Don’t sell Italy and Japan short.

Mussolini invented fascism, and did population-scale deployment of chemical weapons in Ethopia… Imperial Japan are absolutely an all-time G.O.A.T of horrific war crimes.

Their behavior was egregious, and that’s why they sided with the nazis.

I’ll be the one to say it: who is actually using leashes with their shibari suspension?

Plenty of good advice in this thread.

I’m gonna shout out the boy version of the book “what’s happening to my body?”

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Happening-Body-Book-Boys/dp/1557047650

It was super helpful to me in puberty, even with trusted male figures. It’s written from a non-judgemental, information focused space. It also let’s him has some way of privately seeking knowledge that isn’t just whatever he finds on the internet

What the actual fuck.

CNC as a kink is fine, but to be done healthily requires really solid negotiation skills by all parties. Ain’t no way in hell you can implicitly consent just by going to a party. Even the most edgey edge-player (someone who does risky bdsm play) I know would nope the fuck out of that.

Fucking awful.

Yeah, there is definitely an eeriness. The tone taken for the Deep Ones / fish people in The Shadow Over Innsmouth is really genocidal. The story was penned in 1930-31 though, so inspired by prior concentration camps

To clarify, he was absolutely racist with really reactionary views. He wasn’t a Nazi.

I’m not defending him, but I also think it’s worth being clear about who was and wasn’t a Nazi when discussing those alive during the Nazi Party.

For anyone curious, this letter (sorry for linking that site on lemmy, best source i could find) has him discussing Hitler in 1933. It’s far more positive than I’d ever defend, but it’s also pretty clear he’s not a Nazi. He saw Nazism as the lesser of two evils compared to Bolshevism. I think that’s a fucking bad take, but I don’t think someone who says

“Still—don’t get my wrong. I’m not saying that Schön[e] Adolf is anything more than a lesser evil… When the Germans can get another leader, & emerge from the present period of arbitrary fanaticism, his usefulness will be over.”

is a Nazi. He was just a good ol’ New England reactionary racist.

This video essay also has some really great insight into discussing the reactionary nature of Lovecraft from a leftist standpoint while still recognizing his literary contributions.

Fascism is notoriously difficult to define. There’s a huge amount of contention on it among historians, but one definition I like is Rodger Griffin’s. In his definition the core ideology of fascism is

(i) the rebirth myth

(ii) populist ultra-nationalism

(iii) the myth of decadence

I think the MAGA movement pretty transparently meets all 3. The rebirth myth is literally in its name, the movement is pretty openly populist and ultra-nationalist, and decadence is how they describe their enemies (e.g. their rhetoric around trans and queer folk).