Nor the nazi apologia either
From what I remember in the show they just made all the airbenders monks? Like there wasn't a feudal underclass to support them like there were in other bender societies? Kinda weird tbh.
Huh this raises a lot of questions. I think they were vegetarians too (or was that just Aang?) so they wouldn't hunt or slaughter the sky bison. They probably wouldn't plant crops in the mountains as nomads. Maybe there were very few of them and mountaintop gardens could sustain them? It seems kind of unfeasible though.
I demand a political economy of Air Nomad society.
I mean the thing that makes the most sense is that air nomads were raiders who used to descend on other nations' villages and steal their vegetables
I think they were vegetarians too (or was that just Aang?) so they wouldn’t hunt or slaughter the sky bison.
Yeah, though they're obviously based primarily on Buddhists, the air nomads seem to take more after Jains in this regard. It seems killing animals is entirely unacceptable.
There were only 4 tribes of them and each tribe occupied a temple complex the size of a small town so yeah I think their population was pretty small. They seemed to mostly eat fruit pies to I imagine they gathered fruit from tree (either that they tended or wild trees) and traded with other nations for cereals and other staple foods.
they can fly so its probably easy to glide around and forage
Weird how nobody is showed tilling the land. Oh wait, in the comics/LOK they introduce the air acolytes
Air acolytes weren't a historical institution, they were literally Aang's fan club. That's where they started.
oh that makes sense I guess but still IRL those people would be doing shit jobs around the monastery anyway right?
Yeah, all air nomads are monks, there is no class system of any kind at all among them.
The air nomads essentially lived in full luxury vegan communism until the fire nation genocided them. They were also the only nation to not have any homophobic or sexist customs, although weirdly the temples were segregated between men and women.
Lmao it literally sounds like pro-air nomad propaganda
"Yeah the air nomads never did anything wrong and just gave everybody hugs and then they got genocided"
But like... they didn't do anything wrong? They were pacifists who lived on big mountain and meditated
Sorry I'm not accusing you of being an air nomad propagandist, I'm saying if someone described a culture like that to me IRL, I would automatically assume they were selling me bullshit.
No you can accuse me of being an air nomad propagandist, they were a glorious and prosperous nation before the fire nation attacked
Wow love to see someone uncritically spewing Earth Nation state department takes on my hexbear website very cool thank u
Also if I knew anything about Avatar then I think a Fire Nation Stan who attacks the entire plot of Avatar as propaganda would be a great bit account
No they didn't do anything wrong which is sort of the critique. The show depicted the other nations as having their flaws and problems, but was ultimately still respectful which is good. The water nation was sexist, the Earth Nation was oppressively, the fire nation is racist and propagandized.
But the air nomads? There was no real lesson or nuance there, they were just depicted as this perfect, lost culture. Which would be fine if they just didn't want to get into that, but by naming people after the Dali Lama they are sort of making it political, and essentially endorsing feudal Buddhism and connecting it to the real world.
There were non-air benders. I remember from a comic. Unless that was something aang was doing to try and keep the culture alive
I remember hearing that there were no non- airbenders because their attachment to the spirit world was so strong. The non-bending air acolytes in the comments were just Aang's fangirls
Also, in ATLA two very important and sympathetic characters are named as the pictured CIA asset
There are a lot of good sources on how he was trained since young by the CIA butt here's one bit that speaks for itself:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/forgive-pinochet-says-dalai-lama-1.187150
I said it the last time this was posted but this meme is disingenuous. The Dalai Lama is not in favor of “bringing back slavery,” and has called himself a Marxist just not a Maoist. You don’t have to love him just don’t lie about him. Moreover, if you want to align the Dalai Lama as a CIA asset you can use the same qualifiers for a lot of other figures, including Frantz Fanon. So I don’t think that’s a very useful metric.
