I’ve been reading Scott Atran’s work for years; I initially thought he was too soft on religion, but that he was still carrying out compelling, insightful research on what makes people turn to terrorism. His key message was that you can’t simply blame religion. There’s something about young men in particular that makes them susceptible to radicalization, and it’s a cop-out to blame it on Islam, or mental illness, or economic hardship. I first heard him talking about soccer clubs — how young men isolated from other communities would room together, and begin to drift, thanks to Islamic propaganda, into increasingly radical attempts to find purpose in their lives.
Atran’s war zone research over the last few years, and interviews during the last decade with members of various groups engaged in militant jihad (or holy war in the name of Islamic law), give him a gritty perspective on this issue. He rejects popular assumptions that people frequently join up, fight and die for terrorist groups due to mental problems, poverty, brainwashing or savvy recruitment efforts by jihadist organizations.
Instead, he argues, young people adrift in a globalized world find their own way to ISIS, looking to don a social identity that gives their lives significance. Groups of dissatisfied young adult friends around the world — often with little knowledge of Islam but yearning for lives of profound meaning and glory — typically choose to become volunteers in the Islamic State army in Syria and Iraq, Atran contends. Many of these individuals connect via the internet and social media to form a global community of alienated youth seeking heroic sacrifice, he proposes.
This does not fit the media narrative. I’m sure you’ve noticed: the message they try to send is always that the terrorist, the mass murderer, is an alien outsider, someone wildly different from us — a lone wolf with a broken brain. His origin is incomprehensible, and we don’t try to understand it, but only to separate him from us, the normal people, and reassure ourselves that our social group is nothing like that.
Sarah Lyons-Padilla shares a similar view.
Researchers have long studied the motivations of terrorists, with psychologist Arie Kruglanski proposing a particularly compelling theory: people become terrorists to restore a sense of significance in their lives, a feeling that they matter. Extremist organizations like Isis are experts at giving their recruits that sense of purpose, through status, recognition, and the promise of eternal rewards in the afterlife.
My own survey work supports Kruglanski’s theory. I find that American Muslims who feel a lack of significance in their lives are more likely to support fundamentalist groups and extreme ideologies.
She also sees what sets people on the path to supporting terrorism: the isolation of smaller communities from the larger, the fastening of blame on innocent groups. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
What we really need to know now is, what sets people on this path? How do people lose their sense of purpose?
My research reveals one answer: the more my survey respondents felt they or other Muslims had been discriminated against, the more they reported feeling a lack of meaning in their lives. Respondents who felt culturally homeless – not really American, but also not really a part of their own cultural community – were particularly jarred by messages that they don’t belong. Yet Muslim Americans who felt well integrated in both their American and Muslim communities were more resilient in the face of discrimination.
My results are not surprising to many social scientists, who know that we humans derive a great deal of self-worth from the groups we belong to. Our groups tell us who we are and make us feel good about ourselves. But feeling like we don’t belong to any group can really rattle our sense of self.
Take a look at America. We fear Islamic terrorism, so the first thing we do is condemn all Muslims, displacing them from our selves, isolating them, divorcing from the True American community, and reinforcing the very sociological conditions that foster radicalization.
This isn’t just about Islam, though. This seems to be a property of young men in all sorts of conditions. Abi Wilkinson writes about the online radicalisation of young, white men. She’s been reading the Internet.
No, not the bit you’re thinking of. Somewhere far worse. That loose network of blogs, forums, subreddits and alternative media publications colloquially known as the “manosphere”. An online subculture centred around hatred, anger and resentment of feminism specifically, and women more broadly. It’s grimly fascinating and now troubling relevant.
In modern parlance, this is part of the phenomenon known as the “alt-right”. More sympathetic commentators portray it as “a backlash to PC culture” and critics call it out as neofascism. Over the past year, it has been strange to see the disturbing internet subculture I’ve followed for so long enter the mainstream. The executive chairman of one of its most popular media outlets, Breitbart, has just been appointed Donald Trump’s chief of strategy, and their UK bureau chief was among the first Brits to have a meeting with the president-elect. Their figurehead – Milo Yiannopoulos – toured the country stumping for him during the campaign on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. These people are now part of the political landscape.
It turns out that Algerian soccer clubs, the Red Pill subreddit, and Breitbart have a lot in common: they’re all gathering places for frustrated men, who then proceed to reinforce each other’s views, starting with vaguely unpleasant dissatisfaction with, for instance, women, to increasingly vicious and dangerous forms of propaganda. I think you might recognize this tendency many men have to top each other’s stories, to exaggerate their dominance. It leads to increasingly awful stories…and the men in these groups, rather than condemning or rejecting their claims, instead strive to repeat even more outrageous claims.
Reading through the posting history of individual aliases, it’s possible to chart their progress from vague dissatisfaction, and desire for social status and sexual success, to full-blown adherence to a cohesive ideology of white supremacy and misogyny. Neofascists treat these websites as recruitment grounds. They find angry, frustrated young men and groom them in their own image. Yet there’s no Prevent equivalent to try to stamp this out.
Much has been written about financial hardship turning afflicted white communities into breeding grounds for white supremacist politics, but what about when dissatisfaction has little to do with economic circumstance? It’s hard to know what can be done to combat this phenomenon, but surely we have to start by taking the link between online hatred and resentment of women and the rise of neofascism seriously.
These communities create a kind of tension within themselves that seeks an outlet. In radical Islam, it might be to strap on a dynamite vest and kill yourself for glory. In the alt-right, it might be to raise a middle finger to the establishment and vote for Donald Trump. It’s arguable which is more disastrous for world stability.
We need to pay attention to how these radical movements develop. Avoid the cheap out of dismissing it as a consequence of the wicked other — it is us. White people are people, just like Muslims, and just as susceptible to being led down a dark path.
Speaking of introspection and examining ourselves, here’s someone else who was radicalized by a social movement — in this case, the dark side of atheism. Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Thunderf00t, Christopher Hitchens…these guys are gateways to the normalization of hatred.
I was curious as to the motives of leave voters. Surely they were not all racist, bigoted or hateful? I watched some debates on YouTube. Obvious points of concern about terrorism were brought up. A leaver cited Sam Harris as a source. I looked him up: this “intellectual, free-thinker” was very critical of Islam. Naturally my liberal kneejerk reaction was to be shocked, but I listened to his concerns and some of his debates.
This, I think, is where YouTube’s “suggested videos” can lead you down a rabbit hole. Moving on from Harris, I unlocked the Pandora’s box of “It’s not racist to criticise Islam!” content. Eventually I was introduced, by YouTube algorithms, to Milo Yiannopoulos and various “anti-SJW” videos (SJW, or social justice warrior, is a pejorative directed at progressives). They were shocking at first, but always presented as innocuous criticism from people claiming to be liberals themselves, or centrists, sometimes “just a regular conservative” – but never, ever identifying as the dreaded “alt-right”.
For three months I watched this stuff grow steadily more fearful of Islam. “Not Muslims,” they would usually say, “individual Muslims are fine.” But Islam was presented as a “threat to western civilisation”. Fear-mongering content was presented in a compelling way by charismatic people who would distance themselves from the very movement of which they were a part.
Oh, man, that sounds so familiar. I felt the pull of this attitude myself, but at least was able to look ahead and see where it would lead me in the long run, to a belief in Western male exceptionalism that I find grossly repellent.
This morning, I got an email from someone who was in the same situation and got out. They warn of things to watch out for, that almost seduced them.
Here is a tactic to watch out for. They always justify given talking with these people as credible, by say “I disagree with what they say, but they’re nice people, not racist, bigots, sexist etc.”
Sam Harris thinks Black Lives Matter are awful and playing Identity politics. I wonder if Martin Luther king would have been dismissed as playing Identity politics. Anyways just thought I would add to the tactics these people use to lure impressionable white guys like me to the alt-right movement.
Take a look at the NY Times. Combative, Populist Steve Bannon in an article that tries to claim that he’s not a racist. Yet at the same time, it reports that…
One of his three former wives claimed in court papers that he had said he did not want their twin daughters to go to school with Jews who raise their children to be “whiny brats,” a claim Mr. Bannon denies. In a 2011 radio interview, he dismissed liberal women as “a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools.”
In a radio interview last year with Mr. Trump, Mr. Bannon complained, inaccurately, that “two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia.” He has sometimes portrayed a grave threat to civilization not just from violent jihadists but from “Islam.” He once suggested to a colleague that perhaps only property owners should be allowed to vote. In an email to a Breitbart colleague in 2014, he dismissed Republican congressional leaders with an epithet and added, “Let the grass roots turn on the hate.”
Not racist! Not misogynist! Just a “combative populist”.
The seeds were sown early on, and we dismissed them, and now they’re bearing fruit, while the media tries to pretend that there’s no problem at all.
Let’s not do that. Let’s look at that work on the origins of radical Islamic terrorism and appreciate that it’s not solely about those brown people over there, it’s about human beings like the ones right here.
The statement towards the end about only property owners being allowed to vote is one that I have heard floating around my Texas Conservative friends for years. Speaking as a renter I would always counter it by saying:”Since this country was founded on the principle of no taxation without representation, I am OK with your plan, provided i then not be asked to pay any sort of tax whatsoever.” To their credit, most, most were able to sort out why that was a stupid idea.
re @1:
ouch. sounds like poll tax is okay. (only property owners paying prop tax, get to vote)
“no taxation without representation” can be twisted to “no representation without taxation” on into “representation only with taxation”, “pay to play”, etc etc. talk about slippery slopes.
ouch slap ouch bang oops shits
A little tidbit that I saw on Doonebury’s Say,What?
Nice heroes he has, eh? It may also be telling that two of them are imaginary.
As someone who was first an atheist, then a skeptic, I learned about the alt-right years ago, through this very blog and others like it. I vividly remember elevator gate and the creation of the slime-pit. I was here when we all sort of collectively started to notice the white male rage for the first time. I remember the first time I heard “SJW” used as a pejorative.
I remember going to great pains to try and reason with these people, even taking some time to comment at the pit, hoping to get through to some of them at least, but I quickly realized how vile and nasty these people were.
So when a friend the other night asked me about the alt-right, because he knew little about it, I had plenty to say. I am not surprised at their new found power, because I see how seductive their message is to those that would be on the winning side of their sort of fascism, psychologically if not financially or economically.
Unfortunately, with this now 10 year old perspective of having watched this vileness grow from a spat between skeptics, then on to gamergate and other such incidents, I also know that there is no reasoning with these people, there will be no compromise, there can never be. This is some scary shit.
I’m not saying I think the atheist movement is where all this started, it was growing everywhere all around us, just saying that’s the lens through which I witnessed it. At some point, it all disgusted me enough that I had to walk away from the fight. I viewed them as disgusting but mostly harmless, sad little menchildren who could easily be dismissed and ignored as radical outliers who would never dare express their abhorrent views publicly or without the cover of internet anonymity, with a few notable exceptions of course.
Boy oh boy was I wrong. Not that it would have made a difference, but I now lament having given up that fight.
It’s not just “radical movements” either – it’s the core attraction of warfare, of military service, and “muscular foreign policy”. As Chris Hedges put it, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
[Excerpts from the book here.]
Much as I hate it, I always thought the American focus on sports was a healthy alternative for young men to find purpose and outlet for their violent tendencies, and as a sane replacement for the blood sports of the Roman Colosseum, for the audience.
Problem is, the “safety valve” idea simply doesn’t work. People don’t have a fixed level of “violent tendencies” that can be satisfied by directing them into “safe” outlets. Rather, its like a muscle – the more you work it, the stronger it gets.
I read something else that resonated with this idea this morning.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/11/28/men-are-turning-to-chemsex-due-to-loneliness-study-finds/
It’s about a very small study of French gay men involved with a particular sex and drugs subculture, but the social compulsions seem to apply to the wider gay male community as well. There’s the same sense that isolation, loneliness and a sense of being isolated from mainstream culture and emotional validation lead to risky behaviours. The behaviour here is not the kind of violent, aggressive, hateful behaviour that we see in PZ’s case studies, but it is self-harming.
I must say that I have felt this kind of isolation myself, to a small degree. The sense that the world is not made for you, and accepts everyone else while holding you at arms’ length as a kind of also-ran human being. It’s not easy when all your friends and peers have been happily married for a decade and the world of relationships and sex has brought you nothing but depression, terror and loneliness. Especially with all the pervasive cultural messages about what a good life consists in that we get. Recently I found myself visiting gay sauna clubs, much against my better judgment, in response to these feelings. That just left me more worried and terrified than ever (thanks 80s scare ads about HIV that I grew up with!). The search for a place where you can feel accepted and valued and catered to and desired is one I know well.
Of course he would. They used different words back then, but that’s pretty much what happened a lot. To listen to many white people today, all MLK ever said was that quote about the content of character and nothing else.
Speaking of which, I was reading a pop culture website today that mentioned how the writer was uncomfortable that a tv show ditched a romance between its white woman lead and a black man, and this season is now working towards her being with a white man. Sure enough there’s a comment that says “it’s all about the color of their skin, not the content of their character with you.”
People who want to ignore the need for diversity really love that line.
I believe it’s known as “the human condition”.
Add popular youtube personality “DarkMatter2525” to your list of awful atheists with about 500,000 subscribers.
He made animated shorts making fun of creationist claims and religious apologetics. Apparently he got bored with that and started making political statements. I have tolerance for a diversity of opinions, even if some of the things he was saying didn’t line up with my own thoughts, so I stayed subscribed. Then he created an anti-SJW video. Absolutely there are people who take it too far and are easily mocked. However, the comment section was filled with broad-sweeping condemnation of all feminists, etc.
At the time I was a patreon supporter of his and so was able to get his attention on the patreon-only comment board for the video. I said his video has fed into the worst part of humanity, and that it was very predictable that it would happen. His defense was that all the examples in the video were based on real incidents. That doesn’t excuse it though; I made a comparison: if he made a 10 minute long animation mocking rich, corrupt people (like Bernie Madoff) and all of them were Jewish, would he say, hey, it isn’t anti-Semitic because all of those are real people. He didn’t buy the argument. I unsub’d and stopped supporting him on patreon. I have no idea what his content looks like these days.
I’m surprised no-one has pointed out the additional context of Bannon’s remarks:
Because of course disenfranchising a whole group of people who are not your
best friends¹ family is just hunky-dory.___________________________________________________________
1: As in “some of my best friends are . . .”
This is why I disagree with the argument people on the Left should, to be accurate, refer not to the “alt-Right” but to “white supremacists” – the misogynistic aspect is lost.
This is very important in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. The rise of the Right means a full-out attack on numerous people, communities, values, and institutions. Joining with others to defend these can give people’s lives real meaning and historical significance, and different groups – including young men – have necessary roles to play. Organizations, I hope, will recognize the need for people’s involvement in this work, and will find ways for people to actively participate rather than relying on donations and leaving things to professionals. Participating in the grassroots resistance to fascism and authoritarianism can provide a genuine path out of alienation and isolation.*
That said, the question of why some people gravitate specifically towards violent and authoritarian movements rather than others can’t be set aside. Some people, as discussed in the post, can come to see through these movements and arguments, but for others they appeal to a deeply rooted authoritarianism that needs to be addressed. Trump’s authoritarianism was formed early on in his life, and there was little possibility of transformation. The sense of insignificance, powerlessness, self-loathing, and the need to feel superior that form the basis of authoritarianism spring from powerful internal sources (with, of course, social roots); changing the external conditions can help, but dealing with authoritarian psychology is a more complex matter.
* This grassroots organizing will differ fundamentally from the government-run Prevent strategy mentioned in the quote. This book provides a critical overview of such programs in the US and UK.
Dunc: ” People don’t have a fixed level of “violent tendencies” that can be satisfied by directing them into “safe” outlets.”
I wasn’t thinking in terms of violence as much as demonstrations of masculinity, as in mating dances, displays, etc. It’s a powerful motivation for young men, and many don’t have other options.
( sounds so much more sciencey than )
@SC:
The paragraph you cite ends with “the rise of neofascism” — would you agree that “neofascist” could be more accurate than “white supremacist”?
I’m sort of bothered because Richard Spencer boasted about using “alt-” to deliberately brand the movement as being “edgy”. I say, don’t give them the edgy.
A major and fundamental issue with all propaganda is that propagandists start believing each other. This has a consequence!
Definitely more accurate, but still wouldn’t address the specific problem, since most people aren’t aware of fascist thinking about gender or gender policies or the centrality of misogyny and anti-feminism to the newer version.
I know – it’s a problem. Maybe the best approach, for a while at least, would be to keep the term but use quotation marks and then include a descriptive phrase with each mention. Wikipedia offers:
So maybe something like “the self-proclaimed ‘alt-Right’, a collection of virulently racist, misogynistic, xenophobic neo-fascist movements clinging violently and pathetically to a so-called European Christian identity.”
Does seem a bit unwieldy, though. :)
Well, PZ and the authors and folks like Amanda Marcotte are definitely ignoring the elephant in the living room. White women. Blame it on angry young men and alt-right all you want, but WE KNEW HOW THEY WERE GOING TO VOTE. What we didn’t realize was that a majority of American white women were so damned racist that they would vote for a man who would repeal the Lily Ledbetter Act, try to overturn Roe v. Wade, is comfortable overturning the Violence Against Women Act, or at least weakening it to the point of uselessness, try to destroy the public education for their children, try to gut the retirement prospects for themselves and their husbands, is a rapist, a pussy-grabber, a man with the utmost contempt for their gender and sex….but that was all okay, because he hated blacks and Latinos and Muslims and poor people as much as they did. Soccer moms were the ones who gave this election to Trump, in battleground state after battleground state. White women turned on themselves, so deeply seated was their hatred of other non-white women. Stop blaming the pricks we knew would never vote Democrat in a million years, and whose next glimpse of sunlight outside their Mom’s basement will be their first. Place the electoral blame where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of white women, who betrayed everything they shuld have held dear, simply due to their virulent hatred for everyone who’s not a blonde soccer mom.
I would imagine much of today’s radicalization could be explained by access to these hateful subcultures. They’ve always been with us as long as there have been public doomsayers declaring the end of civilization at the hands of “the other” and media corroborating their narrative of a world in chaos, but never have I seen people so effectively funneled into them. Not only can the frustrated casually slide down a deep slope of hate through the official library of cat videos known as YouTube but it’s delivered in a similarly cuddly way that they may not even realize entering into the very same ideology as the Nazis.
This is made even more concerning by where many people get their news from these days, such bastions of integrity as Facebook that collect “news” generated by neo-Nazi propagandists champing at the bit to watch all of the West dive headfirst down the rabbit hole. Authoritarian government censorship and spin is fast becoming an antiquated form of social control.
PZ, your inclusion of Sam Harris in the list of the ‘Dark Side of Atheism’ is perhaps understandable, given the source of the link you provide, your own personal antipathy to the man, and his insufficient repudiation of the logical conclusions of some of his thought processes. In Sam’s defence, I will note that he has been *very* vocal about his distaste for Donald Trump, and has said a happy goodbye to any of his erstwhile fans who might have been Trump supporters, and he’s made very disdainful noises about the alt-right and authoritarianism in general.
However, I was surprised by your inclusion of Christopher Hitchens in that list, as though he would have been in bed with the authoritarian ignorati, had he not succumbed to pneumonia caught in the course of treatment for his esophageal cancer in 2011. The linked article does not even mention Hitchens by name, which leads me to wonder why you think his legacy (of which you’ve more than once spoken warmly, even noting your disagreement of his support for the invasion of Iraq and his seemingly-irrational hate-on for the Clintons) is of a piece with that of Thunderf00t, and worthy of inclusion that the linked article’s author didn’t even see fit to infer.
I’m honestly curious, here. I mean, I know the man was no saint, but he was worm food six months after Elevatorgate broke. He spent his life supporting freedom and chronicling its abuses the world over, and it’s almost unthinkable that he would have turned into a ranting regressive on the level of Dawkins, or even a smug smarm on the level of Harris, with respect to the alt-right’s rise over the last five years (within and without atheism). If you disagree, I’d love to see your reasoning, but until otherwise, I think it was a mistake to blithely mention Hitchens in the same breath as the others on the list.
Because of course it’s white women’s fault, and particularly suburban educated white women’s fault, even though those voting claims are at base false or at the very least misleading.
We’re talking about a fascistic, machista movement (the “alt-Right”) that is, like probably all rightwing movements, male-dominated at all levels and appeals to misogynistic (and related homophobic) attitudes; a presidential campaign supported overwhelmingly by men; a male candidate endorsed or tolerated by a party leadership that is overwhelmingly male and promotes anti-woman policies; a campaign supported enthusiastically by patriarchal organizations like Evangelical churches, run overwhelmingly by men; and a male Democratic opponent supported by many men who dedicated months to bashing the first woman major-party candidate.
So of course the blame for the election falls squarely on white women. Not only are men not responsible for their political actions – they can only do exactly what people allegedly expect of them,* after all, be it joining fascist movements, supporting an authoritarian candidate, or enacting racist and misogynistic policies – but women are responsible for saving them from themselves. And if we fail, the blame for the outcome falls squarely on our shoulders. Of fucking course.
(It doesn’t seem to have occurred to you, but coming to a thread about misogynistic, racist, fascist male dominated movements, in a context in which women fear for our safety and rights, to blame and attack white US women for these problems is just the perfect contribution.)
* For the record, I didn’t expect that level of male support for Trump when it came down to voting, and was shocked and horrified by it.
The 63% of white men who voted for Trump can’t possibly be expected to hold these things dear. I mean, they’re just men.
anbheal:
People are not ignoring anything when they identify where Trump had the strongest support.
Pew says Clinton won by a 12-point margin with women overall, while Trump had an equal 12-point margin with men. Meanwhile, whites overall went to Trump by a 21-point margin, and hispanics and blacks went to Clinton by 36- and 80-points respectively … which of course implies some fraction of the latter supported Trump too. There’s also a clear difference between those with and without college educations, as well as younger voters versus older voters, but of course there is no group of interest which was 100% Clinton-supporting.
So what about those elephants or why are you only talking about one? Maybe you have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
Why did you suddenly start to use totally different categories here? Is “angry young men and alt-right” supposed to stand in for white men? Are white dudes too precious for us to even speak of?
No matter how you’re carving up various groups, it changes nothing that we “knew” how most would vote.
False. The fact that you knew (if you even did) that less-educated, rich, older, straight, white men would vote as they voted does not imply they didn’t predominantly vote for Trump in whatever states you care to name. That group, give or take one or two qualifiers like age or wealth or education, forms a large percentage of the voting population, so that group should be attributed the blame for their relatively large share of the outcome.
You just said we could blame them all we want. Clearly, you didn’t fucking mean it. I’m going to hold them responsible for what they did, independently of how easy it was to predict their votes, because it makes no fucking sense to think being easy to predict means we shouldn’t consider it a cause (or even a major cause) of what happened.
What a piece of shit. Everybody should hold such things dear; and no, I will not give you a pass for being a sexist dumbfuck because I could’ve predicted that as a dudely dude you would probably act this way. You’re betraying people right now, so get a clue and start acting like a decent fucking person.
#19
Your comment shows an utter lack of attempt to understand the mind of the white female soccer mom that voted for Trump. They will tell you that they don’t hate black people, just the lazy one’s on welfare stealing their tax dollars and the criminals. They don’t hate immigrants, just the illegal ones that are again stealing their tax dollars, and the criminals.
They don’t care that he is a sexist because they feel they can handle themselves. They don’t see sexual harassment as an issue because it’s either never happened to them and therefor never happens to anybody, or they think women should toughen up and learn to compete in a man’s world, in other words, stop whining. What’s good for white men is good for them because their husbands bring home the bacon while they raise the kids, which is the way it should be. Should they happen to need to work, it’s just for extra income, they aren’t trying to climb the corporate ladder.
They don’t believe in rape culture. They live in their insulated bubble where bad things only happen to bad people, and only weak people blame their problems on anybody but themselves. It’s the doctrine of personal responsibility. DJT exudes that sense of self confidence in their mind.
The left, in their opinion, is all about refusing to take responsibility for one’s own lot in life, and expecting the government to solve all of their problems. This of course, in their mind, leads to higher taxes, which of course means less money in their own pockets.
They are WRONG mind you, for a million reasons I don’t need to preach about here, but that is the way they see the world. It’s not they think of themselves as racists or hateful people, but they fail to understand the plight of minorities or women in the work place, because they don’t live in that world.
It’s a lack of ability to think about what life is like for somebody other than themselves, which ironically, is exactly what you are doing here.
#19 – again
Additionally, the real elephant in the room is that Hillary failed to get the democratic base to come out, not that Trump managed to sway the racists and sexists. Trump had a lower turnout than any republican in the last 4 elections. The problem was that somewhere between 4 and 6 million democrats that voted for Obama failed to show up at the polls.
We can have a discussion about why that is, but I blame that primarily on the lies told about her for the past 30 years along with her general lack of charisma. She did not run an inspiring campaign. She did not lift hearts and minds. Many stayed home because of the perceived deceit by the DNC in stacking the deck against Bernie, others stayed home because the believed the bullshit lies about emails or Benghazi.
In any event, your bizarre rant against “white women” is just flat out wrong, on many levels.
Shorter @anbheal: this is not about placing blame, it’s about examining a phenomenon.
(Also, what SC wrote @22)
—
erikthebassist, I saw the same thing you did, and which you expressed in #4.
—
Alas, I’m an outsider looking in; this business of seeking a purpose and meaning to life eludes me.
I accept it’s a real phenomenon and that it seems to apply to the majority, but clearly there are at least some of us to whom that apparent need does not apply.
(Specifically, it’s not an universal truth)
I remember Atran, and I’ve watched the videos from Beyond Belief, where he made his claims that religion is not the reason young men turn to terrorism (I even noticed PZ’s bearded visage sitting in the audience). Having had a decade to ruminate upon this thesis, and having seen the evolution of society in that decade, I think there is a more nuanced position to be had.
People, all people, contruct a personal narrative that gives them meaning and an identity. We all want to feel important, like our actions impact the course of world events. And we all want to be the good guys, the people who are fighting for truth and justice, as it were. Religion has always co-opted these natural tendencies, and the teachings of religion have always been used to rationalise some of the most horrific acts committed by humans. Islam just happens to give these young men (and women too) a way they can, in their perspective, be great, be heroic, make an impact.
I have found people like Atran, who question whether the majority of terrorists and terrorist-wannabe’s even believe the precepts of their religion, to be just as arrogant and smarmy as people like Harris. Who is he to tell people what they *actually* believe? Yes, Harris et al. are all-too-quick to point the finger at religion whenever there’s a major terrorist event, despite also knowing and publicizing the reality (at least in the abstract) that nobody really has free will, that the people who blow themselves up in crowded markets could not have done otherwise given the environment in which they grew up. And that environment includes religion, but it includes a whole host of other things that get routinely ignored or acknowledged but then forgotten about by people like Harris.
To deny that religion plays a part in terrorism is simple foolishness, a desire to placate the psyche because really, nobody wants to believe that there are people who are trying to bring about the end of the world as we know it, and/or trying to initiate a thousand-year global theocracy. Most people who haven’t been fundamentalists don’t understand what it is to truly believe in every jot and iota that is written in a holy book, or the desire to put God’s commands first in your life, even/especially when they conflict with the law. They want to feel important, they seek conflict. And to deny that currently only one religion is actually at the root of over a dozen REAL theocracies right now, and that the fundamentalists in this religion are actively seeking, by all means (violent and peaceful), all over the world, to propagate and realize these millenarian goals, is to deny reality.
Yes, Christians in the US have their own loonies whose goals are similar to the Islamists’ goals, but there is a difference: they seldom resort to violence (even if you count the militia kooks, which I don’t, they are mostly acting out Libertarian fantasies), and they never have enough support to actually create a theocracy (whereas clearly, many Muslim-majority countries wouldn’t be theocracies unless a large chunk of the population wanted it; even the Arab Spring never sought to challenge the theocratic nature of governments, rather, activists there were mostly just seeking democracy, the freedom to CHOOSE theocracy – as Egyptians tried to do – or not). The extreme dominionist/reconstructionist Christians mainly seek to force their religion upon other people, and given that there are dozens of sects who are trying to do this, any legal ruling that one group happens to win (like Greece vs. Galloway) will inevitably cause chaos as the right to evangelize has now been given to them all (and don’t think they won’t use it). When the Satanic Temple, the Catholics, the Muslims all start pushing their beliefs, there is enough backlash to make everyone realize that the 1st Amendment exists for a reason. Religious pluralism is the best defense against theocracy, and the only areas we have to worry about are those where many different sects agree on something (like abortion). This is important, and it is incumbent upon all of us to fight against the anti-choice movement, but small potatoes compared to the strife that north Africa and the Middle East are dealing with.
I don’t really want to write yet another post about Trump and his people, so I’ll just say that the people who voted for him, they wanted to be important too, they wanted to play the hero and impact the world. Trump sold them a fantasy, just like Islam sells its young men a fantasy. People who have lived in a fact-free bubble for a decade don’t have any defense against someone like Trump, for whom facts are merely obstacles to be overcome. It helped that many of the things he told them were things they already wanted to believe; for that we can blame a stifling provincial upbringing, poor schooling and a partisan media, but those are all things that can be fixed. In fact, working to fix these issues is the only thing people who don’t deny or run away from reality can do now (at least until the 2018 midterm elections) as an antidote to the Trumpocracy. I suspect the first one will be the hardest to improve; liberals have ignored rural America for decades now, but breaking through the bubble, somehow, will help a lot down the road as a diversifying America splits politically even more cleanly between rural and urban people. Education is hard too, people have to want a better school system and teaching methods that actually work, and they have to show up at meetings, vote for people who represent their values, and band together to lobby their elected officials. But improving the media is as simple as not watching the channels that are deliberately biased. I am also hoping that a declining television media share will force channels to compete for all viewers, not just the ones who share a particular point of view, but that may just be wishful thinking.
chrisdevries:
You’re just plain wrong. Wrongity-wrong-wrong.
I don’t.
And no universal claim survives but one counter-example.
Anything flowing from your claim is therefore flawed.
(Yeah, I know you imagine I’m in denial. Bah)
anbheal @19:
Is “soccer moms” Gaelic for “James Comey”?
That’s yours. ;)
SC, :)
But then, it’s a trivial claim — no less true for my dog or for my cat.
To be clear (possibly) – I meant that your meaning- and identity-giving personal narrative is that you don’t have a meaning- and identity-giving personal narrative,* not that not actually having one is one.
* I was teasing, but I do pretty much believe that. :)
John Morales:
I wouldn’t put it that way, but a couple of points:
(1) It looks like an empirical claim which you could be mistaken about, so you probably want to be careful about how much stock you put into introspection.
(2) It may not cash out for you in the same way it does for, say, a person who finds meaning, purpose, social identity, etc. through religion or other means.
For instance, you come here regularly and communicate with others. Why? I’m sure you have some purpose for doing so. Isn’t this activity meant (by you) to make your life better or more interesting or what have you? Isn’t it to help you understand yourself and/or identify yourself in relation to others with similar/contrasting views? Or at least to cure boredom or pass the time or whatever you may be intending to do at any given moment? Is there no narrative to be told here?
So… in what sense does that sort of stuff not count?
[OT]
CR,
cf. SC @33
Does it make sense to you to imagine that my perceived meaning is that I have no meaning, and that my personal narrative is that I have no personal narrative? ;)
I live, I try to make the best of things with the least possible effort. That’s it.
(Is that really a purpose or a meaning, in any sense that’s not trivial?)
—
Sure, I know I am alive and I try to make the best of things for myself and for those about whom I care.
But that’s not the same as seeking purpose or meaning.
And that’s the thing about the OP; as I understand it, it’s all about facile adoption of meaning and purpose.
—
The first few quotations in the OP are OK, but some are rather shitty generalisations. For example:
“My results are not surprising to many social scientists, who know that we humans derive a great deal of self-worth from the groups we belong to. Our groups tell us who we are and make us feel good about ourselves. But feeling like we don’t belong to any group can really rattle our sense of self.”
(At least that’s qualified: it can really rattle our sense of self, but that phrasing implies that’s not an universal claim)
—
Heh. Alleviating boredom and indulging myself are certainly reasons for my commenting — I’ve in the past noted that I find argumentation pleasing — but they are not a purpose in the teleological sense.
(I’m not seeking to achieve anything beyond that momentary satisfaction)
As I noted earlier, that’s a trivial interpretation; what in mathematics would be called a ‘degenerate case’.
I can remember hearing the story from a guy who’d emigrated from Northern Ireland to Australia about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. His point was belonging to one of the militias back then was just something you did – it was an identity thing much more than an ideology thing. “I am young, male, Protestant and come from $AREA, therefore I join this loyalist militia, because all my friends are doing the same thing, and there’s fsck all else to do”.
He didn’t really “believe” in the cause. I suspect if he’d been asked at the time, he probably couldn’t have articulated it outside a set of very basic slogans. But he knew his mates were doing this, and he knew the cool guys were doing it, and he knew if he associated with the cool guys, he’d get some coolness himself by association. He also knew if he didn’t do it, he’d be marked down as “suspicious” by the rest of the group as well.
He also pointed out the reason he emigrated to Australia was largely because he grew up, got married, and had a son of his own, and he didn’t want his son to feel forced into the same sort of lifestyle when he reached his early teens. It’s easier to avoid these things if you aren’t surrounded by them. So he came to Australia, where the main teenage identity politics revolve around football (which code, which team etc).
(equisetum @3 – I always had my doubts about the existence of Dick Cheney…)
Um…yes?
That’s a narrative. (Your cat – probably :) – doesn’t have such a narrative.) The contrast you draw with others, the narrative-havers with whom you don’t belong, helps form an identity.
Again, yes.
OK, goodnight!
Seth@#21:
However, I was surprised by your inclusion of Christopher Hitchens in that list, as though he would have been in bed with the authoritarian ignorati
I was quite a fan of Hitch, for years. Even past his death. Then I had time to re-think a few things about him, so I’ll attempt to answer, purely from my perspective, of course.
He spent his life supporting freedom and chronicling its abuses the world over, and it’s almost unthinkable that he would have turned into a ranting regressive on the level of Dawkins, or even a smug smarm on the level of Harris
It’s hard to square his hatred for authoritarianism with his willingness to be one. He wrote an entire book blaming religion solely for a lot of really bad stuff – stuff which is clearly as much a result of politics as it is religion. “Religion poisons everything” is too simplistic for someone of Hitchens’ obvious historical knowledge and intellect – yet he wrote an entire book saying pretty much that. In the book he simplified extremely complex politics of post-colonialism, post-WWI and WWII land divisions and various European powers tampering in various places – into it all being religion’s fault. I started off thinking that it was impossible that Hitchens actually believed something so obviously incorrect (e.g.: the Iranians do not hate the US entirely because of religion) (Or Israel) (Or the US-sponsored overthrow of a popular democratically elected leader) (Or the installation of a brutal dictator) (Or nuclear blackmail and overt threats) (etc) – it’s not just religion and Hitchens was certainly smart enough and knowledgeable enough to figure that out. So I started to worry and re-assess him a bit.
And then there were the really disgusting warmongering comments – I believe it was in the debate with George Galloway where he came across with a big dose of toxic masculinity and blustered about “draining the swamp” and treating muslim fanatics like mosquitoes – killing them. He was disgustingly dismissive of the Lancet’s assessment of collateral casualties during the Iraq war that Hitchens supported. I believe that Hitchens was saying things he thought were true – but he was more interested in winning the debate; it was unpleasantly revealing – I reassessed Hitchens as being less of a genuine and sincere progressive than simply a contrarian who wanted to be right all the time.
One of the points Galloway (who I believe is also a repugnant human being) made was devastating – that Hitchens had been on the side of the insurgents in Algeria, Vietnam, Palestine, etc – i.e: anti-authoritarian, anti-dictator – until it was convenient for him to be in favor of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and creating a dictatorship (which is basically what Iraq and Afghanistan have turned into) I think Hitchens’ answers were glib, attempting to deflect what was a very serious charge and what turned out to be some rather prescient ranting by Galloway (@40:00) Hitchens falls shamefully back into nationalist bloody shirt-waving about Al Queda wanting to kill British troops, etc. What Galloway said wasn’t what was important; it was Hitchens’ failure to understand that he had adopted the side of authoritarianism.
I started off seeing Hitchens as a brilliant intellect with a tremendous depth of knowledge, and an amazing ability to string words together. I ended up seeing Hitchens as merely clever, with an amazing ability to string words together in order to hold his own in debate or discussion, but who probably didn’t really have any coherent belief system at all other than “be clever” and “win debates.” He sure gave religion a pounding but we’ve seen over and over in the atheoskeptic world that religion is a pretty easy target, since “boards don’t hit back” I slowly and quietly moved Hitchens into the same column as some of those other atheoskeptics who gave religion a good drubbing because it was an easy target, but otherwise were mostly facile downpunchers who wanted to appear to be smarter by beating up on the foolish faithful. Well, yes, you can look like quite the welterweight by beating up toddlers, too. I write that as someone who used to watch a few of Pat Condell’s videos until I got the sinking feeling that this was someone presenting motivated reasoning based on poor motives. And I once upon a time enjoyed Thunderf00t’s smackdowns of creationists because, well, they were true. But then there’s that broken clock effect I eventually had to take into account.
I still enjoy Hitchens’ flair with the bon mot, and his sneering cuts at religious stupidity. In the end, that’s not much of a legacy, though. He certainly remains a peer and kindred spirit of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. And that’s too bad.
Meg Thornton@#36:
His point was belonging to one of the militias back then was just something you did – it was an identity thing much more than an ideology thing.
Yes, often those who wish to blame religion for certain types of aggression utterly fail to explain why secular street gangs exhibit virtually all the same behaviors. Sure, they get tattoos and don’t cross themselves, but the gang-signs and in-group/out-group identities and behaviors are all the same otherwise.
Marcus@38,
Thank you for that thoughtful reply. I myself didn’t have the patience for the Galloway debate (or a lot of debates generally, even back in ’06 and ’07 when they were coming into their own), so I’ll not pretend to be able to litigate Hitchens’ positions there expressed; I’ll only say point out that the glibness and contempt Hitchens doubtlessly evinced in their expression might have also to do with his distaste for his debating partner, whom you note is (also) despicable. I also can’t fail to point out that accusing the US of toppling Saddam simply to install a dictatorship is a bit facile, since Saddam was himself a (once-US-backed!) dictator, and so I’m not surprised that Hitchens didn’t even bother dismantling the train of thought.
I disagree that Hitchens’ focus was too laser-pointed at religion; a survey of his books before gING shows a thorough analysis of culture, politics, and society, even when examining religious figures or subjects (see: his takedowns of Mother Theresa). GING itself spends quite a lot of real estate explaining conflicts in material terms, and exploring how religion makes them worse, or invents easy and unimpeachible reasons for them. The book presents religion as just like any other human institution except in one way: that it holds itself above any sort of criticism. Indeed, pointing out gang members and totalitarians does not detract from the thesis, but rather confirms that our authoritarian impulses run deep. Of particular note on this point is Hitchens’ examination of the Troubles, and how the parties involved took two different religions and essentially made quasi-ethnicities out of them. His point was not that religion *caused* the Troubles, but that it made them much, much worse than they had to be; for that subject, so for the rest.
In any case, I can respect the conclusions you’ve come to, even if I disagree with them. I’ve taken much of my opinion of Hitchens from his written work, his public readings of same, and his lectures; it does not surprise me that in debates he comes across as simply wanting to win, since his education at Eton essentially guaranteed that style (indeed, he defined being a proper debater as being able to argue your opponent’s point at the drop of a hat). And I cannot deny that there are quite a few of his fans (as well as those of Harris) who seem to like him only because some of his thoughts and arguments can be used in service to bigotry. But I think, nevertheless, his work was (and remains) worhwhile and worthy of consideration.
Thank you again.
Seth@#40:
I’ll only say point out that the glibness and contempt Hitchens doubtlessly evinced in their expression might have also to do with his distaste for his debating partner
Yes, there was some of that. But Hitchens really destroyed any idea I had that he had principled positions. I came to see him just as a glib bully.
As I said, I think Galloway’s also a wretch. I mostly paid attention to Hitchens’ responses to Galloway’s questions, and they were really poor.
I also can’t fail to point out that accusing the US of toppling Saddam simply to install a dictatorship is a bit facile, since Saddam was himself a (once-US-backed!) dictator, and so I’m not surprised that Hitchens didn’t even bother dismantling the train of thought.
You’d have to observe how Hitchens imploded his own credibility; I’m certainly not going to defend it one way or another. If we can agree that “regime change” emplacing a selected government over another is authoritarian (rather than democratic) then there’s not much else that need be said. I find it difficult to accept that Hitchens expressed solidarity with the Vietcong, the Palestinians, the Algerians, and .. uh, the Iraqi Kurds and The Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani (Remember: religion poisons everything?) over the people of Iraq. Uh. It’s complicated. And that’s why I didn’t buy Hitchens’ argument – he tried to paper over the hypocrisy of his position with a lame ad-hominem against Galloway for appearing on the same stage as Bashir Assad. Admittedly, not great company, but Hitchens was flailing and that was the best he could do.
I’m not saying “Galloway won the debate” I’m saying that, for me, Hitchens exploded his own credibility. Up until I really listened to some of the stuff he said, I was beguiled by how cleverly he said it. By the way (except for the “cleverly” bit) I feel the same way about Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. They’re lazy and they’re just taking advantage of the fact that they’re right and they’re attacking people who are mistaken. That’s basically what Hitchens was doing, too. When I started to re-assess him that way, I concluded that his book on Mother Teresa (for example) could have been reduced to a sentence, namely: “Poor deluded old thing.” And his book on the Clintons could have been reduced to the observation that “professional politicians lie a lot.” Not as clever as Hitchens, but pretty much the same in terms of insight and depth.
I disagree that Hitchens’ focus was too laser-pointed at religion; a survey of his books before gING shows a thorough analysis of culture, politics, and society, even when examining religious figures or subjects (see: his takedowns of Mother Theresa). GING itself spends quite a lot of real estate explaining conflicts in material terms, and exploring how religion makes them worse, or invents easy and unimpeachible reasons for them.
Perhaps you read a different edition than I did.
But I think, nevertheless, his work was (and remains) worhwhile and worthy of consideration.
Of course. He’s very entertaining. I stopped taking him seriously as a progressive when I realized that he was an apologist for authoritarianism – to the point of trying to accuse the US and UK’s most reputable medical organizations of politically-motivated mis-estimations of the casualty counts in the war he supported. Uh. Uh. That was not the leftist Hitchens who was so wittily contrarian on CSPAN. Then I realized that perhaps wittily contrarian was all he ever was.
Here’s another thing to consider. You might want to review Hitchens’ various exchanges with Noam Chomsky. It wasn’t a debate, and both parties had plenty of time to think about what they were saying and why. They’re worth reading and you can find them with a quick Google. Chomsky rather correctly points out that 9/11 was the US’ chickens coming home to roost, and Hitchens replies with, basically, “they hate us for our freedoms.”* That was not simply reaching for a debating point – that was deliberately and knowingly sweeping the huge amount of history that he himself well knew, under the rug. It’s pretty painful to read. At the time (I read it when it first came out and have reviewed it since then) it was painful enough, but with 15 years of hindsight, it’s really embarrassing how shallow and desperate his position was. And I never did understand it: his unstinting support for Bush’s war seemed to me mostly a desire to avoid saying the words “I was wrong” – words which, if Hitchens ever uttered in seriousness, I have not seen or heard of.
(*”What they abominate about “the West,” to put it in a phrase, is not what Western liberals don’t like and can’t defend about their own system, but what they do like about it and must defend: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state.”)
[OT]
Marcus:
Nah, it’s better than that. He was superior to most, and he reached people.
Easy to decry him now he’s dead, but I betcha he would have had a damn good comeback had you been able to make this claim to him when he was still alive.
(And his death had dignity and pathos is copious amounts)
Marcus, Chris Hitchens did admit that he was wrong and that waterboarding was torture, after he had put himself to the test.
(That’s courage)
Regarding Hitch, and people like Harris and Dawkins, they may have focused their efforts on religion most of their time, but Harris has said, and I’m sure Hitch and Dawkins would agree, that religion is not the only problem society faces. Perhaps they think it’s the root of the problem, but I doubt it since it seems obvious that there are certain unambiguous human qualities that themselves allow religion, and other dogmatic practices, to exist in the first place (and yes, I am aware Dawkins made a documentary called “The Root of All Evil”, but I’m pretty sure that’s just rhetoric). The root of all evil is the cognitive flaws and pattern-seeking behavior that both, in other contexts, can produce desirable results. Religion has hijacked them, but it’s not the only hijacker that leads to evil, just one of the more obvious and widespread ones. And while Hitch would probably stand by his subtitle (religion poisons everything), that’s not to say that religion cannot have positives, just that they are greatly outweighed by the negatives.
In short, I find the Four Horsemen and people who came along with them saying the same things, to have served an important role in taking the taboo of criticizing religion and simultaneously pissing on it and giving it the finger. But they are all human, and all flawed with the same biases and pattern-seeking behavior that allows religion to thrive. To his credit, if (and that’s a big if, it’s pretty difficult) you get your point through his ultra-dense skull that he is missing the point or entirely incorrect, Sam Harris has shown a willingness to admit his error (Hitch too). I have not seen such from Dawkins; he may be the most bone-headed person alive who is also an esteemed scientist and thinker. I don’t know if there’s anything to do except keep pushing our SJW, feminazi agenda and hoping that the publicity his name brings to any fight will lure others in who are amenable to changing THEIR minds. And perhaps as more and more people decide to ignore him he’ll finally see what’s been right in front of him the whole time (that he is a privileged ass and has ignored the experiences of millions of people because they didn’t align with HIS experience).
Re #26: Turnout in this election was not particularly low.
Source (of many): http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/upshot/election-facts-to-keep-handy-for-thanksgiving-dinner-discussion.html
The narrative that turnout was low was popular right after the election, but is wrong because all the votes aren’t counted on election day. They can take weeks to count.
Re: the thread between SC and John Morales (#28-37)
I also don’t really understand this idea that everyone constructs narratives and meaning in their lives. That is to say, when people talk about such things, they seriously fail to resonate with me. (And I just blogged about it.)
I know I should be suspicious of drawing conclusions based purely on introspection. But I also don’t see why I should believe the general principle that everyone constructs meaning. Experiences are diverse and all that. Just because it is *possible* to shoehorn my experience into this grand narrative of What Human Nature Is, doesn’t mean we should. In fact, I resent the entire idea, after being told so many times that we must all believe in a “higher power” (eg see the 12-step program). I think there could be value in at least trying to think of life within other frameworks.
Argh messed up the html tags again. Oh well.
John Morales:
Yes. Your confusion (not necessarily “denial”) about supposedly lacking a narrative doesn’t imply you have no actual narrative. Those do not seem like they must refer to the same thing.
Like SC said, your narrative, the one you actually have, might be that you don’t have one (at least it may be until we help you out of this confusing mess), and there’s no rule written in stone anywhere which forces us to believe your narrative about lacking a narrative must be true. Does that make sense to you?
What do you consider “trivial”? I wasn’t attempting to make a profound point: you’re an agent with intentions and purposes, as every person is, and we should try to describe you accurately.
If you’re a bot who’s merely been passing my Turing tests with flying colors for the past several years, then I’ll raise a glass to your designers. But we’re both fairly sure that you’re not.
There’s a non-teleological sense? Who said it needed to be whatever you’re counting as “teleological” here?
How would you cast “seeking to achieve X” in non-teleological terms? However that goes, why wouldn’t that be applicable to any other person, religious or otherwise, who by all appearances does all the same human shit as you?
They may not describe it that way themselves — perhaps they think gods have given them purposes, or in more Aristotelian language that certain things are in order for an outcome to be — but we’re not stuck with that kind of description for them, just like we aren’t for you or me. There is something to describe (more coherently than they may be willing/able to do) about our purposeful behavior, which distinguishes it from non-purposeful behavior, no?
I think we may agree that it seems like a rather vacuous claim, to say that terrorist acts (e.g.) are motivated by the person’s desire to be or do something significant, because they have a feeling that their lives lack that sort of significant meaning or purpose. It’s clearly extreme and destructive behavior, done purposefully and often at significant cost, so why should anybody be surprised by the fact that they believe they’ll derive some greater benefit from it? That of course doesn’t imply religious ideas aren’t playing a major role in religious terrorism, so it’s odd to treat them as if they were incompatible/competing theories.
re: 45
Obama 2012 = 65,915,796
Hillary SO FAR = 64,469,963
Delta of 1.4m votes that stayed home. Between WI, MI and PA I do believe we’re at less than a 150k vote margin to trump.
In 2008 Obama had 69m votes, so by that measure, 5m stayed at home, and she only needed 159k more to show up.
My point stands, she didn’t get the vote out. Period, end of sentence.
Great post. I’ve been following this “Manospherian” movement for the past year or so. As a woman, it has horrified me. I’m also a gamer and I’ve watched my hobby go from a relaxing, fun thing to take my mind off of stuff to a politicized, hateful world that targets its venom at women more than anybody else.
I had no idea, then, that this would all spiral into a political movement. I see how it is connected now.
As for Drumpenfuhrer’s comment about owning property to vote, I wonder how wealthy uber-capitalist men like him would respond if women acted like they did and said, “Hey, we are the creators/producers of the most powerful thing there is: life. The only people who should be able to vote are those who spend 9 months with every fibre of their being working towards creating a new life within them and then go through the process of birth. Only someone who creates life values it enough to know how to vote for everyone’s wellbeing.”
CR:
Um. Something that doesn’t have the weight of the claims in the OP.
For instance (my emphases, obviously): “Instead, he argues, young people adrift in a globalized world find their own way to ISIS, looking to don a social identity that gives their lives significance.”
Or, “… people become terrorists to restore a sense of significance in their lives, a feeling that they matter.”
See, those things don’t matter one whit to me, and others like me.
Following on re. the Hitchens conversation: https://youtu.be/1uocFsLoX50?t=1626
He wrote good sometimes, but he was pretty backwards.
@ John Morales #51
Just because you don’t have THAT PARTICULAR narrative doesn’t mean you don’t have one. I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t see themselves in the context of an identity they’ve fashioned, as a person who believes and does what they do because X. In my case it’s a search for truth, mostly scientific truth (but also sociological truth). I find both the natural world and the human world exceptionally fascinating and think that I can contribute to the betterment of humanity by learning as much as possible and finding ways to share what I’ve learnt. I used to teach at university (mainly freshmen) for 5 years and I know I play a major role in helping a couple dozen people shape their own stories because of experiences I initiated that we shared (and a minor role in hundreds of other stories). People changed their majors because they liked what I taught and how I taught it. And who knows what other impacts I had, maybe even some people didn’t like what I taught and decided to stay away from science forever. Now I look for other ways to share what I love with others. We all contribute in weaving the fabric of society.
Whatever your narrative, whatever person you are in your mind’s eye, I don’t think it’s possible that you aren’t anything to yourself. This is a human trait. We define ourselves in a context based on what groups we belong to, what we think, how we act, and we always see what we do, and the things that happen to us, as part of that story. Period. If you’re just doing things for no overarching reason, because you gotta do something, and there is nothing you truly enjoy, no group (formal or informal) you count yourself a member of, nothing that gives you meaning and a way to say to yourself “I belong on Earth and this is the role I want to fulfill”, not even something as simple as the role outfitted for you by the cruel scalpel of evolution, to survive and reproduce, well sir, you are a psychiatric marvel and your brain should be studied and preserved after you die, like Einstein’s.
Note: I should mention that various meditation practises exist in which the practitioner can ditch all of the above and just exist, for a time, but I would argue their narrative is to find ways to expand the limits of human experience and consciousness, to live life at a different experiential level.
it seems perfectly obvious that were use narrative to help us make sense out of the world we find ourselves in we do not have very strong instincts with which to live by and the inside of our heads must be doing something important besides balancing out jaw. We sure as hell have to be taught to do just about everything. it is basic to all humans our animal friends and relations have other ways of doing and do not seem to need the same level of “story” as we do. the post seems to point out the results of not being included by the larger society that some people will find a way to not be relegated to a crap role and will feel the need to take some kind of action and they are describing the process that makes it work. It is a natural process not something imposed from outside. the bad part is that if left alone it can end up quite self destructive sometimes with irrational heroic results.
The answer if there is one is to insure that everyone feels that they are included. How that is accomplished is a profound mystery. It sure ain’t so any where in the world I am aware of now or in the past.
I feel that we are up against it this time we are going to have to find some way to solve this problem or we may be selected against by the results of our own actions and inaction. The luxury of just drifting along swinging left then right may be reaching it’s end point.
uncle frogy
chrisdevries, I already mentioned that you’d imagine I was in denial. Just like goddists imagine everyone has a god-shaped hole in their psyche, so that those who claim they don’t must be in denial.
I may be in a minority — maybe a small one — but I’m pretty sure that I’m not unique in my lack of need for purpose or meaning. Or what is termed “narrative identity”, for that matter. That’s for other people.
—
Anyway, this is a digression from the post topic. I do think the points being made in the OP are plausible and explanatory; I just don’t think they’re universally applicable.
FWIW, over at Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne has discovered that the Guardian article may well be a hoax.
Boy, am I getting close to stopping reading him.
To deny that religion plays a part in terrorism is simple foolishness, a desire to placate the psyche because really, nobody wants to believe that there are people who are trying to bring about the end of the world as we know it, and/or trying to initiate a thousand-year global theocracy.
I think it is certainly true that religion is part of the problem but it isn’t the whole deal. Terrorism is a bigger global problem than the current view of it being a small number of extremely radicalised muslims or an even smaller number of equally mad right wing Christians.
As another commenter has mentioned, living through 30 years of Irish Republican terrorism highighted the fact that almost none of the participants would be described as “religiously motivated” and throughout the 60 – 80s across Europe there were a mix of terrorist groups which could hardly be described as devoutly religious in nature.
Although the extreme events of Islamic terrorism capture headlines, the non-Islamic stuff hasnt really gone away. Even in Northern Ireland terrorist groups carry out punishment beatings and threaten the lives of Police & Prison officers.
Saying religion is the cause of terrorism is as flawed as saying it has nothing to do with terrorism. The reality, I suspect, is more like Atran has described in that all these groups (terrorists, street gangs, religion etc) draw young people looking for a sense of identity, belonging and purpose.
They are not the alt-right. They are the wrong-right.
John Morales, 51
On the contrary, you seem to find your identity (and those of “others like [you]”) highly significant, hence the repeated emphasis, and definitional. Pointing that out is not suggesting you are in denial; it is a suggestion that you define “meaning” and “purpose*” (and “belonging” and “community”) differently than your interlocutors. “Goddists,” as you call them, insist on dividing the world into two distinct, non-overlapping communities (the en-godded, the godless). In this discussion, no one denies the existence of identity and self-definition. It is what those terms signify and how they are expressed and can be discerned and gauged that are in dispute.
*you suggest above that acting in the present to ensure and protect future gains is not “purpose”; many here dispute that, and the attendant implication that “purpose” must necessarily be a rational plan acted out, rather than an innumerable series of fleeting, changing, arbitrary, and sometimes contradictory beliefs and wishes, imperfectly applied and executed, sometimes abandoned wholesale
“Purpose,” “identity,” and “narrative” do not exist absent community and socialization, are not cast in stone, are not logical, but malleable in the extreme. Recognizing one’s “purposelessness” (an existential experience distinct from lacking “identity” or “narrative”) is impossible in a world without other sentient humans to define oneself against and in contrast.
That Guardian article is hilarious.
PZ, it does not make you a hateful radical if you diplomatically express negative sentiments about the religion of Islam. Islam is not a perfect religion. The fact that this is apparently not clear to someone who describes himself as both an atheist and a feminist is fucking astounding.
Ermm, I think what you did just there is take a quote, that someone else said, in another article, just because PZ linked to it, then attributed that speech to PZ and attacked him for saying it… am I right?
@Erik
No, you’re not right. Scroll up and read the context.
1. PZ links the article as an example of radicalization at the hands of the hatred-normalizing dark side of atheism.
2. The radicalization described in the article culminates with the author diplomatically expressing negative sentiments about Islam.
she couldn’t overcome the massive amount of swiftboating.
period. end of sentence.
in fact, I’m not sure anybody can any more… which is exactly why it is so commonly used as a tactic on the right now.
Ichthyic,
Notably, currently over 2.5M more votes than her opponent.
(It’s a representative democracy, alright — but it’s not the population which is being represented)
—
Jessie Foster:
Sorta. The culmination actually was that this event was where the poster perceived a realisation that the fear-mongering and out-grouping had worked its insidious way with him, upon which he repudiated that sentiment. Or: he realised he had been cognitively manipulated.
The specific extract, with my emphasis:
(You’re confusing cause with effect)
#63 – Jesse,
If you think for a moment that he has an issue with
then you either you know nothing about PZ, or you are trolling. As a long time reader of this blog, I can assure you that he has, on many many occasions, done just so himself. All religions are fair game when it comes to being criticized as ideas. Where PZ draws the line, as do I, and I assume many of the readers here, is in using that critique of ideas to justify oppression, hatred and bigotry.
In other words, you can be critical of an idea or religion because it is a bad idea that is not rooted in reality, but also refuse believe that all of it’s adherents are therefor bad or evil people who should be denied basic human rights because of it.
We can hate terrorists, and people who carry out violence in the name of their religion, while still recognizing that the vast majority of the 1.6 billion or so Muslims in the world are just normal people with families and friends trying to survive in sometimes hell like conditions, who may want to come here to escape those conditions, and that as humanitarians we should welcome them, even if it means a few of the bad actors get in as well.
We can be critical of a religion, while still recognizing that creating registries or discriminating against someone based on their religion or skin color is also evil. We can acknowledge the role that religion plays in terrorism and violence and suffering in the world, but also know that it is not the sole source of such pain and misery, and that freedom of conscience is the ultimate human right, including the right to believe silly things.
So what is “fucking astounding” it seems is your lack of ability to comprehend that being critical of a religious idea is not the same thing as believing that it’s adherents are due any fewer basic human rights than the adherents of any other religion.
#64 Ichthyic – You are correct of course. The swift boating was at least part of the reason millions of democrats stayed home, but so was the DNC’s treatment of Bernie, so was her own lack of transparency and honesty when under attack, so was her lack of attempt to stay connected to midwestern rural voters who are traditionally democrats.
In many respects, she blew this herself (or at least her campaign did).
Swiftboating played a huge role, obviously, but painting her as the victim who shouldn’t accept some responsibility for blowing this so spectacularly does nothing to help us understand what went wrong and how to not make the same mistakes in 2018, or especially in 2020.
@erikthebassist
Obviously. But read the excerpt PZ provides. You are literally repeating a talking point that both the author and PZ repudiate.
The article:
and:
PZ:
It looks like the article may have been a hoax parody. Nothing conclusive, but the troll who claimed responsibility has posted a screenshot of a word document with a similar title that is time stamped to before the article’s publication. And the article itself does read like satire, although extreme left positions, like all extreme positions, frequently fall under Poe’s law.
Jessie Foster –
Maybe you are too dense to parse this, I don’t know, but in case you are, let me spell it out:
On one side you have the atheists and skeptics who advocate that all religion is bullshit, that it in general causes harm, but refuse to put any particular religion on a pedestal above the others, or persecute one religion in particular above all others. This side recognizes that the harm done in the name of Christianity is just as widespread and deeply felt as the harm done in the name of Islam, despite the fact that western media would portray it otherwise.
We would just as quickly call out the Catholic church for advocating against the use of condoms on a continent ravage by Aids and STD’s as we would rail against Imam’s who encourage young men to strap bombs to themselves in an attempt to take out innocent civilians.
We recognize that western imperialism has caused, and continues to cause widespread destruction and disruption of innocent lives in the form of bombings, invasions and the spreading of equally horrible ideas.
We do not buy the concept that Islam is inherently more evil than Christianity, because we don’t have blinders on to the harm that Christianity causes. We do not buy the “false equivalency” argument. Muslim’s are people too. They are due every ounce of respect, dignity and basic civil rights as any white Christian. The exception being the criminal act of terrorism, which is no more or less abhorrent than denying global climate change, or ignoring it because the Rapture, or shooting abortion doctors, or blowing up buildings in OK with fertilizer and hundreds of innocent people inside.
On the other side of this equation…. meaning the “Sam Harris” side and most likely “your side”, we have a group who refuses to recognize the atrocities being carried out in the name of western exceptionalism, which for all intents and purposes, is largely driven by white nationalism and christian tribalism.
It’s the difference between the people who think we are at war with Islam, and use this view to justify systematically denying people their civil rights simply because they are brown, head east when they pray or wear a headscarf, and those of us who see equal parts evil being done in the name of these gods on both sides, with the ability to understand that evil in the context of a greater global culture that allows it proliferate.
tl;dr – you want to blame Muslims for the fucked state of the world, we see plenty of blame to go around and therefor do not think there is justification for turning those in need away at our borders, the bombing of innocent civilians in far away lands, racial profiling or Muslim registries.
If the above does not clear it up for you, then you are either willfully obtuse or severely handicapped when it comes to grasping concepts, but either way, I’m done, my point is made. Feel free to have the last word.
@erikthebassist
You know next to nothing about what I believe. I feel no need to respond to the accusations you make and the views you attribute to me in the latter half of your post, because I hold literally none of those positions. You’re arguing with a straw man.
I disagree with two things.
1. I don’t think white nationalism is the major driving force that it once was. We wouldn’t see increasing rates of immigration into Western European countries, for example, if European governments were largely driven by white nationalism.
2. Religions are not equal in the proportionate harm they cause. Religions are not equally moral or immoral. Jainism is not the same as Islam. The greatest global threat to progressive values like free speech and equal rights for women and LGBT people is Islam, not Christianity.
Jessie Foster:
<snicker>
You sure are credulous.
@John Morales
Or maybe PZ and you are.
You aren’t paying any attention to the bigotry trying to be legislated here in the US. It is staggering. And our president-elect doesn’t give a shit.
@Nerd
Not even close to comparable. There are countries whose governments execute gay people and lash women for being raped.
I oppose all legislation that unfairly discriminates against LGBT people and women, but understand the immense fucking difference between a gay person being refused a wedding cake, and a gay person being executed. It should be overwhelmingly obvious as to which is the greater threat.
Jessie Foster:
Interesting phrasing.
(Is there such a thing as fairly discriminating against them?)
Jessie Foster:
“Dear Muslima…”
QFT John Morales #77
And how many of those countries have done so at the urging of bigoted Xians?
Don’t wear blinders that only Muslims are bigots. It doesn’t make you look like you are are that intelligent.
GAYS BEING REFUSED CAKES = BAD.
GAYS BEING EXECUTED = WORSE.
Please understand that saying X is worse than Y is not an endorsement of Y.
Jessie Foster, please understand that Y not being worse than X is not a reason not to address X.
(The only reason Islam is currently particularly pernicious is because the religion is conflated with the politics and with the law; Christianity has been there and done that, and it may do so again; or: Islam does nothing now that Christianity has not done before — “Deus vult!”)
(bah)
Jessie Foster, please understand that Y not being worse than X is not a reason not to address Y.
It’s much worse than “being refused cakes” though, that’s the point. You are trivializing the former while overstating the latter.
We all know there are parts of the world where people of various minority groups have it much worse than they do here (by here I mean the USA, as that’s where I’m from). This is not limited to Muslim countries, but people like Sam Harris and yourself, and Richard Dawkins want us to believe that Muslims are the root of all evil. Meanwhile 1.6 billion Muslims are peaceful, innocent, and considered to be fodder in the “war on terror”.
Do you by chance know what the suicide statistics are for LGBT teens in the US vs CIS teens? Let me enlighten you:
http://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth.htm
Terrorism, whether home grown or abroad, is and always should be a law enforcement issue, not a culture war. By making Islam the threat, instead of it’s few practitioners who’ve become radicalized, the Sam Harrises of the world play right in to the narrative that groups like Isis and Al Qaeda put forth, that the west despises and wants to destroy Islam.
Classic Islamophic bigot.
Until you acknowledge Xian bigotry towart LBGT, al a Pence, the vice president elect, you show nothing of interest, as your your Islamophobia is boring and trite per Sam Harris.
Dismissed as a bigot.
@Nerd
Lmfao. Yes, it’s islamophobic and bigoted to believe that being refused a cake is not on par with execution.
Dismissed as a fucking moron.
cf. “conversion therapy”
( https://www.google.com/search?q=conversion+therapy+trump+platform )
Specific example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Leelah_Alcorn
(Christians in the USA milieu don’t often kill the “other” — they torture them until they kill themselves)
Dismissed as bigot. I’m no moron, as I understand those who are Xian are Homophobic Bigots, and acknowledge reality, unlike YOU.
Until you face reality, you have nothing cogent to say. And you know that.
@John Morales
I agree.
[OT]
Nerd, don’t do what they do.
Not all Christians are Dominionists any more than all Muslims are Islamists*; point being that due to historical contingency Islamic regimes are less restrained by humanistic considerations than Christian regimes; and the USA is still (“In God we Trust!) very much a Christian regime, whatever the ostensible rules may be.
Both religions are shitty Abrahamic authoritarian manipulative tools for subjugation of the populace.
—
* Remember Leigh Williams? She was a Christian and also an OM.
Except you haven’t been paying attention. Governors in about 16 states have filed/joined lawsuits against transgender folks who want bathrooms of the sex they consider themselves despite what the Department of Justice says. All are Xians. You don’t consider that significant? I do….
Jessie Foster:
It’s bigoted to believe that homophobia in the US amounts to “being refused a cake.” That’s some absurdly dismissive bullshit and you should be ashamed of yourself. For fuck’s sake, if you needed something “on par with execution,” the torture and death of Matt Shepard would be a decent place to begin, along with the refusal of conservatives to recognize such hate crimes against LGBT people. Is that like being refused a cake?
I don’t think you’re such an ignorant fucking moron, although that could partly explain the bigotry. I think you’re being a dishonest bullshitter. You’re so obsessed with flinging your anti-Muslim crap around that you show little regard for what gays actually experience or what Christianity actually does.
Notice how the US is not the only predominantly-Christian society in the world, so its particular homophobic features aren’t especially helpful for understanding Christian homophobia everywhere, much less every other sort of Christian hate (which itself is much less than every other bad thing Christianity is responsible for). Don’t you think this is a bit of a problem for your stupid-ass argument?
@CR
I don’t. I was responding to this:
The subject was specifically homophobic legislation in the United States. I brought up cakes as a reference to so called “religious freedom” bills in the US.
@CR
*I don’t believe homophobia in the US is limited to gay people being refused cakes.
JM
Assuming Leigh is Leelah? Thanks for the link. I hadn’t heard about this before and it makes me want to cry, or scream or something, I don’t know. Yet here we have this douchecanoe equating LGBT discrimination to being denied a cake.
Fuck this asshole and every one like him. I’m not talking to him anymore.
@erik
#92, #93
Are #92 and #93 supposed to convince me that you see the error in your argument and point of view? Because they don’t, so you can fuck off unless you can convince me and the others that you realize you were wrong, and how your point of view has changed. Multiple people have pointed out the bigotry in your comments. Read it until you get it.
@erik
No, idiot. Read slowly, and tell me if you understand:
Nerd brought up the subject of homophobic US legislation.
I responded to this by bringing up cake-denial as a reference to the subject of homophobic US legislation.
I did not bring up cake-denial as a reference to the current state of homophobia in the US.
Nerd @90 and others:
I think you are misunderstanding the point of Jessie Foster. (S)he does not seem to be saying that the US is perfect, or that christian anti-gay bigotry is fine. Rather, (s)he appears (to me) to be saying that there is nothing inherently Islamophobic about pointing out that in countries with majority moslem populations the government and general population mostly treat homosexuals worse than in the US.
I think their point is that this blog has a wide readership of educated folk from all around the world. You, Nerd, seem to think that FreeThoughtBlogs should cater exclusively to the inhabitants of about five flyover states. You are clearly not well-traveled, and have no idea of what is happening in the world. I would respectfully suggest you shut the fuck up and listen to people with relevant experience.
Fuck off Jessie, because that is not at all the way this thread went down.
You started out by chastising PZ for someone else’s words, then when corrected on that false attack, you resorted to a ‘Dear Muslima’ defence during which you said, and I quote,
after which, several people corrected your error in trivializing Christian bigotry while over emphasizing Muslim bigotry.
You have since but done nothing but double down on this error.
@erik
Fuck. I thought I made this so clear. I do not fucking understand how you are missing this over and over again. FOCUS.
My intent in bringing up cake-denial was to reference homophobic LEGISLATION. LEGISLATION.
My intent in bringing up cake-denial was to reference homophobic LEGISLATION. LEGISLATION.
I did not bring up cake-denial to reference all aspects of homophobia. Only homophobic LEGISLATION.
I did not bring up cake-denial to reference all aspects of homophobia. Only homophobic LEGISLATION.
Hopefully I wont have to repeat myself any more than I already have in this comment.
There’s only one problem with your theory, that it isn’t fucking true, as several people have pointed out! It’s a false fucking premise to begin with.
The only difference between the way muslims treat LGBT and the way the US treats LGBT, is the fact that predominately Muslim countries are OPEN about their hatred, as is Russia, as is China, as is most of Africa, but here in the United States, we lie to ourselves and put openly gay people on TV and give them talk shows so we can pat ourselves on the back and tell each other how open and accepting as a society we all are, while people like Pence run around destroying the lives of LGBT teens in plain view and no one does anything to stop them, strike that, not only do they not try and stop them, they put them in fucking public office!
Fuck you with your superiority complex thinking that Americans are so much better at the not hating gay people thing. Really, fuck off with that. I’m tired of hearing it.
They do so under the cover of fire from people like you, you go on and on about how much better christians are than muslims, fuck off.
What did you say? You are an islamophobic and homophic bigot?
Stop trying to pretend otherwise. We know the symptoms.
@Nerd
What did you say? You are a racist and misogynist?
Stop trying to pretend otherwise. We know the symptoms.
Republicans blocked the Shepard/Byrd act (which is “LEGISLATION!!11!” ) for nearly a fucking decade, until Obama was able to sign it. Which of course has fuck all to do with your idiocy about cakes.
Nerd @102:
Nice. Real nice. Putting words in someone’s mouth. You’re a class act, Nerd.
You really are a fucking idiot, and an embarrassment to this site, Nerd. I am only bothering to respond to your posts because I want unknowing readers to know that your peabrain is not representative of us here. Fuck me, what a fucking moron.
Title sounds good.
Miles, do you have anything useful or constructive to say or is your sole intention in this thread to try and discredit or verbally abuse Nerd?
@CR
So the United States passed legislation expanding hate crime laws to protect gay people.
Meanwhile, homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc.
Kinda proves my point.
No, it fucking doesn’t. While those laws may exist in those countries, you’ve done nothing to prove or show that life is demonstrably better for western LGBT people than it is for LGBT people in the rest of the world, or that it is particularly worse in Muslim countries than it is in places like africa or russia for that matter.
You simply have a belief that it is, because you listen to too much Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.
@Erik
I wonder how many gay people would prefer Tehran over San Francisco. You should do a survey.
Pop quiz!
What is the most widely practiced religion in Africa?
Jessie Foster:
Christians 45%, Muslims 40%. Fuck-all remnants of the original religions there.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Africa )
re: 10
Well you just stepped in it, because Africa is predominately Christian. Now, do you want to talk about how many people die for being gay in Christian countries vs how many die for being gay in Muslim countries?
Because without even looking, I can tell you that Death by Christian for being gay or TG far outweighs Death by Muslim for being gay or TG.
This is the problem, you don’t fucking get it, and you never will.
So, progressives here have to push long and hard (but note that we could dig much deeper into US history and it certainly wouldn’t look better for your dipshittery) against homophobic Christian bigots who don’t give a shit that gay people are murdered and tortured, just to get a few basic pieces of legislation to address it.
That implies there exist some people here who aren’t homophobic Christian bigots, at least not so thoroughly awful that they wouldn’t lift a finger about hate crimes committed against them…. That doesn’t prove your point, not even “kinda.”
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_accusations_against_children_in_Africa
(aah, religion. ‘Tis to die for)
oops, not re:10, re:109 – not sure how that happened, damned wireless keyboards.
@John Morales
Link says 45% Muslim 40% Christian. But those look to be 2002 figures.
JM
It’s the Salem with trials writ large and aimed at children. Disgusting, and born of Christian proselytizing across the continent. Thank you for the link illustrating my point. There is a shit ton of evil being done in the world, by all people of all stripes and colors. The sooner shitheals like Jessie and Miles and Sam Harris realize it isn’t all coming from the middle east the better.
*Salem Witch
@Erik
Source?
Do you have the figures to refute that? Or are you just going to try and imply that Africa is mostly Muslim now, to reinforce your fucked up idea that Islam is the one true threat to western democracy and progressive ideas?
So, are
miles links and Jessie Foster
actually the same person?
re: 118
https://76crimes.com/100s-die-in-homophobic-anti-gay-attacks-statistics-updates/
@Erik
No stats there on how many gay people are killed by Christians versus Muslims. I don’t imagine many African or Middle Eastern countries have governments which collect that data.
chigau 120:
Ooh, yes. Great theory. And maybe he/she/they are posting on behalf of the Illuminati, who have a secret mission to control all world thought by breeding transgenic weasels which can infect humans with a mind-controlling virus that makes them susceptible to rightwing thoughts, and Donald Trump is going to rule for a thousand years by sucking the stem cells out of babies.
You fucking lunatic.
now, Jessie, please link to me a source that shows how many people in Muslim countries are actually killed or put to death for being gay or TG. Please tell me you can show me how gay people are being slaughtered en masse in these countries, at least more so than they are throughout the rest of the world. If you can do that, I’m listening.
@123 Miles, you’re a couple nuts short of a sack aren’t you….
@Chigau
No. I don’t need 2 accounts to bash Nerd.
@Erik
That data doesn’t exist. I can tell you that the 10 countries in which being gay is punishable by death are all majority Muslim. Most are 95%+ Muslim.
#123 and #126
thank you
bless your hearts
have a nice days
but you can’t tell me how many times that law has resulted in someone’s death? Then you can’t tell me anything. So again, your argument rests on nothing, nothing. Log off, think about it.
@chigau
<3
#128 chigau:
welcome
no problem
you too
english good
@Erik
Do I need to explain why laws that PUNISH GAY PEOPLE WITH DEATH are a bad thing?
miles links
Who are you and what do you want?
@132 Jessie
No, you need to argue why those laws result in more death and suffering than the christian approach to bigotry and hate.
Even if 0 gay people were executed in any of those 10 countries, the mere fact that those laws exist is a clear fucking statement on the human rights that gay people can expect there. It speaks to how the government views its gay citizens. It also speaks to general societal attitudes about gay people.
Just so we’re clear here, you are finally admitting that it’s not about the actual treatment of people, but the appearance of how people are treated that matters to you then correct? I mean, that’s the only conclusion I can draw.
And that attitude doesn’t exist in Xian Countries, like Uganda and Central African Republic?
You are deluding yourself if you keep up with the attitude that ONLY Islam is the problem.
And you will get nowhere here until you stop deluding yourself of Islam being the only problem, and admit almost all religions condemn homosexuality, Xianity, Judaism, etc.
People who behave out of the “norm” are enemies.
@Erik
Wrong conclusion. Laws tell you about how people are treated. Gay people are not going to be treated well if the official government policy is to fucking kill them.
@Nerd
I have never once said that Islam is the only problem.
I only found nine countries after a quick romp through wikipedia. Here there are, sorted by population:
Nigeria: 188.4 M (2015)
Iran: 79.2 M (2016)
Sudan: 40.2 M (2015)
Afghanistan: 32.5 M (2015)
Saudi Arabia: 30.7 M (2014)
Yemen: 25.4 M (2013)
UAE: 9.6 M (2015) More generous than the 5.8 M which was also cited.
Mauritania: 4.1 M (2015)
Brunei: 0.4 M (2013)
Roughly 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. You do the math, if you’re able. These populations are of course not entirely Muslim. It’s also true that the Muslim parts of their populations (along with the non-Muslim parts) are not all in favor of it.
To put things in perspective, we just had an election, in which more people opposed the fucker who by law will be our new president. So it doesn’t necessarily say much about most of us, or the ideologies that most of us have, that certain things happen to be in the books (or soon will be) in the places where we live. Until very recently (and some now if I’m not mistaken), quite a few US states made homosexuality and “sodomy” illegal, with varying punishments, none of which amounted to refusing to sell them a fucking cake, you lying dumbfuck. Meanwhile, I was watching The Imitation Game again recently and was reminded of how jolly old England did its Christian best to push Turing to suicide, just to give you another actual example unlike your vague bullshit. Let me guess… Does this kinda prove your point too, Jessie?
@CR
Benedict Cumberbatch always seems to get the “troubled genius” role in movies.
Correction: Nigeria, the most populous country in the group (and in Africa, for that matter) is about 58% Christian and 40% Muslim. So I shouldn’t have included it. Somehow it calls itself a “secular” nation.
You never mention that and carry on exclusively about Islam. Your intent is obvious to all. You hate and pillory Islam to the exclusion of other religions who have the same problems. That is my problem with your drivel. It reeks of bigotry since it is so single-minded.
@Nerd
I tend to only post on topics when I know I’ll get disagreement. You don’t see me going after Christianity on this site because literally everyone already agrees with me. It’d just be a circle jerk. I’ve gone after Christianity in forums that have Christians, and I’ve argued with Christian anti-abortion activists who have visited my campus in the past.
I attack Islam here because I know its a sacred cow for those on the far left. People here offer the most enthusiastic apologetics that I can find outside of a mosque.
Jessie Foster @144:
*applause applause*
Nerd, I have noticed that when you type the names of religions, you get them correct in all cases but one. You type “Christianity” as “Xtianity”, and derivatives thereof similarly.
Does this also “reek of bigotry since it is so single-minded”?
It’s Xianity. Notice the lack of the letter t. X stands for Christ, and is actually quite respectful.
re 145:
miles must have thought “Xmas” was an insult trying to blur away the religious figure being honored, Would have been nice if he had been informed that X is the Greek initial for “Christ”. Where the Greek letter ‘chi’ in typography is ‘X’.
/pedantry