of which apparently makes pro-israel tiktoks as a side-hobby)

    • AlecSadler@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 hours ago

      I’d also normally call BS but recently learned a very liberal family member of mine “isn’t sure which side to take” on the matter.

      I’ve let them know, but they sort of dismissed me.

      So I can only imagine what someone all-on on Israel would do.

      • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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        45 minutes ago

        I’ve fallen out with my supposedly radlib parents since the time a few years back when I brought up Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine and they got weirdly quiet and non-conversational. It wasn’t just because of that, but that was absolutely a major contributing red flag. I’m sure they’re against Israel today, now that it’s politically popular to be so.

      • Doomsider@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Sees one-sided conflict with superior force and a complete civilian massacre

        “I don’t know, maybe they deserve genocide?”

        Facepalm

      • qarbone@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        D&D empowers a small group of people to individually gain power and eventually exert outsized influence on intra- and international politics, even entreating with godlike entities.

        D&D is just a power-fantasy. Where that fantasy leans (politically/ideologically) is just the GM’s setting.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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          2 hours ago

          Power fantasy is one of the more common modes of a D&D game, but it’s not the only one nor does the game structurally force it.

          • qarbone@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            You don’t believe that leveling up and increasing your attributes, core components of the game, are inherently reflectively of power fantasy?

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        D&D is also popular in the military and overlaps with WH40K players. The Satanic Panic is a distant memory - it’s a family activity in community centers.

      • lord@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        The right are know to take over preexisting communities, I’ve seen that happen in a few warhammar Facebook groups.

  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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    1 day ago

    Highly doubt. The Palestinian allegory to a Zionist would be cartoonist caricatures of rape and violence while the Isn’treal allegory would have been a pure place of light and peace.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      11 hours ago

      The issue is that there is no utopia. If you make one, it instantly looks like a cover. “A place of pure light and peace” is hiding something. Even if the DM intended for it to be perfect, the players could certainly see it as a threat. Unless the DM breaks the fourth wall and explicitly tells them it’s real, there’s no way for the players to know that.

      Then, when that place that has tons of resources is fighting some poor faction next door, it looks pretty damning. The same issue as above happens if you portray them as pure evil. There’s no way they’re actually that evil, and it must be propaganda.

      This all happens even more if your players have been trained to spot these things because this is how the real world works.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      From OOP:

      thats the thing he let us do all the worldbuilding at the outset and then decided that the capitalist u.s./cop city proxy we set up was actually an israel proxy that he was going to commandeer to be The Good Guys.

      but it went straight over all our heads lmfao

      So apparently he let them design the general layout, which had the authoritarian government and the rebels fighting them, and thought the ‘cop city’ they’d made sounded awesome and heroic and was totally the super-cool state of Israel, and the rebels were those dastardly Palestinians, and ran the campaign that way.

      Don’t do religion, kids.

      • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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        2 hours ago

        D.A.R.E. to say no to religion!

        We have a recovery group that meets on Saturday mornings and Tuesday evenings at the bowling ally, you’re welcome to join. It’s called “Formerly Religious Anonymous,” but if you want to speak at meetings, which you’re strongly encouraged to do, then you’re required to state your name, and if you don’t follow the correct forms then we’ll shun you. But it’s not a cult, I swear.

        Oh and you have to be entirely self-debasing if you want us to respect you. Just watch what others do and you’ll catch the drift. You’ll see what I mean. It’s not a religion though!

        spoiler

        /S

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        24 hours ago

        Alright that makes sense and makes it comedy. I won’t edit mt previous comment but I am doing a sicko yes rn

        • Seleni@lemmy.world
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          23 hours ago

          I think if that happened to me every marble in my brain would have dropped out too lol

          • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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            21 hours ago

            Imagine not reading the room at all as a DM, or Idk, I have no idea how this happens. Online game maybe? I only play with friends so.

            • Seleni@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              Yeah, it was an online group. Everyone immediately quit lol

              But seriously, forget real-world politics for a sec. How often in tabletop RPG history has the empire/police state/whathaveyou ever been the good guys and the rebels the bad? Had that DM never played a game before?

              • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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                2 hours ago

                We didn’t get to the end, but I played in a “Dragon Queen” campaign where we were protecting the kingdom from evil dragon-worshipping cultists.

    • Godort@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      When you’re dealing with a setting that is that clear-cut and obvious, you tend to have a situation where the place of light and peace is rotten at the core and has very effective propaganda, while the cartoonish violent rapists are often downtrodden victims whose suffering is made invisible.

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        1 day ago

        But the Zionist wouldn’t put that in there. They dont see that. “Theres no propaganda in America”. Same shit. It’d be like playing one of those shitty American war porn films following Private Badass of The Good Guys.

        • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          There’s this thing in DND where there’s a whole table of people and when the DM says ‘you go into a tavern and see a mysterious stranger in a dark cloak half lit with moonlight lighting up a pipe you catch a small glimpse of his rugged face, the other patrons look uneasy at his presence… also that’s a gnome called Gifgledork picking his nose at the bar’ the party will almost always go 'we ignore The Dark Ranger of Mystery, and spend all night buying drinks for our new best friend Gifgledork. If he set up a ‘The Good Guys’ power structure the players could have all easily decided said good guys were secretly evil and opposed them at every turn. I had a party once INSIST on eating the two birds in a glade I put there as guides to help them get through the trials of the area for plot reasons. they killed and ate the guardian forest birds… it was incredibly upsetting to decide that eating ancient forest guardians probably gave them cool powers. but playing the game is about playing the game and letting your party have fun is more important than playing YOUR game. and when you add in stuff you’re excited about, sometimes the party says fuck that and intentionally sets your bread crumbs on fire and walks into the forest with no hints and finds a witch that makes wooden coins that are bewitched to look like real money. for no reason at all. Is really dumb to go at it with your personal feelings all deeply attached to every plot point.

      • rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        Precisely. It’s why I like Pathfinder so much. The only good guys are the Firebrands, the Bellflower Network, and other liberatory NGOs that are fighting against government. Even the “good guy” nation of Andoran has corruption and powerful conglomerates that influence the government

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        1 day ago

        I can hear the “no, you can’t have that. It was promised to the people of the light 3000 years ago. Just take the quest reward I made for you”

  • jtrek@startrek.website
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    1 day ago

    I think sometimes about politics in games. Especially the unexamined kind. Like a guy one time ran a game predicated on literal patriarchy - the story was about how a baby boy was due the throne instead of his elder sister. I’m like … You could have written anything. I don’t want fantasy patriarchy.

    Meanwhile, my game right before that was about helping an anarchist collective stop a counter revolution from restoring the despotic monarchy. And my current game the players just shot a surveillance CEO on the street and donated all of the wealth they could get out of his unlocked phone to charity.

    • neatchee@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      True but the best stories are sometimes the one’s that make you go “wait… are WE the bad guys?!” and then give you the agency to choose the other side

      • jtrek@startrek.website
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        24 hours ago

        To his credit the guy let us oppose the patriarchy, but it was a huge out of character drain to explain to the other players why I think male headed absolute rule is bad, actually, and I don’t enjoy that in my leisure. It was not the right group for me.

        • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          no game can be better than bad game. you have to do you. I couldn’t sit through a game that’s about supporting things hurting my life in real life either. there’s a lot of themes that would have me saying ‘sorry not a good fit for me, enjoy you game, goodbye’

        • neatchee@piefed.social
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          20 hours ago

          TOTALLY fair. It’s definitely less emotional burden being a cis white guy fighting the patriarchy than… anything else, really

    • 𝙈𝙞𝙖@quokk.au
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      23 hours ago

      My current game is about killing mayors and saving towns. Oh and killing ghost making wizards who made a town riot.

      I’m also a bear, with shield. Partnered with an axe wielding minotaur.

  • TheFogan@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    I do wonder if in this example the party actually detected the intended propoganda, versus if they just were in a campaign doing what they thought good characters would do in a situation. If not it’s so much more telling, as the best way to tell if you are standing on principles or just biased propoganda, is if you would make the same judgments if the names were hidden or even reversed. Even more ironic because obviously the DM controls the facts of the fictional world. Literally likely to not know or leave out details that hurt his case.