I know the events which launched it (the publication of "Michelle Remembers" etc.) but I'm curious as to the social attitudes or historical context of the time which made it the perfect moment for this panic. What was going on in the United States at the time, what social sentiments existed that encouraged the Satanic Panic? Thank you!

I'm currently listening to Lost Enlightenment, by S. Frederick Starr, a really wide ranging and accessible history of medieval central Asia, for anyone who's interested. I highly recommend it. I found the biography of Yaqub ibn-Layth al-Saffar particularly interesting. He seems like a fascinating man of the people and an exceptional military leader.

On realizing that his Saffarid dynasty was founded around 865, I figured he must be a playable character in the popular historical sim, Crusader Kings III. Indeed, he is. The game, which I also highly recommend, of course, starts in 867 just as Yaqub's Saffarid kingdom is at war with the Tahirid emirate to the north. I just started at the time of this writing but it should be a very fun campaign.

But shortly after starting the game, I noticed a curious little detail. For some reason, the developers at Paradox, had made me homosexual. In a game that focuses on dynastic inheritance and the siring of ever more and better offspring, that can add a bit of a fun challenge, but, I can't find out at all if it's historically accurate. It seems most sources make no mention of wives or children of al-Saffar, including Starr, who led me down this rabbit hole in the first place. I don't think that's very good evidence here, though. I'm left with several questions:

First, are there any known sources, friendly, hostile, or otherwise alleging that al-Saffar was gay?

More generally, what do we know about sexuality in medieval Afghanistan? Would the first question even be answerable in that context?

Most generally, does anyone have any thoughts on the running joke among some history enthusiasts (possibly including our friends at Paradox Interactive) that, "if a figure was never known to be in a heterosexual relationship, ipso facto homo?" It's obviously bad history, and bad critical thinking, but has it ever proved "accurate"? Or even just "useful"?

In his notes, he says: “The sexual act of coitus and the body parts employed for it are so repulsive, that were it not for the beauty of the faces and the adornment of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.” And despite being accused of sodomy, it was never proven.

That doesn’t sound like something a gay person would write, especially in their personal diary’s.

While doing my husband's ancestry we found his 26th great grandfather William Saunders of the Bury. I'm one biography it says

In the period 1460-1465 William sought to recover 100 marks' debt from a London grocer who had brought actions against him in the Poultry Counter.

What does that mean?

Hebrew hadn't been spoken as a regular language for thousands of years, and yet today the language is spoken in its modern form by nearly every Jewish Israeli. How did this happen? Who updated the language to its modern form and how was it taught and learned so quickly? Wouldn't teachers need to be trained and such? And how did so many people learn it so quickly? Immersion is a very important part of learning a language quickly which is one of the issues with learning less common languages.

There are quite a few very large claims made within the text, although I'm only about a quarter of the way through it right now. I'm interested in hearing what others have to say about it; the press surrounding the book has been adulatory, which is to be expected, I think.

This might just be me cherry picking or doing some other form of poor analysis, but sorting by Top - Last Month seems to bear out that the most popular post of the entire last month only got to a score of 3.4k, with average daily top posts being less than 1k, when it SEEMS like the average daily best is typically around that 3k mark.

Am I just imagining this, or is there something causing less engagement/enthusiasm going on? Mods, have you noticed something, or am I barking up a non-existent mangled metaphor?

How did planes like the I-15 ( Spanish Civil war - Early ww2) have 3000 rounds of ammunition to then planes like the Yak-9 ( around 1942 maiden flight) only having around 300. Thanks for replies if there are any.

I guess I’m just curious, one of my friends was talking about pirates and I was thinking “woah what if you were a colonist or something similar back when maps weren’t as good and communication took much longer and your empire/sponsor/lifeline just lost some paperwork or the people who knew where you were just up and died and people just forgot you were there? That would kinda suck, maybe they should become pirates and steal to survive” and now I want to know if something like that ever actually happened.

What did/do non-Americans think of the U.S. Civil War? What was their opinion of the Union/Confederacy? What is the consensus of the cause of the Civil War?

Reason I'm asking is it is hard to get an unbiased perspective on the subject in the U.S. I'm curious as to what third parties thought of it.

My general question is if slavery was really the impetus of the war?

I grew up in the West, the narrative we were taught was that the South was wanted slavery and the North did not and they went to war over it.

I find that hard to believe. Sure slavery was a big part of the Civil War, but to me it sounds like a nice narrative to hide the true motives of the war (similar to the Afghanistan War being about terrorism).

Maybe I'm wrong though?

I'm fascinated by the idea of small city-states being able to punch far above their weight class, but mostly overseas. They had a far harder time dominating their own "countries." Athens couldn't conquer the mainland Greek states, and Venice, Genoa, Pisa, etc, did poorly when they tried to dominate the other Italian city-states.

Part of the picture is clear — they had plenty of money from trade, which gave them resources they could use to conquer overseas territories.

But Look at Pisa, as an example. Pisa's fleet and army made conquests on Sicily Northern Africa, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands, feats of logistics and manpower that even major powers like the Byzantines and Romans had failed at. Many of these places had strongly placed defenders and considerable resources. Why were the Pisans able to defeat them with relative ease, but they could make no inroads in Italy proper?

More broadly, why did this model work to an extent, but never really allowed the city-states to become larger empires?

_______________-
I could add Carthage to the list, but they seemed to hold a lot of territory in Africa, which perhaps makes them more of an empire with lots of overseas holdings and strong fleet/merchant marine rather than a "maritime city-state with imperial ambitions."

And if so, why? I honestly can't tell whether this is promoted by crypto-racists trying to claim they were discriminated against too, people who think it just sounds cool and counter-intuitive, or people with a critical race perspective.

Let me prephase this by saying that I am in no shape or form denying The Holocaust. But I can't understand the reasoning behind it.

In every other genocide the reason seems ""logical"" , for instance, the genocide against Indigenous People of what is now The Americas was done to seize their land.

In this sense, what was the reason for creating such a big infrastructure, all for the extermination of the Jewish People? Even more, a big part of them (maybe the majority) weren't even german jews! So why did they go out of their way to take Polish and Russian (and other east european nationalities) Jews and kill them in extermination center?

In 1996, Historian Daniel J. Goldenhagen releases a book to the world which will attempt to challenge earlier Historians and their view of how the common people of Nazi Germany interacted with Judaism. The book is titled Hitler's Willing Executioners in which he uses it to describe a very extreme form of anti-Semitism, which had evolved through religious anti-Semitism -- named eliminationist Antisemitism. Goldenhagen argues that Germany's Anti-Semitism is atypically and uniquely horrific in comparison to any other country, point out Martin Luther (the 16th century Reformist) and his work as an example of percolated anti-Semitism throughout Germany.

And the end of his book he writes:

“The conclusion of this book is that antisemitism moved many thousands of "ordinary" Germans— and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned—to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardship, not the coercive means of a totalitarian state, not social psychological pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men, women, and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity.”

After the publication of this book, Goldenhagen became a very controversial character amongst the ring of Holocaust Historians. He was lambasted and castigated by most prominent Historians, backed by none.

​

Some quotes:

• Hilberg: "by the end of 1996, it was clear that in sharp distinction from lay readers, much of the academic world had wiped Goldhagen off the map"
• Bauer: "Goldhagen stumbles badly, his thesis does not work"

Do you agree with any aspects of Daniel's thesis, or not, and if so why?

Do you agree more with Kershaw's quote of

"The road to Auschwitz was built with hate, but paved with indifference"

- Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-45 (1983), p. 277.

The quote shows the laity of Nazi Germany were more in the dark about the horrors committed by the Nazis. Did Imperial Germany have a lot of anti-Semitism?

Thanks,
hoping for good replies

References:
Bauer, Yehuda (2002). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 107.

Hilberg, Raul (Summer 1997). "The Goldhagen Phenomenon". Critical Inquiry. 23 (4): pp.721–722

I would like to know the facts surrounding the recent slave trade. While I'm somewhat informed in this regard. I would like further details, with respect to race. As far as I have it, it wasn't race based, more than it was finance based. How did the Africans come to be slaves. And why are they the only people mentioned in a time, when they were not the only colour group subjected to slavery?

What or what didnt happen practically in such a situation