Jaslovesthings - Jas

Because of the semi-recent uproar stirred by by J/K/R's blatant antisemitism in that new H/ar/ry P/ott/er game (putting slashes to keep this post from potentially showing up in searches for those terms bc theyre not the focus of this post), and the drive to make the Wizard101 community more explicitly Jewish-friendly, there is a word floating around in wizard101 canon and thus in the wizard101 communities online that I'd like to call attention to.

Cabal

The name of the major antagonists in the second half of Arc 3 and beyond. Host to some of our favorite characters.

The word 'cabal' simply means "a secret political clique of faction".

Why am I calling attention to this word and name?

The word cabal is derived from the rabbinical Hebrew word 'Kabbalah', the word for Jewish religious teachings (specifically study and interpretation of the Torah). I hope I don't have to explain why turning the word for our religious studies into meaning a secret political organization is antisemitic as fuck.

Im not blaming the wiz communities online for using this word, and Im not sure I can even blame the writers for not considering the antisemitic roots of the word. The writers likely didnt think 'oh, let's intentionally use an antisemitic word for the villains we want to introduce'. Antisemitism is woven into our language and culture. Cabal was an antisemitic word and concept before it was a name for a group of fictional villains in an MMORPG.

That being said, we don't have to be (and in fact, we SHOULDN'T be) complacent in antisemitism. Language matters. Therefore, if I may, I'd like to suggest a word we can use instead of Cabal/Cabalists:

Schismist

In canon, the Cabal and Arcanum had been one entity (the old Arkanum) before the Great Schism happened in which the two broke apart into what they are today. The Cabalists were the ones forced out, and the ancestors of the modern Arcanum followed the goal of studying all the schools of magic, rather than studying how to survive the apocalypse.

A friend offered this word up to a discord server we were in, and we all made the switch there.

I'm not asking for much. Just for us to be the slightest bit conscious of our language. Just for us to replace one word for another.

Stranger Things + Reductress Headlines pt 2

Part 1