Decoding Trumpism: a cult survivor explains how the GOP became a death cult

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Decoding Trumpism: a cult survivor explains how the GOP became a death cult

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

This is sort of a weird example Prester John, but I think it represents the ideas you've been talking about on a much smaller and far more impotent scale: the SJW community on Tumblr.

People may remember hearing about how Boko Haram carried out mass killings in a town back in January. For a while the massacre became huge news on Tumblr with certain posts gaining hundreds of thousands of likes and reblogs. At the time I noticed a pattern: on Tumblr the issue was framed entirely around criticizing people in the West for not caring enough about the massacre. There was no interest in examining how Boko Haram came to be or how the corruption of the Nigerian government aided Boko Haram in becoming so powerful. Indeed, there was actually a massive amount of misinformation going around, including :nms:

graphic images :nms:

of dead bodies from entirely different countries being falsely associated with the attacks, that only obfuscated the issue further. This deeply angered many actual Nigerians on Tumblr, who were dismayed at how the lived experiences of people in Nigeria were being completely ignored:

quote:

I have now seen several posts speaking about how the main problem with Boko Haram is that �nobody cares when black people die�. I�m not going to bother to speak about how western racial constructs don�t apply in Nigeria as that conversation has been beaten to death, and if you don�t get it by now you are just choosing to be ignorant. Numerous posts about the Baga massacre seem to centre around how #BlackLivesMatter. I appreciate the sentiment, but this conflict, and the apathy we have seen from the Nigerian government to it�s citizens in this crisis, has absolutely nothing to do with race. This is not a #BlackLivesMatter moment, it�s a #GoodluckJonathonWhenWillYouCareAboutYourCountry moment. The Baga massacre (and the many many other attacks and kidnappings) have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the victims were �black�. Boko Haram are not perpetrating anti-black violence (it�s probably the only thing they aren�t doing) and when you conflate two unrelated issues like this together, you waste time and distract from the important things. The issue here is not that the world doesn�t care when black people die (which is not an incorrect statement at all), but that the Nigerian government does not care when Nigerians (in this case northern nigerians) die. To date there has been no acknowledgement by Goodluck or attempt to send condolences to the victims (but he did manage to find time from his extremely busy schedule of looting and general stupidity to send France his condolences).

When the #BringBackOurGirls campaign was at it�s height (and of course it is still going on), myself and many other Nigerians expressed our frustration over how the issue changed from being discussions about the growing crisis in Northern Nigeria, to an issue of black representation in American media. During that time I read dozens of tweets on how the perceived-lack-of response by western nations was a reflection of anti-black racism, but barely anything about how the governments lack of response (it took mass protests even to force him to publicly acknowledge the issue) showed how much Northern Nigerians have been abandoned by their own leaders.

After reading this in the OP:

quote:

Whether it be a Fundamentalist Zealot or an Objectivist shitlord, Authoritarians always have a narrative that determines everything they say, think, or do. Narrative is the true God of the Authoritarian... No matter what is actually happening, they will believe and behave as if the narrative is playing out exactly as they expected it too. Regardless of actual real world circumstances, outcomes, situations, or influences, Authoritarians always prize the narrative above all else.

I think I finally understand what was happening here. In SJW communities there are certain groups that have been designated as Victims, no matter how incorrect or irrelevant that label might be in specific contexts. Two of these groups are Muslims and black people. Basically, the idea is that black people and Muslims are always Oppressed, never the opposite. So, when confronted with a case where it's undeniable that the oppressors are black and Muslim, SJWs can't honestly discuss it because it would undermine that narrative. It took a little while for them to reframe the story and center the blame back where they're most comfortable: on the West. Meanwhile Boko Haram's role is downplayed or deflected entirely because their very existence endangers the truth of The Narrative (here's a particularly awful post that illustrates both points perfectly, with criticism).

This is just one example. I know most of the people reblogging these posts are teens and young adults who are just casual users, not hardcore cultists or anything like that, but there are definitely devoted SJWs on Tumblr that create their own toxic communities and lead their followers to harass, threaten, and doxx people that don't toe the line. Sometimes its against outsiders (I can think of at least three artists I followed who were driven off by harassment), but it can also be among their own devoted followers as well, just like the purges Prester John was talking about. And on Tumblr it's ridiculously easy to form a new group of your own after you get purged from your old one.

tl;dr: Tumblr's a bad site and I don't use it anymore

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 11:27

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 11:42

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

So what IS going to happen in the 2016 primaries, when there's an inevitable battle between the Tea Party GOP candidate vs. the establishment GOP candidate (Jeb Bush).

Normally I'd bet that the establishment candidate will get forced through again despite what the base wants, but PJ's said we're building to something especially crazy after the SC gay marriage decision. Can anyone guess what that would look like?

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 01:17

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Xibanya posted:

I also recently read an article that pointed out that while autism diagnoses are split roughly 50/50 between the sexes, men are diagnosed with Asperger's (or more correctly, high functioning autism) at a rate four times higher than women. The article went on to explain that those women who are diagnosed are often only diagnosed as adults, usually when they hit a wall in their professional career. The article went on to cite some individual examples and some research, and it appears that many women with asperger's are never diagnosed because our society forces women to manifest signs of empathy. So many women with asperger's, especially those who may have above-average intelligence, "learn empathy" by rote - that is to say, they study a person's face for clues to their mental state due to intentionally making it a habit rather than by instinct (to the point that for some, it becomes so rote that an outside observer would not be able to tell they were "weird" in some way.) I also read a separate article that cited a study that showed that in America, the average woman has more empathy than the average man (a difference presumed to be due to cultural rather than biological difference).

This is extremely interesting, do you have links? Google results seem to be pretty generic.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2015 05:16

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Prester John posted:

I would also suggest that the eldest daughter is the scapegoat of the family (a more or less universal feature of dysfunctional familes, and especially Narcissistc families) and as a result has been so abused that she is infantile and easily exploited. If her Father is a for real Clinical Narcissist than this has been intentionally done, likely because at a younger age she showed some signs of independence and has been made a public example of to her siblings.

Typically in Quiverfull/ATI families the oldest daughter is expected to take on a caretaker role to her younger siblings to help her mother (since there are SO MANY kids it's hard to have only one maternal figure to take on all the responsibilities). This can eventually lead to the daughter having more of a parental relationship to her youngest siblings than a sibling relationship. Here's a blog post from a woman who left a similar family who was also the eldest daughter taking care of younger siblings. She explains how taking on this role makes it even harder to leave because it's like abandoning your children, and the policy Quiverfull/ATI/Conservative Christian subculture parents have towards "rebellious" children is always cutting off contact between family and child completely. For the author, she has to pretend she's still religious and will raise her own children within the subculture in order to have any visiting time with her brothers and sisters.

If you're (not you specifically PJ, the entire thread) interested in learning more about the Duggars and their lifestyle I would recommend reading through all her blog posts.

FourLeaf fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jun 7, 2015

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 00:32

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Woolie Wool posted:

I find the idea of raising your own children within a cult you're only pretending to be part of for the sake of siblings you're in a hosed up quasi-parental relationship with completely perverse, and I really think she should put the needs of her actual children ahead of her "child-siblings" and leave the cult completely. One group or the other is going to lose no matter what, so it's better the already-indoctrinated sibling "children" lose than the biological children who are much younger and not yet indoctrinated.

She's only pretending when she visits her parents. In reality, she's not living the lifestyle at all and is raising her children religion-free. She has no intention of abusing her kids the way she was abused.

When her parents demanded that she break up with her boyfriend because he wasn't conservative or Christian enough, she refused and was essentially cut off from the family. Ironically once she married him she "passed from the authority of her father to her husband" so they backed off and now she can visit her siblings. But things are still awkward because the parents suspect something is up.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 02:02

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Morroque posted:

What gets me about the Duggar situation is how they managed to get as far as they did without one of the children dying. She must've had a miscarriage or something by now.

She has. Child #20 was stillborn. There are disturbing pictures.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2015 02:07

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

Jack Gladney posted:

Some who support him will probably drop away into not caring about politics, which most evangelicals did not until Reagan chose abortion as the social issue to get them in with the racists and the millionaires.

Just wanted to make a quick note that this isn't true; like so many things in American history the origins of the religious right are in racism, specifically rebellion against the end of segregation. Abortion was simply a smokescreen.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133#.U4cuc15MkmY

quote:

One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court�s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion. The tale goes something like this: Evangelicals, who had been politically quiescent for decades, were so morally outraged by Roe that they resolved to organize in order to overturn it.

This myth of origins is oft repeated by the movement�s leaders. In his 2005 book, Jerry Falwell, the firebrand fundamentalist preacher, recounts his distress upon reading about the ruling in the Jan. 23, 1973, edition of the Lynchburg News: �I sat there staring at the Roe v. Wade story,� Falwell writes, �growing more and more fearful of the consequences of the Supreme Court�s act and wondering why so few voices had been raised against it.� Evangelicals, he decided, needed to organize.

Some of these anti- Roe crusaders even went so far as to call themselves �new abolitionists,� invoking their antebellum predecessors who had fought to eradicate slavery.

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn�t until 1979�a full six years after Roe�that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right�s real motive: protecting segregated schools.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2016 13:48

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 11:42

FourLeaf: Dec 2, 2011

https://twitter.com/PGourevitch/status/760259258759909379

Ummmm :stare:

# ¿ Aug 2, 2016 02:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Decoding Trumpism: a cult survivor explains how the GOP became a death cult