Islamophobia

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Islamophobia

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Mandy Thompson posted:

What the hell is wrong with us?

A weak organized left that has abandoned the working class as a foundation, in conjunction with a series of economic crises and failed recoveries ('jobless recoveries' are effectively failures). "Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution".

Rather than think logically about the problems facing society, the path of least intelligence/greatest ignorance is to blame outsiders/'The Other'. Being inherently unknowable, it's very easy for them to appear monolithic and malicious, in the same way that you may see some threatening animal lurking in what is just a harmless shadow. Once this perspective is established, it is difficult to break, because of confirmation bias. You'll seek out what already confirms your suspicions and ignore those that contradict it. 'Muslims condemn paris attacks' Well that's just what they want us to think, secretly they support it, etc.

This is just one expression of the same problem you see throughout human history, one what will continue so long as people fail to love & understand each other unconditionally.

The fact that the main candidate being discussed here, Donald Trump, was able to transition seemlessly from degrading Mexicans to degrading Muslims should have been a tip-off about the psychology at play here.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2015 14:12

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 10:34

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Mandy Thompson posted:

Do you think there is any hope, long term?

Define "long term". In the next couple of decades? No way, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Some fascist groups will gain power first, then they'll run the country into the ground. Then it might end. Lots of people will die during the process.

Helsing made some good points, but they're US centric. If anything, the US has been late to get on the hate train.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2015 01:35

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It doesn't help in passing legislation, but if SCOTUS can be tilted then it's worth it.

My secret hope for this election is that trump is nominated, and then loses in the general - it'll turn an interesting election into a referendum on what are American Values or whatever, and Trump's nativism will get decisively crushed. If trump is denied the nomination, and rubio loses, the racist/fascist wing will only go into overdrive.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Nov 25, 2015

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 17:51

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Arbitration's main purpose is to get rid of class action lawsuits, which it does work at doing, and which is really bad. This has already been mentioned, in the thread on arbitration, which already exists. Go post there about it.

Re: Redistricting, It's honestly kind of astonishing how even enforcing a fair democracy has become a partisan issue, or more specfiically, a socially recognized as a partisan issue. But there's got to be some point at which it gives, they're going to have to gerrymander more and more just to stay in power, which is only going to make them look more and more desperate. It's obviously highly unethical, underhanded and deceptive, so their hypocrisy about how liberals are unfair to them or whatever is only going to look more and more self-serving. How long can that continue?

SedanChair posted:

I had been inclined to think "let the nuts have their day and get it over with" but I am not sure what the mechanism would be to cause it to be "over with" just because Trump made it to the general and lost. These freaks aren't going away.

But they can't pretend any longer that they have majority support, because they don't. I don't want them to have their way, I just want them to lose, publicly. If they decide to go Waco, all the better.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2015 04:48

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Manic X posted:

As sad as it is to say, I honestly don't think social mixing is a good idea; especially when certain cultures have agressive beliefs and tendencies.

The Athenians didn't annex the city states they conquered, they just demanded they pay tribute and poo poo. Don't really see what they have to do with communal values or whatever, or what communal values have to do with religion. We're well past the phase of human civilization where religion was the primary source of meaning and values.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2015 17:55

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

The same is true of Islam, incidentally, which is why I'm skeptical of claims that the should be some kind of Islamic pope - that's not the issue and I'm not sure it could actually help.

Also, all religions are magical thinking, but not all magical thinking is religious, and it's the whole set that is problematic. Not that you could ever solve this problem with legislation in any way.

# ¿ Nov 27, 2015 08:02

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Effectronica posted:

I don't know why reminiscence of modern scientific understanding is a moral point in a religion's favor. Is it because many supposed nonreligious atheists are actually practitioners of the atheistic religion of scientism?

Ignorance is generally seen as a bad thing, promoting ignorance and making it sacred is just plain awful. E.g. abortion wouldn't even be an issue if everyone understood (or at least didn't misunderstand) fetal development. So either its beliefs need to be in line, or it needs to be willing to more abstractly interpret them. Which, honestly, doesn't always happen, so your best bet is to just do away with religious claims that aren't morals-based - ie abolish religion as a source of morality and instead just argue over morality.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2015 05:06

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Helsing posted:

As I said above: religious toleration is a strategy for integrating cultural minorities. If anything it's an approach that shows a great deal more faith in western secularism than the people who ironically think that western society is on the verge of being over run by scary alien beliefs like sharia law.

This has been true historically, but part of the problem is that insular groups are adapting to this strategy. Part of that adaption is the creation of exclusive religious schools, gated communities, etc that create a closed loop of control. The best example is evangelical christians, but it's not exclusive to them. It's not enough to say 'well if we tolerate then they'll integrate' anymore, that won't necessarily work. Home schooling is a big one, and is basically used as an excuse to place children in an environment of ideological uniformity. In my mind, you basically need to ban that and schools that don't meet certain standards of quality. That along with making sending kids to schools compulsory should help fix the issue.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2015 02:39

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

computer parts posted:

Uh, that's been a thing for over a hundred years with the Catholic school programs.

Have you read the Prester John threads here on SA? It's a very different world, a lot more extreme.

Though to an extent, even Fox news/Right wing radio does this. You got this impenetrable bubble being set up, where no contradicting evidence gets in. Merely advocating 'tolerance' cannot work in this kind of environment. Not really sure what the solution is though.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2015 11:03

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Baloogan posted:

We will kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.

Wow, you're a real loving charmer. Kindly gently caress off, and take your bigotry with you.

computer parts posted:

Can you prove that? Specific examples, comparing what Prestor John said with historical notes about the Catholic system of yesteryear.

Proof would require the kind of involved comparative empirical study that would take years to complete. I'm not sure that has been carried out by anyone else, nor am I able to mount such an exercise on my own. Though if I had proof, this wouldn't be a matter of debate or discussion, it would be a matter of accepting established fact.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2015 08:01

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Yggdrassil posted:

Is it really like that? I think you are making the same mistake into which many people fall when saying "all muslims are terrorists". Islamophobia still sounds reasonable to me, but it is clear that some Islamophobes have gone clearly mad enough to go around actually hurting people -which is ridiculous, since that same violence is what I fear from Islam (the idea that I'll be subject to violence because I think differently from them).

But then your correct phobia would be of fascism, not Islam. Fascism/ethno supremacism can express itself within any ethnic group. The common factors are anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, militarism and elitism - which leads into anti-liberalism and anti-democracy. Isis has that in spades, but neither it not Islam in general are the sole owners of this kind of disgusting thought.

I think it's important to have a historical outlook on these kind of things, and when you contextualize Isis they, like Le pen, only gain power when there aren't any other options. They are just the pus-oozing cysts that exist on the surface of a more serious infection. They aren't the secret essence of Islam, as much as may they think they are, they're just a bunch of dickheads who got lucky.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2015 13:05

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

An Enormous Boner is correct, it's wrong to look at what ISIS says about themselves, and then turn around and go "well clearly they don't believe any of that, the real reasons are the more limited goals of retaliation/whatever". The answer is Yes and No. If it were purely a tit-for-tat affair, then none of their other actions make sense (artifact destruction, brutal & broadcasted beheadings, ethnic cleansing, taunting of western leaders etc). Wouldn't they be trying to keep a lower profile? That and just pure terror attacks are usually not the way to go.

You want a good contrast, think of the Moscow Theater Crisis. The people perpetrating that acted very differently; their procedure, the way they treated hostages, their bargaining positions, totally different. Their mistake was their enemy was Putin, who could not give two shits about being either moral or about the welfare of his own citizens, so he gassed them. But the terrorist's goals were limited, clearly explained, and their actions matched those goals - withdrawal from Chechnya, these hostages are our bargaining chips.

That isn't how ISIS operates. Would a mass-slaughter terror attack in the tourist hot spots of France reduce or increase the motivation of France to intervene? It's a really obvious question, with a just as obvious answer. Are we supposed to believe that they didn't ask themselves that? Are we to believe that they're that stupid? No, they can't be - so the assumptions we have about their motivations must be wrong.

This doesn't mean that ISIS is what Islam is really about, or any trash like that. But if you want to understand these kinds of groups, you have to think about them on their own terms. You can't project your own, modern understanding of the role of warfare (the Clausewitzian 'achievement of limited political goals that cannot be obtained by other means') onto them, because that's not how everyone else throughout history actually thought about war.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Dec 7, 2015

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 08:11

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 10:34

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Helsing posted:

It's a pretty serious issue. The leading GOP candidate's success seems to be coming largely from anti-Muslim sentiment, and more than half of GOP primary voters seem to support his call for a total ban on Muslims.

Honestly I feel that the real test for all the Islamaphobia in the states right now depends on exactly one number: How well Trump does in the Iowa Caucus. There are real issues with polling right now, that's not the case for polling a decade ago. People tend not to use landlines any more, you can't do automated polls on mobiles, and internet polls are tend to be horribly inaccurate. So you don't really know how well Trump is doing (who tends to poll much higher in internet polls than landline polls) until an actual election occurs. If he does well, that's going to have a three-fold effect a) Legitimize the rhetoric that has already occurred. b) create a 'space' for new, or perhaps more extreme rhetoric b) put moderate republicans on notice. The worst effect by far is c, because what it will demonstrate is that there is a serious risk of GOP moderates being primaried out by someone more extreme, so they'll have to change accordingly.

You want to blame one person for all this, there's only one answer: Rupert Murdoch. The fact-free bubble of prejudice and bigotry created by that man's media empire has had a real and lasting effect on US politics. Whether or not Trump wins the nomination, that bubble will still be there, and the people created by that bubble will still be just as extreme and dangerous. They're immune to rationality or evidence, and they've been whipped into a frenzy of fear.

So I'll be watching that caucus with interest, and I'm just hoping it's not as bad as it could be. But you never know.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2015 04:13

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Islamophobia