This isn’t just bait, this is an actual question. Is making fun of inbreeding ableist? Of course I’m not defending inbreeding or royals, but the imagery used in the third panel just feels so much like ableist comics I’ve seen in the past. I think this comic is essentially saying that royals are genetically deformed and genetic deformity should be laughed at. I find the hubris that causes inbreeding to create a sort of funny irony to it, however I have a hard time with the implications that can come with the jokes
An easy test I’ve found with these, is to ask who the target / butt of the joke is. And it usually should be obvious, because a lot of irony-poisoned people make memes that just target the same groups as the reactionaries, or make the targets ambiguous.
I’d say with this one, its pretty clear the targets are the royals who choose to inbreed to preserve their position, and not their unfortunate offspring.
I am honestly not sure. The way that I saw it, was just a portrayal of how deep the genetic damage done by inbreeding has gone. I am not sure if that in itself is ableist.
Making fun of someone on the basis of congenital traits beyond one’s control, especially those that present themselves as a disability, is indeed ableist, and there is no way to turn that around.
More often than not I find that people who otherwise would be comrades having no issues at all about jumping into reactionary behaviour when their target is considered “fair game” due to their class: the ableism portrayed here is an example, but it also happens with sexist and homophobic behaviour. We should know better than this.
Then step down as the monarch of your country.
“Oh no, the poor Habsburgs and their unlimited wealth and power, boohoo, don’t make fun of our horrific family line that looks more like a circle then a tree. We didn’t have control of our defects, so that should have no bearing as to if we should remain the ruling heads of millions of people!”
Also these aren’t some accidental one in a million genetic flukes or disorders, this is the organized, premeditated, and preplanned genetic deformity of a family line that lasted hundreds of years. If what was happening was so utterly horrific, they could have simply stopped, but they despised the lower classes that much.
Monarchs should not be ruling heads of millions of people at all, regardless of genetics. Parallel to that, an individual should not be degraded on the basis of congenital traits, no matter if these are accidental or the result of someone else’s choices. Those are absolutely not exclusive facts.
Despise monarchs for what they deserved to be despised: for being the embodiements of a system that places laborers at the bottom living in misery and the landowners who leech from the former’s labor at the top living in abundance despite giving nothing in return.
The moment you begin to focus your criticisms on other traits of an individual away from class, such as disability, gender or sexuality not only you’re waddling into reactionary territory yourself, but you are also displaying that you have not fully interiorized what class struggle is truly about. Both acts that can be similarly seen in people who would call a female member of the bourgeoisie a “b*tch”, per example - An unfortunately common sight.
Understandable, I see your point and I agree with pretty much everything you said.
However, the deformities that some of those monarchs suffered are also a living embodiment of their class, as in their hubris and desire to separate themselves from those they deemed beneath them, they shot themselves in the foot and paid a high price.
That’s just an observation and shouldn’t be the main focusing point of course.
And it is a correct observation. However using it as the butt of any jokes or as serious criticism is a dangerous line to walk over, as many (if not most) people will miss that nuisance and simply interpret (and even interiorize) that those who have congenital disabilities are to be laughed at, and pointing at royals once asked why.
Nonetheless, and I feel like this is very important to emphasize: it is imperative that we communists strive to build a world where the differently abled have the same opportunities as those who aren’t, including holding positions where other people depend on them. If at any point we cannot allow someone to be general secretary of a party for being blind or for having cerebral palsy, then the shame is on us, no matter if their traits were a probabilistic statistic or the result of someone’s choices, such as a having been born of a woman who chose to have children later in life than most or being born from a family that culturally practices marriages between close kin, as it happens in the Arab world.
If you are part of the ruling class and your family has purposefully inbred for hundreds of years. Then I feel you are not exempt for being criticized for something that is actively diminishing your ability to rule. It’s no accident at that point.
The majority of Habsburgs reached the point where they were simply vegetative their entire short lives, but they held control of the lives of millions of people.
Calling people vegetables is reactionary and borders on slur, it’s extremely dehumanizing. I understand there’s an inherent comedy in the irony of them considering themselves the master race. We can laugh at their bigoted beliefs without making the butt of the joke that they’re “vegetables” because their bigoted beliefs don’t make the source joke any less ableist.
Good point, I could clarify that to be a bit more exact.
The wording was definitely the wrong choice, but like you said, I was more so pointing at the fact that it reached the point where Emperors and Kings could not eat food, close their mouths, speak, cough or sneeze without choking, or even understand what was even going on around them. And these were the people considered to worthy of holding the Divine Rights to power.
