[worry]

Here are two vital threads imo. Together they encapsulate what I was inelegantly trying to say above. I'm sorry if I was rambling/incoherent.

1: On the already-normalized pervasiveness of Islamophobia. It's from an American journalist so it's US-centric, but I believe a lot of it you'll recognize in bits and pieces around the world.




2: And on the throughline from Gamergate, online harassment squads, the rebrand into 'alt-right,' and its place in the burgeoning right wing, reactionary, white supremacist movement.

[Mezla PigDog]

I haven't read any of the guys "manifesto" but it was described in a Guardian article that I read and how he says he identifies as European and subscribes to the belief that white people are being "replaced". It strikes me as extremely ironic that this dude is Australian. He could have chosen to channel all of this energy into helping the native Australians that he has personally replaced but I guess that would too difficult to get his puny mind around.

I hadn't come across this "replacement" idea before and how some of the focus is on the declining white birth rate. So it really is the perfect intersection for loser white guys to create this pathetic ideology where they can blame their problems on people who don't look like them and control women. It makes me feel a bit sick. Also pretty much identical to every other kind of fundamentalist belief system in the world.

[Primateus]

Mezla PigDog, on 16 March 2019 - 08:19 AM, said:

I haven't read any of the guys "manifesto" but it was described in a Guardian article that I read and how he says he identifies as European and subscribes to the belief that white people are being "replaced". It strikes me as extremely ironic that this dude is Australian. He could have chosen to channel all of this energy into helping the native Australians that he has personally replaced but I guess that would too difficult to get his puny mind around.

I hadn't come across this "replacement" idea before and how some of the focus is on the declining white birth rate. So it really is the perfect intersection for loser white guys to create this pathetic ideology where they can blame their problems on people who don't look like them and control women. It makes me feel a bit sick. Also pretty much identical to every other kind of fundamentalist belief system in the world.

But Mezla, those native Australians ain't white, y'know? So they might as well be the alien invaders themselves.

And isn't that just sad? This train of thought is just so skewed it's, in my opinion, easier to just boil it down to colour, religion and sex.

[Tiste Simeon]

That Aussie bellend politician got egged by some skinny teen kid and his cretin right wing "tough guy" goons jumped and choked him.

https://www.reddit.c...uslims_for_the/

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Tiste Simeon, on 16 March 2019 - 02:46 PM, said:

That Aussie bellend politician got egged by some skinny teen kid and his cretin right wing "tough guy" goons jumped and choked him.

https://www.reddit.c...uslims_for_the/

So it takes three grown men to restrain and choke hold a teenager for throwing an egg? And someone kicks him while he's on the floor as well.

Stop the planet. I want to get off.

[worry]

That kid rules. A student at an NYU vigil for Christchurch confronted Chelsea Clinton yesterday, who had the gall to show up, about her ugly Islamophobic attacks against Ilhan Omar these past few weeks, and her friend happened to catch it on video...they're already getting tons of mob harassment and death threats etc. Egged on by the usual suspects, including Donald Trump Jr. No surprise the one time he'll defend a Clinton is for their common cause of Islamophobia.

[Cause]

For Bill Maher. I recently discovered him and I love him. I dont watch his shows just segments like new rules on youtube. I find him hysterical. Its possible he has said something heinous I don't know about but I don't think he is particularly responsible for spreading Islamophobia. I think he is anti extremist, this includes muslim terrorists, SJWs, white-nationalists, climate denialists, christian evangelicals. He is also anti-religeon which is a sentiment I share to a degree (I just don't see any reason to promote it). I don't think he is anti-Muslim or promotes Muslim hatred though.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tiste Simeon, on 16 March 2019 - 02:46 PM, said:

That Aussie bellend politician got egged by some skinny teen kid and his cretin right wing "tough guy" goons jumped and choked him.

https://www.reddit.c...uslims_for_the/

I disagree on this. When I first saw the headline for this, the headline left out the speaker was a right-wing nutjob and I have to admit I never saw the video but my thinking was that if some kid is gonna crack an egg against your head and you turn around and slap him, fair is fair.

In this case we disagree witht he speaker so we are happy to see him get egged but it could have been any politician. Its okay or it isnt and I think turning around and giving him a klap is perhaps natural.

Being tackled by three guys and the one who contemplates kicking him while he is down is abhorrent.

Id say bad behaviour for everyone in the video.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Last thought, I agree with worry. The fringe are out there and they are whackadoodles! We can all point at them and know they are crazy, dangerous nutjobs. However, I think their extremism is like an onion in that their are layers. 8chan nazis and white supremicists (kill all non-whites) are supported by a a larger layer of right-wing white supremacists (america for whites only) who are supported by a larger layer of right wing fox news watchers (seperate but equal) who are supported by a larger layer of fox news watchers who havent made up their minds fully but who arnet against hearing the ideas etc etc.

The fringe cant exist in a vacuum and we have to be careful not to provide them cover. Its more nuanced than what I described but I think thats the core of it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

EdiT- I am back after having to google it

https://twitter.com/...769084602953728

This is the tweet that got chelsea clintion in trouble? Seriously?

This post has been edited by Cause: 17 March 2019 - 11:14 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

He didn't slap he Cause he full on punched him twice and was going to keep on doing so if someone hadn't stepped in and stopped him. Then his idiot followers carried on assaulting him and even that one guy kicked him while he was down. I get that it's not nice being egged but this is way over the top. It's the right wing "alpha male" thing where they show how tough they are to someone who is a lot weaker than them.

[Primateus]

Cause, on 17 March 2019 - 10:50 AM, said:

For Bill Maher. I recently discovered him and I love him. I dont watch his shows just segments like new rules on youtube. I find him hysterical. Its possible he has said something heinous I don't know about but I don't think he is particularly responsible for spreading Islamophobia. I think he is anti extremist, this includes muslim terrorists, SJWs, white-nationalists, climate denialists, christian evangelicals. He is also anti-religeon which is a sentiment I share to a degree (I just don't see any reason to promote it). I don't think he is anti-Muslim or promotes Muslim hatred though.

Not technically related to guns and guncontrol, but Bill Maher is pretty much a straight anti-scientific anti-waxxer. He's been told time and again that the Flu vaccine is an important vaccination that helps millions of people and that it works. But he continues to refuse to believe it works.

[Aptorian]

I'd also add that Maher IS decidedly anti-muslim. Though it's an idology and culture thing and not race based.

[Cause]

Primateus, on 17 March 2019 - 11:40 AM, said:

Cause, on 17 March 2019 - 10:50 AM, said:

For Bill Maher. I recently discovered him and I love him. I dont watch his shows just segments like new rules on youtube. I find him hysterical. Its possible he has said something heinous I don't know about but I don't think he is particularly responsible for spreading Islamophobia. I think he is anti extremist, this includes muslim terrorists, SJWs, white-nationalists, climate denialists, christian evangelicals. He is also anti-religeon which is a sentiment I share to a degree (I just don't see any reason to promote it). I don't think he is anti-Muslim or promotes Muslim hatred though.

Not technically related to guns and guncontrol, but Bill Maher is pretty much a straight anti-scientific anti-waxxer. He's been told time and again that the Flu vaccine is an important vaccination that helps millions of people and that it works. But he continues to refuse to believe it works.

Bill maher is anti vax? Never would have pegged him for it! He seems so pro science, logic etc.

[Malankazooie]

Missing, and probably should be most prominent is "Netflix of Snuff film / Netflix Snuff porn" or something similar.


Let's hear that pos Zuckerberg and his 'shift the paradigm', "move fast and break things" business model bullshit explain this away. I'm sure he and Sheryl Sandberg will do a VR TED Talk where their 'avatars' will walk around the site of the crime and awkwardly giggle.

[worry]

I stopped watching a while ago, but Bill Maher generally has "new atheist" types on -- Dawkins, Harris, etc. -- throughout the season specifically to demagogue about how Islam is a particular threat to civilization, but he has them on as the individual opening guest or the mid-panel special guest so that they can talk about it uninterrupted/unchallenged. He also has right-wingers of the same ilk -- Peterson, Bari Weiss -- to commiserate on this topic, even though the only thing they have in common (aside from smugness) is Islamophobia. Those aren't typically the segments that go viral...generally those are his final New Rules monologues.

I'm not saying he (or his writing staff) are always wrong on issues, or even that they're never funny despite Maher's ever-grating self-righeousness -- I'd agree with his New Rules thesis often enough, especially on environmental issues, and also as a personal flaw I am a creature of habit that has a hard time changing my routine -- but after a while I just couldn't say that any of these moments outweighed the very real, very ugly narrative he was selling. I could feel the ostensibly "liberal" audience, at least part of it, gradually coming around to his arguments, laughing less hesitantly at his oft-repeated "beekeeper suit" line, etc. and knew I was letting that slide too in light of the more entertaining parts of the show. There's also his other problems: the anti-vax stuff, the chauvinism, and -- when I finally gave up the ghost -- his casually saying the N word as a laugh line. But I'm still responsible for all the times I let that stuff slide, or defended his show despite those truths.

And hopefully I'm more mindful now than I was 15 years ago or whenever it started, and have a better grasp of this kind of stuff, and how the bottom contributes to the top:

Spoiler

[worry]

(I'm not like trying to convince anyone else to stop watching Real Time clips you get entertainment or peace of mind from, and I'm not saying Maher caused this incident, and I'm not saying Chelsea Clinton did either. But Maher's constant stoking of religious resentment against Muslims in particular, and Chelsea's weeks-long, disingenuous crusade against the US's first and only black Muslim Congresswoman for not wanting to pledge allegiance to Israel, are both tributaries to this larger phenomenon).

[Aptorian]

That I disagree with. Free speech is free speech. If he has a problem with Islam he's free to voice that sentiment. Just like he's done against Christianity before now. Islam doesn't get a free pass just because most of the believers are brown people.

While Maher could be wrong in what ever argument he makes, I've never noticed him being disengenious or particularly rabid in his rhetoric. He argues his points from that strange psuedo-liberal libertarian world view he has.

That's in my mind good. Maher likes to go against the grain and that includes being hard on Islam. He's not doing that from the position of a bigot. He's doing it as a political, ideological creature who sees a threat to his own culture. Why would he be softer on Islam than he is on the Democrats and Republicans he rails against every week?

You can't link every form of criticism to hate crimes or there'll be no conversation left.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 17 March 2019 - 09:09 PM

[Malankazooie]

About the kid smashing the egg. Not too shocked by the response myself. I've seen worse meted out for equivalent action or less.

To bring some lightness to this topic, watch this.

[worry]

Aptorian, on 17 March 2019 - 09:07 PM, said:

He's not doing that from the position of a bigot. He's doing it as a political, ideological creature who sees a threat to his own culture.

Read this back to yourself over and over until it clicks.

[Cause]

worry, on 17 March 2019 - 09:38 PM, said:

Aptorian, on 17 March 2019 - 09:07 PM, said:

He's not doing that from the position of a bigot. He's doing it as a political, ideological creature who sees a threat to his own culture.

Read this back to yourself over and over until it clicks.

I see no fault in Aptorians words. Extreme Islam is a threat to western culture, so is nazism, populism, extreme evangelical Christianity. In fact even when we speak of western culture we need to be more specific and define it by the decade and even which part of the west. Cultures change and adapt, from forces within and without. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. We can all challenge those ideas we dont like or abhor.

My country for example has its own culture and ideological battles going on all the time. Everything from the rainbow nation on one end to kill all white poeple on the other.

The pyramid of white supremacy says the lowest level is people backing away from challenging politics they dont agree with, if we have to challenge white people who think wrong thoughts we have to challenge everyone.

[worry]

Who doesn't already know that extremists are dangerous? And on what planet is Extreme Islam a threat to western culture? For one thing, Islamist terrorists, like any such group, are a bigger threat to the moderates and liberals in their own localities than they are anyone else. For another, the US and co. have dropped 32,000 bombs on Syria & Iraq alone in the past two years, so who's really a bigger threat to whom? The thrust of white supremacy is to other all Muslims -- or as many as possible, especially those that look a certain way -- in with that subset of "extremists". And that's Bill Maher's argument: Islam is a uniquely violent religion that creates terrorists, has few moderates at all (though he pays them lip service), and so its adherents broadly shouldn't be trusted. If he were arguing that extremists were dangerous, there wouldn't be an argument to have, cuz everyone already knows that.


And to be clear: When someone makes that argument, they are indeed furthering the white supremacist narrative that these "others" are a threat to so-called white western civ. They are indeed contributing to the Islamophobic status quo that leads to white supremacist extremists defending their 'homelands' and 'cultures.' And that is indeed a precondition to genocide. And all of this is more easily done than people are comfortable acknowledging because we're primed for it constantly. It's already normal. Even in the US we hear the propaganda that there are whole cities in England, or throughout Europe, that have been taken over by Muslims. The president of the USA literally instituted a Muslim ban, and our Supreme Court okayed it. So why are we even talking about Islamic Extremists? How many days has it been since a white supremacist gunman slaughtered people in two mosques, and the topic is already back to this? These white power fascists are, by orders of magnitude, bigger threats to democracy than "Extreme Islam" is even close to being.

[Aptorian]

We're talking about Islamic terrorism because on a global scale, Islamic terror and violence is a hell of a lot more prevalent than white hate crimes... So far.

Maybe it's different because America has always been a Hodge podge of nationalities. Western Europe is not like that. Scandinavia definitely not.

Up until the second half of the 20th century, the 60-70s, Denmark was a very homogenous country. And from the second half of the century to now we've become extremely secular. Religion has little to no meaning in our society today. It creates a lot of tension when the influx of immigrants increases.

When I think about Islam I have a hard time thinking of a culture and ideology that is more opposite to our society. Islam is less tolerant and more violent. That's plain to see. And the problem is that you cant isolate the issue - Islam is both a religion, ideology and nationhood. It's an identity.

The politicians in Denmark have no clue about how to address this. Our politics for the past ten years revolves primarily about integration, immigration and deportation. You'd be lucky to get a a debate about healthcare or infrastructure. And we're only digging a bigger divide.

Which leads to fear mongering and populism. As a counterpoint to Islam. And here we are, at a point where there are decidedly NOT fine people on both sides.