diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0725.jpeg.enc b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0725.jpeg.enc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff4496e
Binary files /dev/null and b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0725.jpeg.enc differ
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0733.jpeg.enc b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0733.jpeg.enc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36e4f0c
Binary files /dev/null and b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_0733.jpeg.enc differ
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5797.jpeg.enc b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5797.jpeg.enc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..013aceb
Binary files /dev/null and b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5797.jpeg.enc differ
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5805.jpeg.enc b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5805.jpeg.enc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8485a3b
Binary files /dev/null and b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/IMG_5805.jpeg.enc differ
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/The Simple Secret Formula.mp3 b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/The Simple Secret Formula.mp3
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..926ef35
Binary files /dev/null and b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/The Simple Secret Formula.mp3 differ
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/index.md b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/index.md
index 868f2ba..5ce7c15 100644
--- a/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/index.md
+++ b/content/journal/dispatch-15-may-2024/index.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
title: "Dispatch #15 (May 2024)"
-date: 2024-04-17T16:38:58-04:00
+date: 2024-05-06T21:05:37-04:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
@@ -25,28 +25,35 @@ references:
url: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
date: 2024-04-18T16:30:46Z
file: www-citationneeded-news-loassa.txt
+- title: "The Judgment Of Magneto | Defector"
+ url: https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto
+ date: 2024-05-07T01:04:07Z
+ file: defector-com-cfiovt.txt
---
-Some thoughts here...
+* Lisbon
+ * E-bikes
+ * Benfica
+ * Playlist[^1]
+* Pointless Week
+ * https://stackstash.site/
+ * Laravel
+ * https://www.viget.com/articles/stackstash-taking-bookish-musings-to-the-next-level/
+* Death Cab / Postal Service
+* The Simple Secret Formula
+ * https://blog.landr.com/lofi-chord-progressions/
+* iPad music
+ * https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/1ci0jcr/comment/l26rjp1/
-1. P64 By My Side - John Carroll Kirby
-2. Need Your Body - Stimulator Jones
-3. Temptations - Jitwam
-4. Sunny - Bobby Hebb
-5. Mais Que Nada - Paulo Sergio
-6. Feet Keep Moving - Natural Self
-7. Make My Day - Waldeck
-8. Te Faço um Cafuné - Mariana Aydar
-9. Primavera - Ocote Soul Sounds
-10. When You're Gone - Jon and Roy
-11. I Will Survive (lalala) - Hermes House Band
-12. Off to the Side - L'Impératrice
-13. I Believe in You - more*
-14. Love Story (Retromigration Remix) - Malik Hendricks
-15. Tout va bien - Voyou
-16. Aquela Bossa Axé - Affonsinho
+{{}}
+{{}}
+
+{{}}
+{{}}
+
+
This month:
@@ -68,6 +75,30 @@ Links:
* [Title][4]
* [Title][5]
+* [The Judgement of Magneto][6]
+
+ > A fault-line yawned open within the global Jewish community, exposing the divide between those who had understood “Never Again” to be a humanistic warning, and those who saw it as permission in advance for whatever they deemed necessary to ensure it.
+
[3]: https://example.com/
[4]: https://example.com/
[5]: https://example.com/
+[6]: https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto
+
+[^1]: Here's my Lisbon playlist:
+
+ 1. P64 By My Side - John Carroll Kirby
+ 2. Need Your Body - Stimulator Jones
+ 3. Temptations - Jitwam
+ 4. Sunny - Bobby Hebb
+ 5. Mais Que Nada - Paulo Sergio
+ 6. Feet Keep Moving - Natural Self
+ 7. Make My Day - Waldeck
+ 8. Te Faço um Cafuné - Mariana Aydar
+ 9. Primavera - Ocote Soul Sounds
+ 10. When You're Gone - Jon and Roy
+ 11. I Will Survive (lalala) - Hermes House Band
+ 12. Off to the Side - L'Impératrice
+ 13. I Believe in You - more*
+ 14. Love Story (Retromigration Remix) - Malik Hendricks
+ 15. Tout va bien - Voyou
+ 16. Aquela Bossa Axé - Affonsinho
diff --git a/static/archive/defector-com-cfiovt.txt b/static/archive/defector-com-cfiovt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55e2958
--- /dev/null
+++ b/static/archive/defector-com-cfiovt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,767 @@
+[1]Skip to Content
+[2]Defector home
+[3]Defector home
+[4]Subscribe[5]Log In
+[6][ ]
+Menu
+[9][ ]Search
+Search
+ • [11]Crosswords
+ • [12]NFL
+ • [13]MLB
+ • [14]NBA
+ • [15]Soccer
+ • [16]Tennis
+ • [17]NHL
+ • [18]Podcasts
+ • [19]Arts And Culture
+ • [20]Politics
+
+ • [21]About Us
+ • [22]Send Us A Tip (News)
+ • [23]Send Us A Tip ($)
+ • [24]Merch Shop
+ • [25]How To Pitch Defector
+ • [26]How To Comment On Defector
+ • [27]Defector Freelancer Policies, Created In Partnership With The National
+ Writers Union
+ • [28]Crossword Submission Guidelines
+ • [29]Masthead
+ • [30]Defector Hall of Fame
+
+[31]Log In[32]Subscribe
+
+ • [33]Defector X (formerly Twitter)
+ • [34]Defector Twitch
+ • [35]Defector Bluesky
+
+[36]History
+
+The Judgment Of Magneto
+
+[37][ima]
+By [38]Asher Elbein
+
+2:13 PM EDT on April 24, 2024
+
+ • [39]Share on Bluesky
+ • [40]Share on X (formerly Twitter)
+ • [41]Share on Reddit
+ • [42]Share on Facebook
+ • [43]Share on WhatsApp
+
+An illustration of Magneto placing a yarmulke atop his head.Illustration by
+Mattie Lubchansky
+[44]
+245Comments
+
+Somewhere beyond death, in a realm of judgment and pain, a concrete labyrinth
+filled by countless names, a man walks. He is Jewish, and has been made hard
+and cruel by his experiences in the Nazi death camps. He's also a mutant,
+gifted with the power to manipulate metal and the electromagnetic spectrum.
+Since his first appearance in the inaugural X-Men comic, he spent six decades
+of Marvel publication history oscillating between supervillainous heel,
+messianic terrorist, swaggering nationalist, and increasingly heroic
+anti-fascist. He stood trial for crimes against humanity and tried his hand at
+state building; he’s variously fought against, allied with, and led the X-Men.
+He’s taken and abandoned many names: Max, Erik, Magnus. Only one ever stuck:
+Magneto.
+
+This is the setup for Resurrection of Magneto, an ongoing miniseries by Al
+Ewing and Luciano Vecchio. In it, Marvel’s master of magnetism, who is also the
+company’s most famous Jewish character, counts his many sins, tortured by the
+fear that he’s wasted his life on a poisoned dream. The comic arrives at a
+fraught time. When it debuted earlier this year, Israeli bombs had been falling
+on Gaza for three months; [45]25,000 people were dead. That number [46]has now
+topped 34,000, and the bombs are still falling.
+
+It is a low and shameful moment. It is also one that suits Magneto entirely too
+well—a distillation of all the ambiguities and anxieties of American Judaism as
+it reckons with the sacrifices made to the promise of “never again,” and the
+increasingly fraught question of what that actually means.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Magneto debuted in 1963, as the lead villain of the first issue of Uncanny
+X-Men #1. The comic was a late, weak product of the long-running partnership
+between artist Jack Kirby (who did most of the work) and Stan Lee (who claimed
+most of the credit). The narrative engine was simple: A team of teenage mutant
+superheroes, led by kindly mentor Charles Xavier, seek to protect a suspicious
+populace from the depredations of evil mutants. “The human race no longer
+deserves dominion over planet Earth!” Magneto snarls as he slinks through
+Kirby’s rushed layouts, swearing to “make homo sapiens bow to homo superior!”
+
+Kirby (née Kurtzberg) and Lee (née Lieber) were both American Jews, and the
+product of one of the great Jewish cities: New York. Their relationships with
+that community varied; [47]Kirby maintained a muscular ethnic and cultural
+pride in his Judaism, while Lee tended to avoid [48]associating with it. The
+X-Men’s original creators wrote about people who, though sometimes able to pass
+as WASPs, were inescapably and essentially different, and the subject of both
+elaborate conspiracy and unthinking prejudice. They were human and not; eternal
+Others hiding in the upstate suburbs, longing for acceptance from a world that
+hated and feared them. That otherness would be interpreted in many ways over
+the coming decades, [49]as imperfect stand-ins for various identities and
+populations. But the American Jewish anxieties of the midcentury were there
+first, and undergirded much of what came after.
+
+If the X-Men can be read as crypto-Jews, what was Magneto? Kirby had fought in
+World War II, and Magneto fit alongside his other supervillains—if not explicit
+Nazis, then fascists and bullyboys and tinpot dictators. Magneto himself is a
+supremacist lunatic, barely cloaking his conquering urges in
+self-justification. “They would kill us all if they could!” he says in an early
+issue, fleeing a nuke that he’s primed to destroy a small country he’s just
+tried to conquer. “We fight only in self defense!”
+
+It’s a revealing line, but only in retrospect. The original incarnation of
+X-Men, canceled due to low sales in 1970, was essentially a rough draft; so was
+its lead villain. In 1975, Chris Claremont, a young Anglo-American Jewish
+writer, inherited a freshly reinvented X-Men comic and set about turning the
+book into a much more explicit metaphor about persecution.
+
+Magneto, he realized, needed an overhaul. Trying to work out where the
+character’s ranting antipathy toward humanity might have come from, Claremont—
+[50]who’d kicked around on a socialist kibbutz in Israel among Holocaust
+survivors four years before he got the job—made a change that utterly redefined
+the character: He tied Magneto’s origins and explosive rage to the German death
+camps. “I remember my own childhood—the gas chambers at Auschwitz, the guards
+joking as they herded my family to their death,” the villain recalls during his
+big return in 1981’s X-Men #150. “As our lives were nothing to them, so human
+lives became nothing to me.”
+
+While [51]initially playing coy about whether Magneto was explicitly Jewish,
+Claremont wasn’t quite able to stop himself [52]from implying it, either. From
+the beginning, Israel and Israeli politics are woven through Claremont’s
+conception of the character. Menachem Begin, founder of Israel’s right-wing
+Likud party and a former terrorist who masterminded the lethal 1946 bombing of
+the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, was an explicit inspiration. In a later
+issue, Claremont establishes that Magneto and Professor X are old friends who
+had first met in Haifa after World War II. There, as Jewish militants were
+waging open war against both the British Mandate and their Palestinian
+neighbors, the two sparred genially over whether oppressed mutants should
+pursue Xavier’s liberal integrationism or something more violent. “Mutants will
+not go meekly into the gas chambers,” Magneto tells Xavier. “We will fight, and
+we will win.”
+
+The narrative substitution here is deft but familiar—tie the cartoonish
+supremacist to monumental tragedy, and render him more human. But there were
+other undercurrents here. Throughout the midcentury, the Holocaust went largely
+unspoken of [53]in America and [54]Europe, and was a source of [55]pity and
+embarrassment in Israel. Even as Claremont took over X-Men, however, a new
+Holocaust memory culture took shape at home and abroad, fueled by a powerful
+surge of expansionist Israeli nationalism. The spectacle of [56]Israel’s
+rendition and [57]trial of (arguable) Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann in
+1961 resurfaced the issue. Wars in 1967 and 1973 against coalitions of Arab
+nations led by Egypt, which [58]effectively destroyed the Labor party’s long
+dominance in Israeli politics, left the state awash both in the heady rush of
+military conquest and a siege mentality. In America, Jewish
+organizations—rattled by the Arab wars and perhaps not immune to the “[59]white
+ethnic revival” that emerged in reaction to the civil rights movement—began
+tying themselves ever more closely to political Zionism.
+
+In this context, the slogan “Never Again,” [60]popularized in English by the
+American-born Jewish supremacist and terrorist Meir Kahane in 1971, became a
+common rallying cry among American Jews and Israelis alike. Many understood it
+to have a specific meaning: Never again for Jews. Such circumstances favored
+the rise of men like Begin, who took over as Israeli Prime Minister in 1977 and
+invaded Lebanon to attack the PLO in 1982; the war left Beirut a smoking ruin
+and tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese dead. Begin was among the
+first Israeli leaders to seek justification in the Holocaust, both for the
+invasion of Lebanon—“Believe me, the alternative to this is Treblinka, and we
+have decided that there will not be another Treblinka,” [61]he said before the
+war—and his vision of [62]Israel’s identity. To him, Palestinians and other
+Arabs were the new Nazis, Palestinian political leader [63]Yasser Arafat the
+new Hitler, and the next genocide forestalled only by Israeli walls and guns.
+
+Yet Begin appealed to Claremont as a model not simply for his terrorist past,
+but also for his participation in the 1978 Camp David Accords that brought
+peace with Egypt, which won him a statesman’s reputation. Over the course of
+the writer’s run, the regretful Magneto increasingly sought to distance himself
+from his 1960s behavior, first—in Uncanny X-Men #200—by agreeing to stand trial
+for his crimes, and then by taking over Xavier’s school in the professor's
+absence, teaching his students, and furthering his integrationist goals.
+Whatever his reservations, the old supremacist terrorist would try to pursue
+liberalism and coexistence.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Unfortunately, Begin proved a more apt model than Claremont had intended. By
+the end of the 1980s, Marvel editorial mandated that Magneto turn heel again, a
+decision that [64]played a large part in driving Claremont off the book. In the
+absence of the writer that redefined him, Magneto became an increasingly
+unstable antagonist, spending a good chunk of ‘90s X-Men comics manipulated,
+insane, or in a coma—but always at war against the non-mutant world. In one
+1999-2000 arc, the supervillain bullied the UN into granting him a mutant
+nation on the fictional island of Genosha, the refugee population of which he
+soon sought to turn into a conquering army. If the root of Claremont’s
+reinvention could not be wholly ignored, it bubbled out in Magneto’s bristling
+paranoia and monomaniacal focus on mutant power and safety, with ugly hints of
+eliminationism underneath. Here was “Never Again” framed as the blind pursuit
+of power and the false safety of the preemptive strike.
+
+In 2001’s New X-Men, Scottish writer Grant Morrison mined that queasy space for
+maximum discomfort. That run, a barn-burning 2001 attempt to reinvigorate the
+series in the wake of the blockbuster 2000 X-Men film, begins by re-staging the
+Holocaust in grand sci-fi scale, with mutant-killing robots wiping out the 16
+million mutants of the mutant nation of Genosha, Magneto seemingly among them.
+The terrorist became a martyr, and the island’s ruins a monument to his memory.
+Disaffected students at Xavier’s school don Che-like T-shirts emblazoned with
+his face and the slogan “Magneto Was Right.”
+
+And then, in “Planet X,” the penultimate arc of the comic, Magneto returns and
+wrecks it all. Having infiltrated the Xavier school under a false identity, he
+subverts students into terrorists, badly thrashes many of the X-Men, and turns
+Manhattan into a death camp for humans before the team finally kills him.
+
+“What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir
+Ian McKellen [who played him in the blockbuster], is a mad old terrorist twat,”
+[65]Morrison once said. “No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal
+behavior, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he's just an old
+bastard.” It’s as thorough a rejection of the Claremont model as could be
+imagined. Morrison’s Magneto is a frightening but strangely feeble presence.
+His own propaganda of power and grievance—it’s literalized as a sentient
+power-boosting drug because, hey, it’s comics—leaves him utterly unconnected
+from reality. He’s reduced to ranting on a rooftop to a crowd that can’t hear
+him, while marching the humans of New York into abattoirs. “This all started as
+politics and freedom,” one of his students says in dawning horror. “When did we
+all turn into such total Nazis?”
+
+When indeed? Magneto’s broader heel turn coincided with a shift among some
+Jews, who [66]began to regard the trajectory of the Jewish state—by then
+expansionist, swaggering, increasingly adept at leveraging the sympathies and
+shames of Europe and America—with a troubled eye. Survivors of Auschwitz with
+deep emotional ties to Israel, like Jean Améry and Primo Levi, nonetheless
+condemned the torture of Arabs in Israeli prisons and the Jewish supremacism
+behind Begin’s rise. In a clear-eyed 1980 column, the Israeli writer Boaz Evron
+[67]dissected the ways that Israeli politicians increasingly bent the Holocaust
+to their own purposes, as a means of policing diaspora politics and excusing
+their own nationalist policies. That management created in the Israeli
+consciousness “a peculiar moral blindness,” Evron observed: an ideological
+framework that set Jews as a whole (embodied, in their view, by Israel) outside
+of humanity—eternally hated, eternally feared, permitted everything and
+forbidden nothing. Orthodox polymath and theologian Yeshayahu Leibowitz was
+more strident still, warning throughout the 1990s that adherence to Israeli
+nationalism was corrupting global Judaism as a whole, a position that led him
+to [68]eventually decry the “Nazification of Israeli society.”
+
+Claremont had drawn a similar connection back in 1981, in his big reinvention
+of Magneto in Uncanny X-Men #150. After almost killing X-Men team member Kitty
+Pryde, a 13-year-old Jewish girl, the shocked supervillain collapses to his
+knees. “I believed so much in my destiny, in my personal vision, that I was
+prepared to pay any price, make any sacrifice to achieve it,” he wails in a
+moment of operatic clarity. “Can you not appreciate the irony? In my zeal to
+remake the world, I have become much like those I have always hated and
+despised.” Claremont, [69]reflecting on the issue years later, went right at
+it: “His shattering realization is: 'What kind of monster have I become? Has
+what the Nazis did to me in the Shoah made me a Nazi?'”
+
+This kind of comparison quite understandably tends to get people screamed at.
+Equating a Jewish government to the Nazi regime has long been a red line in the
+discourse, cast as an inherent and particularly vicious antisemitism. Yet the
+unspeakability of the comparison marks a vulnerable spot. Under Morrison,
+Magneto’s ugliness feels deliberate and pointed, a finger pressing against a
+bruise. Too hard for Marvel, as it turned out: In an impressive feat of
+backpedaling, the company hastily overturned the entire storyline after
+Morrison left, revealing that the maddened genocidaire had actually been an
+imposter. The real Magneto, revealed by a returning Claremont to be secretly
+alive on Genosha, would never do such a thing. The villainous path was closed;
+he could get his face-turn after all.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+It’s ironic, considering Morrison’s critique of Magneto, that the lasting
+influence of their time writing the character was something they’d intended as
+satire—the slogan “Magneto Was Right.” It was a fair conclusion for characters
+and fans alike to draw. After a 2005 editorial edict depowered the vast
+majority of characters in the X-line (though, notably, not the marketable ones)
+a succession of writers spent 15 years piling on stories of hate crimes. The
+battered X-Men and redeemed Magneto thus drifted increasingly into each other’s
+ideological orbits.
+
+And why not? Read enough X-Men comics, and you’ll notice that the fundamental
+feature of the franchise—the idea of mutants as eternal stand-ins for Jews, or
+black people, or queer people—is its essential pessimism. In X-Men, minority
+life is wholly defined by oppression. No improvement can last; progress is
+always an illusion; as figures in an ongoing, eternal piece of intellectual
+property, mutants must always be hated and feared. This enforced, recursive
+Marvel-Time unwittingly echoes what we might call Jewish-Time: the idea that
+Jewish people were, are, and always will be [70]oppressed by antisemitism, cast
+as [71]the same villain in different costumes. Persia is Rome, Russia is
+Germany. Rather than discrete historical occurrences—contingent, contested,
+complex—they are foreordained, essential, and inescapable. There is only the
+pogrom, forever.
+
+Actual Jewish history isn’t so clear-cut. Most of our communities have
+lived—indeed, still live—under the rule of multiethnic nations, and those
+experiences have profoundly shaped our culture and religion. In Babylon and
+Persia, Imperial Rome and Charlemagne’s France, in Al Andalus and the vast
+lands of the Ottomans and as far as western China, Jewish communities spread
+and prospered under the disinterested gaze of non-Jewish governments. Such
+minority communities—and in this, Jews are in no way unique—sometimes endured
+spasms of brutal violence. We remember the victims of those horrors, and are
+right to do so. But that is not the only story of Jewish life; it seems
+profoundly disrespectful to our history to forget the rest, or to subordinate
+it so profoundly to Jewish suffering.
+
+This [72]Judeopessimism, which centers Jewish identity around past and
+potential future trauma, grants a strange kind of privilege even as it elevates
+danger into the ubiquitous and decisive aspect of Jewish life. That danger can
+be real—antisemitism is real—but centering it like this also extends the
+entitlement of myth, of living in the four-color world of propaganda, of being
+at once eternally strong and desperately weak. Conceptualize history in this
+atavistic way, as many diaspora and Israeli Jews do, and you might see
+nationalistic power as a necessity. If Professor Xavier’s integration can never
+come, then the hour of Magneto must always be around the corner.
+
+It’s notable that in 2008, amidst this slow transition, Magneto finally became
+canonically Jewish, officially and incontestably, in the pages of Greg Pak and
+Carmine Di Giandomenico’s Magneto: Testament. The book, an extensively
+researched and often brutal retelling of his origin amid the Holocaust death
+camps, reveals his original name of Max Eisenhardt and follows him from the
+passage of anti-Jewish laws to his time as an Auschwitz [73]Sonderkommando,
+disposing of the camp dead. By stripping away the heightened sci-fi logic of
+other X-Men comics, Testament forces readers to consider Max not as a
+metaphorical mutant minority, but a recognizably human one.
+
+Mostly, though, this dark past serves as textual justification for an era in
+which Magneto is rendered, in effect, as power fantasy. In his 1980 essay,
+Evron dryly observed that American and Israeli Jews both clung tightly to “a
+double, contradictory image—the virile [Israeli] superman, and the potential
+Holocaust victim.” The former construction, he argued, offered American Jews a
+chance to indulge their fantasies of toughness and manliness. By 2014, for
+example, a 21-issue series written by Cullen Bunn had positioned Magneto as a
+modern Nazi-hunting vigilante, operating out of hotel rooms and killing
+anti-mutant bigots. The series mined a pulp thrill from Magneto’s moral
+ambiguities, but ultimately justified them. “People say he’s some sort of
+monster,” a young mutant says. “But I’m just glad that mutants have someone
+like him. Someone who can be angry, who can do the bad things, so that we might
+survive.”
+
+That’s the fantasy. Here is a man against whom every bigot, every neo-Nazi,
+every gay-basher will find that they have bitten off far more than they can
+chew. Isn’t this the way it should have happened? No weapon formed against him
+can prosper: The mechanical, mechanized means of death that killed so many of
+our ancestors can be set back on their perpetrators with a contemptuous flick
+of the hand. And despite his demonstrated ability to level a city, Magneto will
+always hit the correct targets, the ones that have it coming. He will be a
+superhero, and always Right. He will not have to reckon with himself. He will
+not have to change.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+And yet, miraculously, Magneto has. In 2019, after years of languishing in a
+narrative holding pattern, the X-Men franchise relaunched with a wildly
+ambitious five-year story, spearheaded by a group of writers initially led by
+Jonathan Hickman. Formed from multiple interweaving series, it is rooted in a
+simple premise: Mutants have again established their own sovereign nation on
+the living island of Krakoa. This time, however, Xavier and Magneto are working
+together as leading partners, and mutants have worked out how to use their
+powers to resurrect the dead. The world may hate and fear them, but it can no
+longer kill them.
+
+For most of its existence, the Krakoa era has been an impressively
+precision-engineered setup, something that can be plausibly read in multiple
+ways. You can, if you like, interpret it as a metaphor for the promises and
+failures of Zionism, or ethnonationalism more generally. Here is a state formed
+out of, and justified by, the memory of atrocity. It is built on a dream of
+establishing a [74]new cultural identity (complete with [75]a new language) and
+[76]a quasi-socialist yet techno-capitalist setup.
+
+And yet its government never quite gets around [77]to creating a real
+constitution; its spy agency is too busy pursuing foreign policy debacles and
+internal power politics [78]to catch the threats rising around them. As time
+goes on, the beautiful Krakoan dream is brutally undercut by the agendas of the
+monsters they allow in—people who see the nation as an avenue to their own
+power and want to twist it into something horrific, and who nearly get their
+wish. You can also read Krakoa just as easily as an invocation of the original
+Zionist nightmare: a small nation surrounded on all sides by enemies bent on
+its elimination, who poison its reputation and are ultimately successful in
+destroying it via brutal sneak attack. (The status quo, recall, can never be
+transcended for long; Marvel-time is mythic Jewish-time; the next pogrom for
+the X-Men is always coming.)
+
+Over the course of the narrative, Magneto—subjected to a remarkably sustained
+bit of authorial examination—finally begins to evolve. Under Hickman’s pen, he
+opens the series in fine old form, as a swaggering nationalist atop the Krakoan
+embassy in Jerusalem, browbeating deceitful ambassadors, playing power politics
+at Davos, indulging in feats of incredible strength. Yet as the story winds on,
+Magneto finds that mutant nationalism, with all its attendant compromises and
+failures, is not actually the balm he sought. In his growing disillusionment,
+he abandons the project. “I tried to build something,” he muses in the pages of
+2022’s X-Men: Red #1, written by British writer Al Ewing. “But when I tried to
+wrestle my dream into the world—to make it real—it broke apart. Shattered to
+pieces. And they cut me to the heart.”
+
+That disillusionment, too, might sound familiar. By the 2000s, an increasingly
+right-wing Jewish nationalism had both the American and Israeli mainstream in a
+chokehold. The dream of peace had been replaced by a fantasy of a perpetual
+managed apartheid. Powerful and increasingly reactionary lobbies like AIPAC
+came down harshly on insufficiently deferential politicians; institutional
+programs like Birthright worked to funnel diaspora Jews through hasbarist
+fantasies. Over time, as previous Holocaust survivors and Israeli writers had
+predicted, the gravitational pull of the state increasingly [79]twisted the
+more[80] liberal elements of diaspora Judaism out of true. Transferred
+nationalism, as George Orwell [81]caustically observed in 1945, proved “a way
+of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.” Move over, Hashem; we
+have new gods now.
+
+Amidst a perpetual occupation whose brutality was, in all senses, unspeakable,
+the Holocaust memory culture that sustained the state took on an increasingly
+acid and farcical edge. Germans [82]scolded refugees for daring to identify
+with persecuted Jews; the increasingly white-nationalist Elon Musk [83]
+performed the stations of the cross at Auschwitz alongside Ben Shapiro, to show
+how much of an antisemite he wasn’t. Even before the October 7 massacre, the
+Likud and its partners even further to the right in Israeli politics had grown
+fat on entitlement, unaware or disdainful of the fact that they were badly
+overspending their credit. A fault-line yawned open within the global Jewish
+community, exposing the divide between those who had understood “Never Again”
+to be a humanistic warning, and those who saw it as permission in advance for
+whatever they deemed necessary to ensure it. As a villain and antihero, Magneto
+easily stood in for the latter camp; those decades of endless, intermittently
+coherent historical rage, and the way in which it made every response allowable
+and indulged.
+
+And yet if superhero comics can be a site of bubbling anxiety and creaky
+metaphor, they can also offer flashes of genuine grace. Let us return, then, to
+where we began: the realm of judgment. In 2022, amid the excellent “Judgement
+Day” crossover, Magneto died, falling in combat against a physical embodiment
+of genocide, in order to save the world. Ewing writes him a deathbed epiphany:
+“We must fight together—all of society's so-called undesirables,” he whispers.
+“Or our enemies will destroy us simply for daring to exist.”
+
+It wasn’t going to last. Death in superhero comics is an illusion; the only
+question was what shape that return might take. In Ewing’s Resurrection Of
+Magneto, it’s a tour-de-force examination of the character, one that sifts and
+dissects and synthesizes his entire creative history, from Kirby/Lee to
+Claremont and Morrison, as the man himself wanders past walls of monumental
+concrete and fire. There are names, too: the names of all who died by his hand
+or through his inaction, for the sake of his dream, and the too few that he has
+saved.
+
+In death, of course, he’s still Magneto. He’s still swift to anger and quick to
+lash out and prone to expediency; his suffering has not necessarily ennobled
+him. He is as he’s been written. But, Ewing gently suggests, he might also be
+something else as well. Magneto can not just evolve, but repent. In the Jewish
+tradition, repentance is a long and difficult road, and one that offers no
+guarantees—not of comfort, and not of a return to a pleasant status quo with
+one’s sins absolved. It asks us instead to give up our illusions, our
+resentments, our stiff-necked devotion to our own self-determination. It asks
+us to accept both the reality of our sins and our capacity for good. It demands
+that we abandon our belief in easy miracles. There is only the walk; there is
+only the work.
+
+“Throughout my life, I have repressed the rage in me until it exploded, or I
+have given it free reign over all decision,” Magneto says, confronting his old
+Kirby/Lee self on the road back to life. “But I cannot return to the world and
+return to the same path. I must change... So I acknowledge all that I have
+done. I admit all that I am. I own the shadow that is in me. And if this is the
+engine that drives me—let it drive me to a better world. A world for all who
+are hated and feared.”
+
+For all who are hated and feared. “The true guarantee against
+ideologically-based extermination is not military power and sovereignty,” Evron
+wrote in 1980. That is, not in the building of more and higher walls, but in
+the “eradication of ideologies which remove any human group from the family of
+humanity.” Such a pursuit offers fewer opportunities to swagger and punish, and
+tickles no atavistic fancies. Yet it is, in its way, a far more grand and
+radical desire.
+
+Change in corporate superhero comics is as much of an illusion as death, of
+course, and about as permanent. Any character development is subject to
+reversion, and rare indeed is the development that doesn’t get walked back
+somewhere down the line. But at this moment, this is what a reborn Magneto has
+come to stand for—not the wary and vengeful paranoia of “Never Again,” but the
+greater aspiration of “Never Again” for anyone.
+
+If to be a Jew of the diaspora is to be, in the Kirby/Lee/Claremont
+formulation, a mutant, then this is what we must remember. We are not immune to
+hatred and fear, and we are not the only ones subject to it. And we cannot be
+safe until we create that better world for everyone, together. It’s a hard road
+to such a world, and haunted. It might, perhaps, be an impossible one. The
+judgment of Magneto is that all of us have to walk it anyway.
+
+If you liked this blog, please share it! Your referrals help Defector reach new
+readers, and those new readers always get a few free blogs before encountering
+our paywall.
+
+ • [84]Share on Bluesky
+ • [85]Share on X (formerly Twitter)
+ • [86]Share on Reddit
+ • [87]Share on Facebook
+ • [88]Share on WhatsApp
+
+[89]*
+[90]Asher Elbein
+
+Asher Elbein is [91]a journalist and fiction writer based in Austin, Texas.
+Among other places, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Scientific
+American, Undark Magazine, Audubon, and Texas Monthly.
+
+Read More:
+
+ • [92]Al Ewing,
+ • [93]antisemitism,
+ • [94]Chris Claremont,
+ • [95]Comics,
+ • [96]fl,
+ • [97]Grant Morrison,
+ • [98]israel,
+ • [99]Jack Kirby,
+ • [100]judaism,
+ • [101]Magneto
+
+Stay in touch
+
+Sign up for our free newsletter
+
+[102][ ]Email
+Sign up
+More from Defector
+
+[104]Tennis
+[105]
+
+Iga Swiatek And Aryna Sabalenka Bring Out The Best In Each Other
+
+[106]4Comments
+[107][hea]
+[108]Patrick Redford
+May 6, 2024
+[109]Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Iga Swiatek of Poland meet at the net prior
+to the Women's Singles Final match on Day Twelve of Mutua Madrid Open at La
+Caja Magica on May 04, 2024 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty
+Images)
+[110]Arts And Culture
+[111]
+
+Kendrick Lamar And Drake Battle For The Lowest Blow
+
+[112]128Comments
+[113][ima]
+[114]Israel Daramola
+May 6, 2024
+[115]Kendrick Lamar performing on stage at the Glastonbury music festival in
+England in June 2022.
+[116]
+
+You DID Hear It From Us: There's Normal Gossip Merch
+
+With Season 6 starting on April 18, check out Normal Gossip’s Episodes
+Collection! This selection of t-shirts and tote bags, with a design by Tara
+Jacoby, features some of Normal Gossip’s most iconic episodes. Printed by a
+union co-op on Made in USA gear.
+Shop Now →
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+[117]Gambling
+[118]
+
+Sports Is Betting It All On Gambling
+
+[119]192Comments
+[120][ima]
+[121]Corbin Smith
+May 6, 2024
+[122]Joe Montana attends the FanDuel Fantasy Golf Classic on July 11, 2017 in
+New York City.
+[123]MLB
+[124]
+
+The Marlins Surrendered In Record Time
+
+[125]114Comments
+[126][rat]
+[127]Ray Ratto
+May 6, 2024
+[128]Luis Arraez #4 of the San Diego Padres reacts after hitting an RBI single
+against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the fourth inning at Chase Field on May
+04, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona.
+[129]Racing
+[130]
+
+Lando Norris Finally Did It
+
+[131]53Comments
+[132][Ima]
+[133]Luis Paez-Pumar
+May 6, 2024
+[134]Lando Norris of Great Britain and McLaren F1 Team celebrates his win
+during the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on May 5,
+2024 in Miami, United States.
+[135]See all posts
+[136]Defector home
+[137]Defector home
+
+This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place
+together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without
+favor, without discretion, and without interference.
+
+Stay in touch
+
+Sign up for our free newsletter
+
+[138][ ]Email
+Sign up
+ • [140]Defector X (formerly Twitter)
+ • [141]Defector Twitch
+ • [142]Defector Bluesky
+
+The last good website.
+
+ • [143]Send Us A Tip
+ • [144]Support and General Questions
+ • [145]Press Inquiries
+ • [146]Advertise With Us
+ • [147]Hall of Fame
+ • [148]Masthead
+
+ • [149]Privacy Notice
+ • [150]Terms of Use
+
+© Copyright 2024
+
+Made in partnership with [151]Lede
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto#main
+[2] https://defector.com/
+[3] https://defector.com/
+[4] https://defector.com/products
+[5] https://defector.com/login
+[11] https://defector.com/tag/defector-crosswords
+[12] https://defector.com/category/nfl
+[13] https://defector.com/category/mlb
+[14] https://defector.com/category/nba
+[15] https://defector.com/category/soccer
+[16] https://defector.com/category/tennis
+[17] https://defector.com/category/nhl
+[18] https://defector.com/category/podcasts
+[19] https://defector.com/category/arts-and-culture
+[20] https://defector.com/category/politics
+[21] https://defector.com/about-us
+[22] https://defector.com/tips
+[23] https://defector.com/tip-jar
+[24] https://defectorstore.com/
+[25] https://defector.com/how-to-pitch-defector
+[26] https://defector.com/how-to-comment-on-defector
+[27] https://defector.com/freelancer-policies
+[28] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vsMt8kzQug6h9qe9B2LObcxUFt0T-ESp/edit
+[29] https://defector.com/masthead
+[30] https://defector.com/defector-hall-of-fame
+[31] https://defector.com/login
+[32] https://defector.com/products
+[33] https://x.com/DefectorMedia
+[34] https://www.twitch.tv/defectormedia
+[35] https://www.bsky.app/profile/defector.bsky.social
+[36] https://defector.com/category/history
+[37] https://defector.com/author/asher-elbein
+[38] https://defector.com/author/asher-elbein
+[39] https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto%20-%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[40] https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[41] http://www.reddit.com/submit/?title=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[42] https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[43] https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?text=Check%20out%20this%20story%3A%20The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[44] https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto#coral_thread
+[45] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/21/gaza-death-toll-surpasses-25000-as-israel-escalates-assault
+[46] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/gaza-death-toll-passes-34000-israel-iran
+[47] https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/4722/
+[48] https://www.timesofisrael.com/stan-lee-was-not-as-marvelous-as-he-and-marvel-wanted-us-to-think/
+[49] https://www.academia.edu/226078/Mutant_Readers_Reading_Mutants_Appropriation_Assimilation_and_the_X-Men
+[50] https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/dark-phoenix-how-the-x-men-magneto-became-jewish.html
+[51] https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/dark-phoenix-how-the-x-men-magneto-became-jewish.html
+[52] http://www.alara.net/opeople/xbooks/magjew.html
+[53] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43122
+[54] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/pankaj-mishra/memory-failure
+[55] https://www.polisci.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/Lustick_Four%20Constructions%20of%20the%20Holocaust%20in%20Israeli%20Political%20Culture_Cont%20Jewry_Lustick%20(002).pdf
+[56] https://jewishcurrents.org/may-11-eichmann-captured
+[57] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/43122
+[58] https://time.com/6322802/yom-kippur-war-israel-history/
+[59] https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/23824
+[60] https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-never-again-evolved-from-holocaust-commemoration-slogan-to-universal-call/
+[61] https://books.google.com/books?id=1sNfEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA239&lpg=PA239&dq=%22Believe+me,+the+alternative+to+this+is+Treblinka,+and+we+have+decided+that+there+will+not+be+another+Treblinka%22.&source=bl&ots=RoR6GKVzzL&sig=ACfU3U2XAFAfMVrclwQmtwA8p4qNoORCkQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM6MOy8smFAxVL4ckDHWjXDI0Q6AF6BAgOEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Believe%20me%2C%20the%20alternative%20to%20this%20is%20Treblinka%2C%20and%20we%20have%20decided%20that%20there%20will%20not%20be%20another%20Treblinka%22.&f=false
+[62] https://ruj.uj.edu.pl/server/api/core/bitstreams/8ce3f84f-9905-443b-b841-b8d308d7897a/content
+[63] https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/08/weekinreview/beirut-and-after-begin-s-dark-vision.html
+[64] https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/dark-phoenix-how-the-x-men-magneto-became-jewish.html
+[65] https://web.archive.org/web/20131203064013/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20044.html
+[66] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n06/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza
+[67] https://palestinecollective.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/the-holocaust-learning-the-wrong-lessons.pdf
+[68] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/01/25/maverick-israeli-professor-gives-up-state-prize-amid-flap/f0890de2-e571-454d-b1e5-a835932e060e/
+[69] https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/x-men-wolverine-jean-grey-chris-claremont-five-key-storylines/
+[70] https://jewishcurrents.org/bari-weisss-unasked-questions
+[71] https://jewishcurrents.org/facing-amalek
+[72] https://ayinpress.org/on-antisemitism-and-anti-blackness/
+[73] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando
+[74] https://www.jstor.org/stable/176365
+[75] https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-news/this-week-in-history-revival-of-the-hebrew-language
+[76] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-04-25/ty-article/.premium/israel-at-75-how-a-young-socialist-nation-became-capitalist/00000187-b3fb-d803-ad8f-fffb87c30000
+[77] https://jewishunpacked.com/why-doesnt-israel-have-a-constitution/
+[78] https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/19/israel-intelligence-gaza-nuclear-weapons-hezbollah-iran-escalation-could-be-catastrophic/
+[79] https://jewishcurrents.org/elon-musk-the-jews-and-the-adl-with-know-your-enemy
+[80] https://jewishcurrents.org/top-executive-leaves-adl-over-ceos-praise-of-elon-musk
+[81] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
+[82] https://jacobin.com/2023/12/germany-holocaust-memory-migrants-islamophobia-antisemitism-israel-gaza
+[83] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-says-jewish-association-auschwitz-visit-sees-almost-no-antis-rcna135271
+[84] https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto%20-%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[85] https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[86] http://www.reddit.com/submit/?title=The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[87] https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[88] https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?text=Check%20out%20this%20story%3A%20The%20Judgment%20Of%20Magneto%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-judgment-of-magneto
+[89] https://defector.com/author/asher-elbein
+[90] https://defector.com/author/asher-elbein
+[91] https://www.asherelbein.com/
+[92] https://defector.com/tag/al-ewing
+[93] https://defector.com/tag/antisemitism
+[94] https://defector.com/tag/chris-claremont
+[95] https://defector.com/tag/comics
+[96] https://defector.com/tag/fl
+[97] https://defector.com/tag/grant-morrison
+[98] https://defector.com/tag/israel
+[99] https://defector.com/tag/jack-kirby
+[100] https://defector.com/tag/judaism
+[101] https://defector.com/tag/magneto
+[104] https://defector.com/category/tennis
+[105] https://defector.com/iga-swiatek-and-aryna-sabalenka-bring-out-the-best-in-each-other
+[106] https://defector.com/iga-swiatek-and-aryna-sabalenka-bring-out-the-best-in-each-other#coral_thread
+[107] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
+[108] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
+[109] https://defector.com/iga-swiatek-and-aryna-sabalenka-bring-out-the-best-in-each-other
+[110] https://defector.com/category/arts-and-culture
+[111] https://defector.com/kendrick-lamar-and-drake-battle-for-the-lowest-blow
+[112] https://defector.com/kendrick-lamar-and-drake-battle-for-the-lowest-blow#coral_thread
+[113] https://defector.com/author/israel-daramola
+[114] https://defector.com/author/israel-daramola
+[115] https://defector.com/kendrick-lamar-and-drake-battle-for-the-lowest-blow
+[116] https://defectorstore.com/collections/normal-gossip
+[117] https://defector.com/category/gambling
+[118] https://defector.com/sports-is-betting-it-all-on-gambling
+[119] https://defector.com/sports-is-betting-it-all-on-gambling#coral_thread
+[120] https://defector.com/author/corbin-smith
+[121] https://defector.com/author/corbin-smith
+[122] https://defector.com/sports-is-betting-it-all-on-gambling
+[123] https://defector.com/category/mlb
+[124] https://defector.com/the-marlins-surrendered-in-record-time
+[125] https://defector.com/the-marlins-surrendered-in-record-time#coral_thread
+[126] https://defector.com/author/ray-ratto
+[127] https://defector.com/author/ray-ratto
+[128] https://defector.com/the-marlins-surrendered-in-record-time
+[129] https://defector.com/category/racing
+[130] https://defector.com/lando-norris-finally-did-it
+[131] https://defector.com/lando-norris-finally-did-it#coral_thread
+[132] https://defector.com/author/luis-paez-pumar
+[133] https://defector.com/author/luis-paez-pumar
+[134] https://defector.com/lando-norris-finally-did-it
+[135] https://defector.com/all
+[136] https://defector.com/
+[137] https://defector.com/
+[140] https://x.com/DefectorMedia
+[141] https://www.twitch.tv/defectormedia
+[142] https://www.bsky.app/profile/defector.bsky.social
+[143] https://defector.com/tips
+[144] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[145] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[146] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[147] https://defector.com/defector-hall-of-fame
+[148] https://defector.com/masthead
+[149] https://defector.com/privacy-notice
+[150] https://defector.com/terms-of-use
+[151] https://joinlede.com/