7 ms·

If anybody wants to read a comic with the perspective of someone that went through one of these places and spent the years after fighting against them, I stumbl

by plqbfbv 11mo ago

If anybody wants to read a comic with the perspective of someone that went through one of these places and spent the years after fighting against them, I stumbled upon this one a few years ago: https://elan.school/ https://elan.school/ I am not in any way affiliated with the author, it's just one of the few books with real content that I've read in a long time.

zoklet-enjoyer 11mo ago
Great comic and there's a documentary about that place. Very messed up that's it's a whole child abuse industry.
- nekusar 11mo ago
  Might take a karma hit for this, but whatever. Its the truth. Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse, and then turning around and claiming its to "save them", so the abuse isnt reallllly abuse. Most of these camps cited are christian. And the people running them? Dogmatic christian fundamentalists. And these are the same types that run "pray the gay away" camps too. And my inflammatory, albeit true comment also goes right back to the heart of the article: "Reformatories were institutions where girls and young women who refused to conform to the Franco regime's Catholic values were detained - single mothers, girls with boyfriends, lesbians. Girls who'd been sexually assaulted were incarcerated, assuming the blame for their own abuse. Orphans and abandoned girls might also find themselves living behind convent walls." Extremist Roman Catholic "values", demonization and imprisonment of 'unruly women', anti-LGBTQ. Same damned thing, again and again. When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem?
  - HiPhish 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - slumberlust 11mo ago
      It's possible to be moral without religion. Your assertion stands stronger with tribalism than religion.
    - AlexandrB 11mo ago
      Most non-religious people aren't in cults.
    - justin66 11mo ago
      > Humans are always religious, no exception. You should get out more.
      - rayiner 11mo ago
        It’s true. The supposedly “secular people” I know are always prattling about “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would.
        wtfwhateven 11mo ago
        Are you being satirical?
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
        justin66 11mo ago
        > stuff that sounds very religious Sounds very religious? Oh well then, you've clearly put some serious thought into this. > They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would. What a truly weird thing to write.
        diego_moita 11mo ago
        > “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Should we then assume that monkeys and elephants are very religious, too? > like a non-religious person would. Oh, I see you took a lot of care in trying to understand what a "non-religious person" is. Are all church people this smart, too? /s
  - LexiMax 11mo ago
    > When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem? Because it's not. I've been interrogating this sort of question for most of my life. I am a queer agnostic who grew up in a religious part of the South and saw shades of this kind of abuse firsthand, mostly around queerness. At first, I did blame religion, but with the benefit of hindsight, I realized something. In the context of queerness, almost nobody I ran into growing up hated queer people because they heard their preacher say so and thought it must be true. They hated them because they were massively insecure. They were terrified of being labeled gay. They were terrified of guys hitting on them. They were terrified of hitting on a woman who turned out to have been born as a man. Religion isn't the problem. Instead, religion gives these sorts of insecure people a trump card that requires very little interrogation. However, if these folks weren't Christian or weren't even religious, I have no doubt that the underlying insecurities would remain, and simply manifest in a different way. Once I realized this, it was actually a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. In particular, I was no longer confused as to why my friend groups that were majority Christian continued to be nice to me and treated me with respect, despite me being a atheist queer at the time. It opened the door to connecting with them on a deeper level of understanding, as well as leading to me dabbling with my own forms of non-Christian spirituality. So yeah, religion isn't the problem. It's merely a mechanism that allows shitty people to be shitty.
    - usefulcat 11mo ago
      Agreed. I've long thought that it's much more the case that a person's religion is a function of their values, not the other way around. Or, put another way, if a person's religion conflicts with their values (including prejudices), which one is more likely to give first?
      - LexiMax 11mo ago
        You don't have to wonder. I have been hearing about several recent church schisms over certain folks thinking the church had become too accepting. This is literally an example of individuals choosing their religion based on their own values. Folks on one side of the schism might criticize folks on the other side of the schism for not being true Christians, but it's ultimately a dispute over "Thou shalt not lie with another man," versus "Love thy neighbor."
  - dang 11mo ago
    > Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse > religion itself is the problem Religious flamewar isn't allowed here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html --- Edit: It also looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation), and we ban accounts that do it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
    - nekusar 11mo ago
      So we're supposed to simultaneously discuss the article (General Franco's extremist Catholic task forces), but not identify the religious tropes behind this? I read the article, and discussing the article. And as hackers, im curious as how to fix the problems.
      - dang 11mo ago
        You can discuss things like that without denouncing entire groups of people and without inflammatory rhetoric. It's not hard to understand where the line is if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and genuinely want to use HN as intended.
        LexiMax 11mo ago
        [flagged]
      - DontForgetMe 11mo ago
        I mean, of all the many, many talking points from the article 'This particular religious / cultural group is a global problem and must be eradicated, and (all of? Seems like it meant all of) its many billions of members are enthusiastic supporters or perpetrators of child abuse' is not one that leapt out to most people. And even if it did, they didn't say it here. This is not the place for religious ideology. I passionately hate my neighbours who listen to music really loudly in their garden all the time, but I don't call for their eradication on public fora unless there's a really, really specific relevance (like here, for example) and I also don't campaign against them on GitHub, my local supermarket, local government meetings, or other places where people are trying to do other things. There are places for me to rant about my neighbours. There are entire discussions about noisy neighbours, my vicinity, local customs and manners etc. If I wanted to rant about them, those would be the place to do it. But I don't, because I wouldn't actually gain anything from it. I'm not going to single handedly change the law on nuisance, and all a hate campaign could achieve would be, well, more hate. I want solutions, or quiet, and I won't achieve either of those by telling random strangers how terrible my neighbours are. I'm sure you can think of the easiest solution to the hypothetical neighbour problem. It's not ideological and doesn't involve changing the hearts and minds of hundreds of people, none of whom are currently concerned about my neighbours. It might look like I'm trivialising your point, but I promise, I'm not. Noisy neighbours, or an itchy foot, or even a literal broken fingernail, are a more immediate problem than 'we must rid the world of Christians', unless they are currently holding you hostage. And the reason I'm bothering to write such a long-ass reply at all is because there is currently far too much intolerance and ethno-religious hatred being propogated and spread around the world. We know where this leads. It always leads the same way, there is no possibility of a happy ending. We have tried 'that religion is the problem, let's persecute them' repeatedly and we end up in the sort of fascist dystopia we were reminded of literal moments ago in the article. It's not ok to do it to Jews or Muslims, which means it's not ok to do it to Christians. And it's not ok to let people spread those messages in bad faith, which means I've got to call out those spreading the same message in presumed good faith. My neighbours are just annoying me, I can deal with that. Christians are just kinda weird but whatever, we've all got our foibles. Racists, dogmatics and puritans can believe whatever they want, I just won't listen to it. And I invite you to step away from the brewing culture war too. It's more fun discussing tech and stuff.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
fairramone 11mo ago
I had no idea about Elan School. The comic is absolutely amazing and I've just spent the last several hours reading the first half of it. Absolutely amazing and hard to just imagine the horrific physical and psychological abuse that occurred at this "school."
6510 11mo ago
What epic creation, I probably couldn't stomach reading or viewing this material in any other format. This is the original programming. You might visualize it complete with a bug tracker, version control, patches, feature updates and programming languages. We can only see it when absurd enough but it gets much more absurd than this and the software may run for thousands of years. I remember reading and seeing videos about training child soldiers. The weak or injured ones were killed as hunting targets and the more they killed the higher their rank. In the final ceremony that completes the training they had to shoot their parents. It was a great honor and they truly enjoyed it. We have to remember death is nowhere near the worse punishment. It might be the nicest thing on the list. Perhaps it is even worse if people don't notice they are in a similar program because it has been refined to such extend. Imagine if you left the house without clothing. Like a default human, like any other species, or if you like, how god put you on this earth. Or say, who decided you must use language? Not just that, you must say the correct things at the correct time. If you get the dress code wrong, fail to speak or construct the wrong sentences well conditioned people from all over the world will come to beat you back in line. We force the little ones to sit on designed to be uncomfortable chairs the whole day, the entire week. They must sit, not move, shut up and listen. Someone once "rescued" a small child living on a garbage heap. Gave him foster parents and put him in school. The kid escaped, he went back to playing in the garbage. When asked why he said he wanted to play with his friends. With a look on his face as if he was talking to a crazy person. It was obvious he didn't want to sit, shut up and not move.... forever? Seems to me we have many bug reports to fill and that patches are welcome. Our cult is far from perfect.
hydrogen7800 11mo ago
This is horrifying. "There oughtta be a law" is my first reaction... What a useless thought. This is one of those examples of "the details matter". "Tough love", or "tough on crime", or other such empty utterances are useful only to give catharsis to a subset of people, and always the subset who are not subject to this torture. Society needs ritual sacrifice, I guess... How depressing. If the details are made obvious, I suspect meant would think twice about such treatment.
jbgt 11mo ago
Amazing read! Thanks for this
Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
I can't not respond to this. That was horrifying. I am happy -at least- that that school is closed.
- Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
  Can't edit my previous post. But it seems that facilities like this still exist in the US? That can't be good.
Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
Oh my goodness this was hard reading. The hardest bit is that this might still be going on in other facilities.

by plqbfbv 11mo ago

zoklet-enjoyer 11mo ago

Great comic and there's a documentary about that place. Very messed up that's it's a whole child abuse industry.

nekusar 11mo ago
Might take a karma hit for this, but whatever. Its the truth. Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse, and then turning around and claiming its to "save them", so the abuse isnt reallllly abuse. Most of these camps cited are christian. And the people running them? Dogmatic christian fundamentalists. And these are the same types that run "pray the gay away" camps too. And my inflammatory, albeit true comment also goes right back to the heart of the article: "Reformatories were institutions where girls and young women who refused to conform to the Franco regime's Catholic values were detained - single mothers, girls with boyfriends, lesbians. Girls who'd been sexually assaulted were incarcerated, assuming the blame for their own abuse. Orphans and abandoned girls might also find themselves living behind convent walls." Extremist Roman Catholic "values", demonization and imprisonment of 'unruly women', anti-LGBTQ. Same damned thing, again and again. When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem?
- HiPhish 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - slumberlust 11mo ago
    It's possible to be moral without religion. Your assertion stands stronger with tribalism than religion.
  - AlexandrB 11mo ago
    Most non-religious people aren't in cults.
  - justin66 11mo ago
    > Humans are always religious, no exception. You should get out more.
    - rayiner 11mo ago
      It’s true. The supposedly “secular people” I know are always prattling about “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would.
      - wtfwhateven 11mo ago
        Are you being satirical?
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - justin66 11mo ago
        > stuff that sounds very religious Sounds very religious? Oh well then, you've clearly put some serious thought into this. > They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would. What a truly weird thing to write.
      - diego_moita 11mo ago
        > “human dignity” and stuff that sounds very religious. Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Should we then assume that monkeys and elephants are very religious, too? > like a non-religious person would. Oh, I see you took a lot of care in trying to understand what a "non-religious person" is. Are all church people this smart, too? /s
- LexiMax 11mo ago
  > When are we going to actually look at these issues dispassionately and realize that religion itself is the problem? Because it's not. I've been interrogating this sort of question for most of my life. I am a queer agnostic who grew up in a religious part of the South and saw shades of this kind of abuse firsthand, mostly around queerness. At first, I did blame religion, but with the benefit of hindsight, I realized something. In the context of queerness, almost nobody I ran into growing up hated queer people because they heard their preacher say so and thought it must be true. They hated them because they were massively insecure. They were terrified of being labeled gay. They were terrified of guys hitting on them. They were terrified of hitting on a woman who turned out to have been born as a man. Religion isn't the problem. Instead, religion gives these sorts of insecure people a trump card that requires very little interrogation. However, if these folks weren't Christian or weren't even religious, I have no doubt that the underlying insecurities would remain, and simply manifest in a different way. Once I realized this, it was actually a massive weight lifted off my shoulders. In particular, I was no longer confused as to why my friend groups that were majority Christian continued to be nice to me and treated me with respect, despite me being a atheist queer at the time. It opened the door to connecting with them on a deeper level of understanding, as well as leading to me dabbling with my own forms of non-Christian spirituality. So yeah, religion isn't the problem. It's merely a mechanism that allows shitty people to be shitty.
  - usefulcat 11mo ago
    Agreed. I've long thought that it's much more the case that a person's religion is a function of their values, not the other way around. Or, put another way, if a person's religion conflicts with their values (including prejudices), which one is more likely to give first?
    - LexiMax 11mo ago
      You don't have to wonder. I have been hearing about several recent church schisms over certain folks thinking the church had become too accepting. This is literally an example of individuals choosing their religion based on their own values. Folks on one side of the schism might criticize folks on the other side of the schism for not being true Christians, but it's ultimately a dispute over "Thou shalt not lie with another man," versus "Love thy neighbor."
- dang 11mo ago
  > Christians are more concerned about *causing* extreme child abuse > religion itself is the problem Religious flamewar isn't allowed here, so please don't post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html --- Edit: It also looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological/political/religious battle. That's not allowed here (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for more explanation), and we ban accounts that do it. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd appreciate it.
  - nekusar 11mo ago
    So we're supposed to simultaneously discuss the article (General Franco's extremist Catholic task forces), but not identify the religious tropes behind this? I read the article, and discussing the article. And as hackers, im curious as how to fix the problems.
    - dang 11mo ago
      You can discuss things like that without denouncing entire groups of people and without inflammatory rhetoric. It's not hard to understand where the line is if you've reviewed https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and genuinely want to use HN as intended.
      - LexiMax 11mo ago
        [flagged]
    - DontForgetMe 11mo ago
      I mean, of all the many, many talking points from the article 'This particular religious / cultural group is a global problem and must be eradicated, and (all of? Seems like it meant all of) its many billions of members are enthusiastic supporters or perpetrators of child abuse' is not one that leapt out to most people. And even if it did, they didn't say it here. This is not the place for religious ideology. I passionately hate my neighbours who listen to music really loudly in their garden all the time, but I don't call for their eradication on public fora unless there's a really, really specific relevance (like here, for example) and I also don't campaign against them on GitHub, my local supermarket, local government meetings, or other places where people are trying to do other things. There are places for me to rant about my neighbours. There are entire discussions about noisy neighbours, my vicinity, local customs and manners etc. If I wanted to rant about them, those would be the place to do it. But I don't, because I wouldn't actually gain anything from it. I'm not going to single handedly change the law on nuisance, and all a hate campaign could achieve would be, well, more hate. I want solutions, or quiet, and I won't achieve either of those by telling random strangers how terrible my neighbours are. I'm sure you can think of the easiest solution to the hypothetical neighbour problem. It's not ideological and doesn't involve changing the hearts and minds of hundreds of people, none of whom are currently concerned about my neighbours. It might look like I'm trivialising your point, but I promise, I'm not. Noisy neighbours, or an itchy foot, or even a literal broken fingernail, are a more immediate problem than 'we must rid the world of Christians', unless they are currently holding you hostage. And the reason I'm bothering to write such a long-ass reply at all is because there is currently far too much intolerance and ethno-religious hatred being propogated and spread around the world. We know where this leads. It always leads the same way, there is no possibility of a happy ending. We have tried 'that religion is the problem, let's persecute them' repeatedly and we end up in the sort of fascist dystopia we were reminded of literal moments ago in the article. It's not ok to do it to Jews or Muslims, which means it's not ok to do it to Christians. And it's not ok to let people spread those messages in bad faith, which means I've got to call out those spreading the same message in presumed good faith. My neighbours are just annoying me, I can deal with that. Christians are just kinda weird but whatever, we've all got our foibles. Racists, dogmatics and puritans can believe whatever they want, I just won't listen to it. And I invite you to step away from the brewing culture war too. It's more fun discussing tech and stuff.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]

fairramone 11mo ago

I had no idea about Elan School. The comic is absolutely amazing and I've just spent the last several hours reading the first half of it. Absolutely amazing and hard to just imagine the horrific physical and psychological abuse that occurred at this "school."

6510 11mo ago

What epic creation, I probably couldn't stomach reading or viewing this material in any other format. This is the original programming. You might visualize it complete with a bug tracker, version control, patches, feature updates and programming languages. We can only see it when absurd enough but it gets much more absurd than this and the software may run for thousands of years. I remember reading and seeing videos about training child soldiers. The weak or injured ones were killed as hunting targets and the more they killed the higher their rank. In the final ceremony that completes the training they had to shoot their parents. It was a great honor and they truly enjoyed it. We have to remember death is nowhere near the worse punishment. It might be the nicest thing on the list. Perhaps it is even worse if people don't notice they are in a similar program because it has been refined to such extend. Imagine if you left the house without clothing. Like a default human, like any other species, or if you like, how god put you on this earth. Or say, who decided you must use language? Not just that, you must say the correct things at the correct time. If you get the dress code wrong, fail to speak or construct the wrong sentences well conditioned people from all over the world will come to beat you back in line. We force the little ones to sit on designed to be uncomfortable chairs the whole day, the entire week. They must sit, not move, shut up and listen. Someone once "rescued" a small child living on a garbage heap. Gave him foster parents and put him in school. The kid escaped, he went back to playing in the garbage. When asked why he said he wanted to play with his friends. With a look on his face as if he was talking to a crazy person. It was obvious he didn't want to sit, shut up and not move.... forever? Seems to me we have many bug reports to fill and that patches are welcome. Our cult is far from perfect.

hydrogen7800 11mo ago

This is horrifying. "There oughtta be a law" is my first reaction... What a useless thought. This is one of those examples of "the details matter". "Tough love", or "tough on crime", or other such empty utterances are useful only to give catharsis to a subset of people, and always the subset who are not subject to this torture. Society needs ritual sacrifice, I guess... How depressing. If the details are made obvious, I suspect meant would think twice about such treatment.

jbgt 11mo ago

Amazing read! Thanks for this

Kim_Bruning 11mo ago

I can't not respond to this. That was horrifying. I am happy -at least- that that school is closed.

Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
Can't edit my previous post. But it seems that facilities like this still exist in the US? That can't be good.

Kim_Bruning 11mo ago

Oh my goodness this was hard reading. The hardest bit is that this might still be going on in other facilities.