We need to talk about the loptyr Cult

[loamlife]

Hey so I really didn't want to have to make this topic but it really bothers me that NO ONE has ever mentioned this about the Loptyr Sect in FE 4-5. In that they are one of the most heinous antisemitic caricatures I have ever seen in any form of media let alone a video game. It also bothers me in the ways they are antisemitic is super obvious yet again I feel like I am the first person to notice this. Let me go through how I came to this conclusion so I don't sound like a crazy person.

To start the Loptyr Sect worship Loptyr. Who for all intensive purposes is Satan. Jews worshiping Satan is a major part of Christian antisemetic propaganda.

Then there is the fact that they are remenents of a powerful evil empire beaten back by the forces of good into the margins. Their base of operations in Genealogy is the Yield Desert making them "Desert Interlopers" into the kingdom of Grannvale. I don't think I need to spell out the implications.

They are all framed as deceitful manipulative and untrustworthy. Notice how every holy blooded villain except Scorpio is framed as being "tricked" by the Sect in some way. even Chagall arguably the most irredeemable character in the game was convinced by Manfroy to kill his father.

They literally cause all the wars. Every single war in the first generation of genealogy was orchestrated by the Sect in some way as part of there plan to conquer the continent. Jews being responsible for all wars in the world is a major antisemitic canard. 

Then there is the child hunts. In case you don't know in the middle ages the jews were constantly murdered for supposedly killing children and baking their blood into Matzo. This "Blood Libel" still persist to this day because antisemitic canards never go away only accumulate. In the Jugdral games the Sect actively engages in the hunting of children for their rituals. Several characters in both games  turn against the empire only due to opposition to the child hunts. 

Lastly this one might be hard to explain but they just look like jewish caricatures. They have big noses and were cult like robes. compare Manfroy and Veld to the Jews in passion of the Christ and maybe you will see what I mean.

So in the end we have satan worshiping middle eastern desert interlopers wishing to bring back their evil empire invading a innocent kingdom by corrupting deceiving and orchestrating wars so they can achieve global domination who also happen to kill children for their rituals. Factor in the fact that everything in the game is nordic themed in naming...and Scandinavian coded people chosen by the gods repealing the evil desert interlopers corrupting their homeland has some implications.

I wanted to post this because non of this stuff is particular subtle yet I have never seen anyone else mention this. There is no info or writings on anti-Semitism in genealogy and I felt like I had to get this out there. If anyone want more in-depth sources on Antisemtic canards and stereotypes I would be happy to give them resources to check and learn more.

[Slumber]

I think you're reading WAY too much into it.

Just for a few things:

The parallel between Loptyr and Satan doesn't really work, because A) Loptyr is a dragon with no real godly powers, B) There are many Earth dragons, and C) The dragons as they exist in Jugdral are more along the lines of polytheistic religions, where each major dragon represents a different element or different abstract concept. 

Their base of operations is Yied, but the Lopto Empire sprouted out of Gran. 

Pretty much everyone in Genealogy is fucked up. It's not some "Aryan Nords fight evil Jews" story. Several kingdoms in Jugdral are more than happy to willingly participate in the Lopto Sect's atrocities so long as they benefit from it. It's mostly just Chalphy, Leonster, Isaach and Silesse that are wholly decent places. And Chalphy/Leonster are just small kingdoms in much larger countries. 

The people who made these games are Japanese, and very likely not Christian, so it's difficult to see why they'd be using Christian propaganda from 1000 years ago as the basis for their game. 

Edited July 16, 2017 by Slumber

[Hardin]

I think you might actually be onto something OP. I remember years ago on FESS, somebody posted an old article from the mainstream Japanese media about either FE4 or FE5 being recalled by Nintendo because one of the maps had a swastika made out of trees. I wish I had saved that article, because for the life of me I just can't find it. 

[NinjaMonkey]

33 minutes ago, Hardin said:

I remember years ago on FESS, somebody posted an old article from the mainstream Japanese media about either FE4 or FE5 being recalled by Nintendo because one of the maps had a swastika made out of trees.

Why didn't they recall all copies of Zelda 1 then, as the third dungeon is in the shape of a swastika? Also, the swastika is a symbol of Buddhism in Japan, so I don't see why they'd recall the game.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Hardin said:

I remember years ago on FESS, somebody posted an old article from the mainstream Japanese media about either FE4 or FE5 being recalled by Nintendo because one of the maps had a swastika made out of trees. I wish I had saved that article, because for the life of me I just can't find it. 

You sure they weren't just correcting a completely innocent error? As in "Hey, let's try not to make the forest layout on maps look utterly blah and generic all the time" and thus they accidentally made the symbol. Similar to how they changed the symbol on the Forest Medallion in OoT3D, but I think some of these changes just lead people to see the accidental swastika after

 

I'm in agreement with Slumber here- there is no latent anti-Semitism in Jugdral. You're reading into it. I'll add my own additions.

Child hunts are simply an extension of the child slavery Kaga had included in FE1 (Linde's recruitment has Marth freeing her from them- it was changed for the NA release in Shadow Dragon). Kaga like using kidnapping as an evil his baddies engage in. 

Any abnormally large nasal features are simply because it's a deviation from the standards of human appearance and beauty. Generally in stories with clear heroes and villains you load up the bad guys with ugly features symbolic of their evil to distinguish them from the handsome and beautiful heroes.

Evil sorcerers manipulating? That is typical of sorcerer depictions across time and place. There are loads of stories with secret societies and dark cults manipulating things in all sorts of entertainment media, and you can't call it anti-Semitic blindly.

As for the mythology- IS wanted to use Norse mythology because it's epic and cool to use it. Don't think of bringing up Wagner- one can use Norse mythos, which Wagner helped popularize, without ever touching Wagner's anti-Semitism. Did Norse Pagans even know of Jews in the days before Christianity took over Scandinavia?

And not every place in Jugdral has a Scandinvian name- Silesse from Silesia is Polish and German, Verdane is Verdun in France, Agustria is Austria,  Manster and Ulster are Irish and the latter features loosely Japanese swordsmen. Thracia is in the Balkans/Mediterranean, and Miletos is from ancient Turkey.

 

9 hours ago, Slumber said:

It's mostly just Chalphy, Leonster, Isaach and Silesse that are wholly decent places.

Isn't Leonster kinda racist towards South Thracia and allows the people there to starve? Don't mean to set up a human rights commission in Jugdral, but I think Leonster could lose a point or two from that if you have an unbiased conscience, which some non-Manster District Jugdralians might.

[The Baroness of Blainswal]

Hmm. I'm not entirely sure that was their intention. I just had a look through a list of all known Lopto Sect members, and a lot of them do have pointed noses, though I don't think they're necessarily intended to be Jewish stereotypes. Sharp features come across as more harsh and menacing so designs like this are often used in villains.

Admittedly, there is a member in the cult named Judah, which might give off a sort of antisemitic implication. Though there is also a Daggon (or Dagon) who was known as a god of Philistines in the Hebrew Bible, and I don't think it would make much sense to include someone with this name in a group of people intended to be a negative allegory towards Judaism. 

The satanist parallels you've found might be intended (even though as Slumber said, Loptyr doesn't quite work as a Satanic figure), though it wasn't always associated with Judaism in a historical context with groups like The Knights Templar even being accused of dealings with Lucifer.

[CT075]

i... no? that's ridiculous

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

To start the Loptyr Sect worship Loptyr. Who for all intensive purposes is Satan. Jews worshiping Satan is a major part of Christian antisemetic propaganda.

i'm pretty sure "____ worshipping satan" was a major part of christian anti-anything propaganda. for that matter, "cult worshipping the evil god" is one of the most approximately generic setting villains that exists; are all of these suddenly also suddenly anti-semitic? Is LotR's Sauron-worshipping group being outlawed an allegory for christian persecution? Or the daedric cults in the elder scrolls world? or, like, anybody in shin megami tensei that literally worships lucifer? Fuck, that's like saying "X character is greedy for money, and jews are stereotypically super money-hungry, it must be some deep anti-semitic slur".

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

Then there is the fact that they are remenents of a powerful evil empire beaten back by the forces of good into the margins. Their base of operations in Genealogy is the Yield Desert making them "Desert Interlopers" into the kingdom of Grannvale. I don't think I need to spell out the implications.

this is strictly false: the lopt clan's base of operations is in grannvale.

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

They are all framed as deceitful manipulative and untrustworthy. Notice how every holy blooded villain except Scorpio is framed as being "tricked" by the Sect in some way. even Chagall arguably the most irredeemable character in the game was convinced by Manfroy to kill his father.

They literally cause all the wars. Every single war in the first generation of genealogy was orchestrated by the Sect in some way as part of there plan to conquer the continent. Jews being responsible for all wars in the world is a major antisemitic canard. 

List of cults supposedly pulling the strings controlling all the world:

Freemasons

Illuminati

Elders of Zion

Fourth Reich

etc (I can keep going)

 

Please note: The Freemasons, Illuminati and Zion are Christian cults. This is not an inherently Jewish stereotype, and I don't even think I would have thought of connecting it to being a semitic thing if you hadn't brought it up.

 

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

Then there is the child hunts. In case you don't know in the middle ages the jews were constantly murdered for supposedly killing children and baking their blood into Matzo. This "Blood Libel" still persist to this day because antisemitic canards never go away only accumulate. In the Jugdral games the Sect actively engages in the hunting of children for their rituals. Several characters in both games  turn against the empire only due to opposition to the child hunts. 

welcome to "generic fiction cult actions 101"?

 

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

Lastly this one might be hard to explain but they just look like jewish caricatures. They have big noses and were cult like robes. compare Manfroy and Veld to the Jews in passion of the Christ and maybe you will see what I mean.

i looked it up and some other contemporary artwork, and i'm pretty sure that this applies to anybody who "isn't christian". Or, for that matter, any "evil interlopers" in any artwork in general

 

11 hours ago, loamlife said:

So in the end we have satan worshiping middle eastern desert interlopers wishing to bring back their evil empire invading a innocent kingdom by corrupting deceiving and orchestrating wars so they can achieve global domination who also happen to kill children for their rituals. Factor in the fact that everything in the game is nordic themed in naming...and Scandinavian coded people chosen by the gods repealing the evil desert interlopers corrupting their homeland has some implications.

if you hadn't told me this was about the Jews, i would have assumed you were talking about this being anti-Muslim, to the point where that's literally what the Crusades and the Holy War were (in theory) for. I will again point out that this is also a reasonable description of the modern caricature of the illuminati.

 

I think you're drawing parallels to history that are really not intended. I'm not going to say that they don't exist, but this is not only "generic high fantasy" but also "generically historical" -- the jews were not the only group accused of being an evil-worshipping cult, they are not the only group that has been accused of being behind every war ever, and they are certainly not meant to be modern-day parallels to the lopt sect.

 

E:

Furthermore, even if it was meant to invoke christian anti-semitic imagery, who cares? it's so far removed from the actual jews that it's a waste of time to be mad at it. "O no, it's bad to dislike the cult that sacrifices children". It is unreasonable to expect us to condemn arbitrary elements of fiction that, i say again, are generically evil things to do, just because "they were once used as slurs against the jews". Is every movie that features a really fast bank robber in the american south inherently anti-black? Of course not, that's stupid.

Edited July 16, 2017 by CT075

[RJWalker]

3 hours ago, Hardin said:

I think you might actually be onto something OP. I remember years ago on FESS, somebody posted an old article from the mainstream Japanese media about either FE4 or FE5 being recalled by Nintendo because one of the maps had a swastika made out of trees. I wish I had saved that article, because for the life of me I just can't find it. 

Why would the Japanese freak out a swastika? Go to Asia and you'll see it everywhere. There's nothing anti-semitic about the swastika. I can step outside my home and see that every apartment in my building has a swastika painted or craved above every main door.

Edited July 16, 2017 by RJWalker

[Hardin]

I would imagine, that because the game has so many Germanic elements, the notion that it's just a Buddhist thing didn't really fly. I'm trying to find the article, but locating a news story from 20 years ago is quite challenging. 

[loamlife]

22 hours ago, Slumber said:

The people who made these games are Japanese, and very likely not Christian, so it's difficult to see why they'd be using Christian propaganda from 1000 years ago as the basis for their game. 

The Japanese have no ingrained history of anti-Semitism like the west does but stuff pops up from time to time. Look up the Anime "Angel Cop". As for genealogy they were taking stuff from the western medieval fantasy canon and were not aware of where those tropes originated from. Western stuff about "evil cults in the shadows" of all forms comes from western traditions of anti-Semitism. The guys making this game probably just didn't know any better. (why would they?)

11 hours ago, CT075 said:

 

Please note: The Freemasons, Illuminati and Zion are Christian cults. 

uhhhh the elders of zion is a specifically antisemitic thing. Zion is a term for Jerusalem that comes from the Hebrew Bible. Zionisim is the movement to relocate all jews to Israel. "The protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a antisemitic forgery from the early 20th century about the supposed plot for world domination by the Elders of Zion who are supposed to be a group of secret jews that run the world. 

I will also say I know very little about the real Illumianti and freemasons but most of the conspiracy theories you see about them on the internet are thinly veiled anti-Semitism. I have nothing on the fourth Riech though some people are just crazy.

12 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Any abnormally large nasal features are simply because it's a deviation from the standards of human appearance and beauty. Generally in stories with clear heroes and villains you load up the bad guys with ugly features symbolic of their evil to distinguish them from the handsome and beautiful heroes.

Heroes pretty Bad guys ugly is pretty standard but using the hooked large nose as a sign of ugliness is rooted in anti-Semitism. Even if they are not supposed to be jewish giving an overtly evil character a big nose is bad form.

Edited July 17, 2017 by loamlife

[The Geek]

I'm on the side of "you're looking too far into this".  Maybe some of these tropes have roots in anti-semitism, but I don't believe Kaga, IS, and Nintendo were trying to push an anti-semetic ideology with FE4.

[CT075]

23 minutes ago, loamlife said:

uhhhh the elders of zion is a specifically antisemitic thing. Zion is a term for Jerusalem that comes from the Hebrew Bible. Zionisim is the movement to relocate all jews to Israel. "The protocols of the Elders of Zion" is a antisemitic forgery from the early 20th century about the supposed plot for world domination by the Elders of Zion who are supposed to be a group of secret jews that run the world. 

I will also say I know very little about the real Illumianti and freemasons but most of the conspiracy theories you see about them on the internet are thinly veiled anti-Semitism. I have nothing on the fourth Riech though some people are just crazy.

i'm aware of this. you can't say the evil cult is an allegory for the jews and then turn around and say that because they're parallels to an antisemitic cult and make those both be about being antisemitic4

 

edit:

that is, i don't see how you can say all these things that supposedly point to "THE LOPT CULT IS THE JEWS" and then go "oh but they're also a parallel to an antisemitic group which is still bad"

the whole point was that the concept of "evil shadow cult destroying the world" is not solely applied to jewish people

23 minutes ago, loamlife said:

Heroes pretty Bad guys ugly is pretty standard but using the hooked large nose as a sign of ugliness is rooted in anti-Semitism. Even if they are not supposed to be jewish giving an overtly evil character a big nose is bad form.

i legitimately don't think anybody seriously associates having a long hooked nose with being jewish anymore

Edited July 17, 2017 by CT075