One Piece and the Pirate Identity
Yt Rallying vs Self Criminalization of Young Racialized People

Dear Mothers,

l am writing you today out of admiration for the work that you are doing, and concern. l am not French and l am not a parent, but l learned about your organization while l have been in France. l recently visited Saint Etienne to work on a project with my associate, who mentioned Fatima Ouassak to me and pointed me to an event that she was part of.

l noticed the running theme of academically trained, leftist, civil society commentators in Europe identifying with the word "pirate".

Fatima Ouassak identifies with One Piece and promotes "pirate ecology". Another presentation in Saint Etienne next week promotes a 6 year old project which seeks to popularize the coinage of "pirate care".

Pirate, or privateer, or "filibustier" were literally criminals who usually worked directly for colonial powers some, if not all, of the time.

OP was indeed very motivational and inspiring in the beginning. It has been 20+ years since that time. The artist started in his 20s, now he's 50+. People change as they get older. l myself was motivated by the beginning of One Piece, and increasingly engrossed by the writing from the entry into the Grand Line up until the end of Impel Down. After that, l continued to engage with the entire text --except for the second and third(?) acts of Wano-- because l know how big the audience is.

l wonder if Fatima Ouassak has looked at the actual text of One Piece in the past 20 years.

l half slept through the most of the text of OP to be honest, which Fatima Ouassak probably did not even have time to do, being a responsible adult and community organizer.

In my homeland, the US, there are indeed insurgents. People with right wing politics who attacked the capital are insurgents, taking direct action to destroy the safeguards of the US federal system. They never call themselves criminals, even as they commit treason, they insist they are upholding their rights. Ultimately, there are insurgents in the white house who pardoned them. These attacking insurgents actually initially placed more insurgents in the white house, by voting, to create that pardon. They didn't formulate that plan either, but they followed it.

Simultaneously, folks like Stop Cop City or Pro Palestine movements are subjected to counterinsurgency; through covert tactics, cultural warfare, and overt social and physical repression, inter alia. We, people in the US, don't say we are pirates either, because our movements to defend our human rights have experienced ample counterinsurgency. Being black is associated with criminalization, mothers implore their sons to not present as gang members or thugs. You will notice that this contemporary pirate identity is promoted by the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and Netflix. It is propaganda.

l now enumerate 3 points about One Piece that are easily identifiable as counteinsurgent in nature:

1. Female (Body) Image

   l put this at the top because Fatima Ouassak organizes mutual aid by mothers. The bodies of One Piece female characters have been much discussed. To state the obvious, they have unrealistically large breasts and their outfits are often fetish oriented. The characterization of female characters invariably sexualize them, and display them as needing men's assistance when the stakes are high. For many story arcs, whenever Luffy visits a new country, he advises and saves a princess. The supposedly bad ass and most beautiful woman Hancock, who rules the country of only women warriors, loses control because of her crush on Luffy. In the "Incident Involving Captain Koby" Chapter 1059 of the manga and anime episodes 1087-1089, she and Amazon Lily (the land she rules) are not only depicted as needing mens' help, she physically prostrated in Rayleigh's lap after being saved by this patriarchal figure.

   In the latest arc on future island, the secondary protagonist Bonny is a 12 year old girl posing as a 19 year old girl. There are many literary devices supporting her strength as a young child saddled with responsibilities, but she regularly breaks out in tears crying for her Daddy. The body image problems persist. She is 12 years old, looking like she is 19, with the OP normative female body type of giant breasts, wearing bikini bottoms, exposing her butt and breasts. They choose to place her in care of Sanji, the actual consent violator (he fantasized about the using invisibility to enter the women's bath for 20 years, then actually did it.) This is even depicted as natural because Sanji "loves women". There are actually 12 year olds who look like 19 year olds; they are usually exposed to inappropriate sexual advances and suffer mental health consequences. l will remind the reader that feminine subjects in Japanese porn make young girl-like vocalizations, as opposed to the female vocalizations in porn from elsewhere. The sexualization of Bonny, a 12 year old, is not incidental.

2. WANO
   This arc's anime ran for 3 years, it is the longest arc, repleated with propaganda.
   1. WANO stands for World Association of Nuclear Operators. Wano Kuni ostensibly stands for "和の国". In the Japanese language, "Wa" (和) indicates culturally Japanese entities: 和風 (wafu) means Japanese style, 和服(wafuku) means Japanese clothes like kimonos and yukata. l point out that there's no possessive の (no) after "Wa" in these Japanese language terms. The nation state in the text of OP could have been called whatever the artist/ publisher wanted, like 和国(Wa Kuni). They went with "WANO", World Association of Nuclear Operators.
   
   
   2. The story flips the script on WW2.

      In OP, Wano (Japan) is occupied by a foreign ruler, Kaido, who looks Mongolian or otherwise east Asian, He is a east Asian style dragon, which further indicates his east Asian ness. Additionally, he is an animal which has eaten a devil fruit, which gave him his human form. Animals/ subhuman was how imperial Japan propagandized  other Asian people to Japan. In the fictional story arc, it is the non-Japanese, east Asian occupier who installs a factory manufacturing chemical weapons and experimenting on the local Japanese-ish population. This is exactly what Japan did around east Asia in WW2, including on Japanese subjects. The infamous Unit 731 experimented on live human subjects including captured pregnant women and babies, and used the chemical weapons coming out if that research in open warfare.

3. Luffy has a grassroots image but is privileged/ elite by blood

   Luffy was first presented as a street kid from the dump. However, as the story progresses, we find out his 2 patriarchs (grandfather and father) are military and the "leader of the revolutionary army" respectively.

   There is absolutely no mention of his mother and maternal line.

   In the beginning, the story was written to appeal to youth with no access to power and wealth, as motivation to achieve and dream and rebel. It was not long before we find that Luffy's grandpa is a "vice admiral" in the Navy, and his father is "the leader of the RevolutionaryArmy". Luffy says he is destined to be the king of pirates probably because he already has patriarchs in the highest places of both ends of the political spectrum. He's not the type of royalty like the Celestial Dragons/ Tenryubito, but he is political royalty like a Kennedy. He is most certainly elite prior to entering into piracy, no different than any nepobaby who lives independently of their parents. As the story progresses, we find out that his brother Ace had a different father, the pirate king Gol D Roger, and then Ace dies, leaving Luffy as the heir of the pirate king title by inheritance. We later find that there was further another brother with different parents, Sabo, who was born a noble, but joined the revolutionary army (led by Luffy's daddy) and is a ranking "officer". Even in the context of the Revolutionary Army, a noble by blood is still depicted as excellent among other participants.

There are many more counterinsurgent points than the above 3, and there are more details that can be discussed.

l looked at the website of the group that promotes the term "pirate care". l see that they are very connected academically. One of the spearheading figures is associated with performance art.

Performative activism has drawn a lot of attention in the past several years, and finally we are able to discuss its problematic nature. While "justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done," there has to be alignment between intent and effect. The performance aspect isn't necessarily the problem, it becomes a problem in the context of serving the goal of virtue signaling instead of actually affecting the issue the act is supposedly addressing.

The group defines "pirate care" as providing care (and/ or mutual aid, but they make no mention of this concept) when institutions have failed, and they point out that it is being criminalized. l am American; like many, institutions have never provided for me; l have always been cared for by community if one exists. The Black Panthers served my home area before l was born, their main activities were providing community services like child care, and they got classified as terrorists because there were militant elements in the movement. Black Panthers were exercising their right to bear arms, a constitutional right. They carried out actions, but never self identified as criminals. In contrast, l find academics in Europe urging the population to wear colonialist criminality --"pirate"-- as a badge. Is it reclaiming a label, or maybe appropriating an identity for good? l see a lexical trap that people are walking into: for people to self criminalize, and give up the very legitimacy that the group is ostensibly defending.

For targeted groups, like north African youth in Europe, owning the pirate identity has distinctly different consequences than non-targetted groups, like academics & activists who have European ancestry. The latter group has the luxury of metaphor, while the public audience will judge targetted persons literally as criminals.
Such identification with stereotypical criminality is an expression of internalized oppression.

l believe that this organization and Fatima Ouassak have genuine intentions and are intelligent. l don't necessarily think you all should stop associating with One Piece if you find the above enumerated points about the OP problematic. Middle aged people associating with youth oriented media will make the media look uncool to adolescents, while simultaneously promote it to small children. The material produced for children & young adolescents by a young artist, the beginning of One Piece, was very motivating; the propaganda produced for adolescents and adults by an established middle aged artist is counterinsurgency, and it should look uncool.