worldview – One Rabbit Riot

This is a new term for me, but it is genius. Craftivism is activism through crafting. It is using your art and everyday things to show what you believe and to speak out against injustice. And to use an internet term, this has completely “changed my brain chemistry” to think of using my knitting to say what I believe, just like art.

What made this a tangible thing for me to get started in community was the Welcome Blanket collection at my local yarn shop. Together, sections of knit and crochet squares would be collected and seamed into blankets, like receiving blankets, to welcome immigrants to the United States. With all the ICE-y conditions out there, it’s swimming against the current in a way that aligns with my beliefs and what we are called to do as Christians – love your neighbor and take care of immigrants. Not to worship power, money, and excuse racism like some so-called “Christians” in my country are doing. Seeing my crochet square stitched together with other like minded indivduals’ fiber art was powerful. It reminded me of how we are stronger together and how doing small things, as a community, makes a difference. I also enjoyed reflecting on my own immigrant heritage and sharing my story of how my family came to the US and why immigration is necessary.

As an American who is not Indigenous, every part of my family tree came from somewhere else. Some of my family came from Germany, I believe, in the early 1900s, since my great-grandmother, who was born in 1912 in the US, spoke German as her first language at home. Some of my family from Ireland left County Cork’s farmland during the potato famine to escape certain death from the genocide of starvation by Great Britain. Some of my family from County Armagh immigrated in the late 1800s to the US, went back to Ireland in the early 1900s, and came back again to the US during the Troubles. The rest of my family came from Canada in the 1960s. If we are not members of Indigenous nations, then we are all here because of immigration. To act like immigration is dangerous, un-American, and unwelcome is not American to me. We all came from somewhere else. Let’s love our neighbors and support them in this new chapter of their lives, which came about because of a very difficult decision.

The second opportunity that brought Craftivism back on my radar was the Melt the Ice hat. This hat was used from protest by Norwegians in the 1940s during the Nazi occupation of Norway. Minnesotans, many of whom are descended from Norwegian immigrants, but now are a rich community of immigrants from all over the world, brought the hat pattern back to raise money for the Immigrant Rapid Response fund, which provides assistance for immediate needs – food, rent, etc. This fundraiser raised $650,000 with a $5 pattern during the Melt the Ice MAL in February 2026. If you are not aware of what has been going on in Minneapolis, there has been violence, there has been death, there has been kidnapping, and unlawful occupation of a city by federal forces in the name of corruption and power. Making the hat felt like there was a healthy place to channel my grief and anger over what is happening while bringing community together – Craftivism is powerful.

Have you ever heard of Craftivism? Would you participate in it?

What is historical bias? As I dove deeper into my historical training, it became the elephant in the room of every class discussion and the turf monster of every thesis. It is where worldview intersects with historical interpretation and constructs an invisible wall between historical accuracy and interpretation in our present.

Even with firsthand accounts or eyewitness testimony of events, personal bias, and interpretation passively or actively weave themselves into the evidence. It is inescapable.

Something that I’ve gleaned, with a better understanding of, has been from listening to Biblical scholars meditate through the Greek and Hebrew translations of the Bible aka primary sources. It is truly an extraordinary work to ponder accounts from the past and sift through the biases we have as moderns to catch a fleeting moment of connection with the past filled with as deep of empathy for their pov as we can.

It is fleeting because the easier and more common way we interact with history is through quick and heavily biased source material.

A thesis-first and evidence-second approach, instead of first studying the evidence and letting it reveal the thesis is how we as humans prefer to communicate. But what we will gain if we let the text talk to us. Letting the text speak is similar to the Socratic method except instead of a conversation with people, you let the sources speak.

This does not translate well to our current pace of consuming information. It is slow and requires patience to study and understand the matter at hand from many angles. Therefore the “pop press” way of disseminating information, like the History Channel so often uses, rises from the ashes once again to the far reaches of TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

This is not to say that only bad history or bad thesis drafting is a product of social media. I’ve learned wonderful details about a vast array of histories, fashion, language, and culture through these social platforms that I couldn’t have had access to at college, because the experts didn’t exist. Dress History wasn’t even a widely accepted specialty during my time in college. Social Media has provided a platform for niche history lovers to share their passion with a new audience. Social Media also provides a salon of discussion to debunk myths or provide deeper context to a subject that was given the “pop press” treatment.

So why am I writing about this today? I was watching a video from a creator who used to be a fantastic source of fashion and film content, a 2000s historian of girlhood with insightful and researched evidence that let the text speak. The original work was so high caliber that this current slump into heavily biased “historical” fashion videos and content that is just politics loosely veiled as film or fashion-focused, has been a great disappointment to me. The creator is so talented, and to see them be swayed by forces that are in our culture is sad.

Not only a disappointment, but it has shown me how important it is to stay committed to awareness of historical biases and the humble acknowledgment that we can’t talk in absolutes when it comes to interpretation. We have to be open to exploring the sources from many points of view and not let ourselves be mouthpieces of modernity, with the clever out of “victors write history” so what is the point of going deeper.

Victors certainly change history and can try to control its narrative, but history is the story of humanity and is bigger than one group’s manipulation.

For example, in my wheelhouse, I am the descendant of Irish immigrants who were potato farmers in Cork. The Potato Famine was discussed historically as just a blight. Bad luck. Not a big deal. Oh well. The crisis was met with such apathy that Irish clergyman Jonathan Swift, wrote “A Modest Proposal” to draw attention to the British attitude towards the Irish was not unlike the absurdity of his proposal.

But now, we know that this event can be classified as a genocide because the British colonized Ireland for centuries. There was enough food in Ireland until the British stole it and imported it out of their colony of Ireland. The “victors” affect history but their version is not the guaranteed final version forever. They inflict death and destruction but this will not stay in the shadows forever, the light is greater than the dark.

My point is that this summation, “The victors write history” is paltry.

So what started this ramble of historical bias?

A video essay about the history of the Goth aesthetic which had random political bias inserted as fact and a lack of nuance to the conclusions based on a clearly preconceived thesis where evidence was cherry-picked to fill out a video that wasn’t really about Goth style. It was about our Nov 5, 2024 election and unnecessarily put a lot of negativity out into the world instead of talking about the Goth aesthetic.

I believe it’s time that we as a society stop stirring up dissension and casual hate in the name of the political savior. These candidates never save anything. They try their best but they are just humans. Is it worth hating an entire group of people because they hold different views? Never.

No human is perfect, so how can human government create a perfect society? It’s a straw man.

I hope in time, the strong political biases I see swaying storytelling in my culture will sour. Instead, I hope an appetite for deep discussion to understand each side of the coin will spring forth. For truth, for the sake of truth, warts and all. For deeper connection. To understand what people believe and why they believe, with mutual respect, and respect for the biases we hold so that we don’t let our biases keep us from true understanding and continue to fertilize this culture of casual hate I am seeing in 2024.

I hope this post is not too convoluted. I wanted to discuss this without saying what creator I am referring to because it is not them I want to critique but the fallacy they have fallen under and the way they are approaching history, politics, and interpretation of these things without the awareness of their personal bias. It’s creating foolish and unuseful content that reads more as pop press propaganda than well-researched discussion, which is what I think they excel at doing. I believe they are amazing and I want to see their talent shine once again!

Bias is such a difficult thing to wrestle with and I acknowledge that no matter how I tried to check mine at the door, it still persists. I try to hold it loosely and pursue the truth, but I am an imperfect human.

Thank you, reader, for being here and I hope this was an interesting ramble if nothing else. If I have offended you, I humbly ask for your grace and willingness to love others – enemy or friend, because that is how we will make this world a better place.