From Worker’s Liberty, “The shame of the invertebrate liberals”:
The liberal Establishment, including the liberal newspapers, have responded to the still-burning political explosion ignited by the Danish cartoons showing Muhammad in a downright disgraceful way. They have turned tail on the traditions of freedom of religion and freedom to have no religion, of free speech and a free press, which in less demanding times they claim as their own and are ever ready to denounce Marxists for allegedly not accepting or defending.
Very little of the political explosion triggered by the Danish cartoons seems to have been spontaneous, raw religious outrage. It has been fomented, organised, directed by organised political movements and leaders of political Islam, including the Saudi government, and, in Syria and Lebanon, by the quasi-secularised Syrian Ba’thist government.
From Karachi to London, to Baghdad, to Ramallah, the cartoons have been deliberately seized upon and used to organise a gigantic world-wide roll-call of the forces of Islamic reaction. The response has been impressive. And, as it was meant to be, intimidating. It has certainly intimidated the liberals.
The cartoons have been the focus for every grievance, resentment, imaginary insult or real injury which any part of the Muslim world feels against the non-Islamic world – against the modern world of globalised capitalism in general, and against American imperialism in particular.
Despite the presence of many grievances in the general mobilisation, the focus on the cartoons has made it a single movement with one upfront demand—that the non-Muslim world should obey the prohibition of (the majority of) Muslims against portraying (or against insulting) Muhammad.
That people everywhere should obey a rule of a religion they all reject, and some may abhor. That those who refuse to obey the Islamic edit should be punished and penalised by non-Islamic governments.
Western governments who do not want to have their embassies burned down, or their trade with Islamic countries boycotted and ruined, or the lives of their nationals in Muslim countries placed in jeopardy, had better make themselves enforcers for the rules of a religion which their citizens do not accept. That is the demand.
They must curb free speech and free expression. Curb the freedom to criticism and mock and outspokenly denounce religion—the freedom from which over centuries most of our freedoms have been spun and consolidated.
And how have the bourgeois-democratic governments and liberal newspapers and TV systems responded? In the face of an outcry which—whatever energies other than religious feelings have fuelled it—has been a vast outpouring of religious zealotry and bigotry, they have apologised!
They have scurried and run.
They have accepted the diktat of Muslim priests and of religious politicians whose goal and ideal is to establish everywhere authoritarian-theocratic states whose nearest equivalents in 20th century European history were the mid-century fascist states (including Nazi Germany before World War Two).
Newspapers possessing the wealth and weight to stand up to the outcry and the very real threats have chosen not to republish the cartoons. Most of them have tended to place recriminating blame on those who exercised, on Islam, the elementary right to criticise and mock religion.
Observer columnist Nick Cohen has pointed out that there is now in the Western democracies a double standard. Where other religions, such as Christianity, can be freely criticised, more or less, Islam has won for itself exemption. Not as an expression of real respect for Islam, but of fear – the fear of outcry and of physical reprisal against those who criticise or mock Islam, or treat it with hostility or contempt.
The Western governments and press have assumed, towards raucous political Islam, the role of the toady to the hysterical bully—the one who tells those inclined to defy and confront the bully not to “provoke†him or “anger†him, but to humour him lest he “do something desperateâ€Â.
Some of them remind themselves of the unfortunate fellow’s many wrongs to explain why he is touching and quarrelsome, and insist that the issue is really “racism† as if animosity to aggressive bigotry from people of the poorer countries is automatically “racismâ€Â.
For the invertebrate liberals, the fault lies not with the bigots. The issue is not an attempt by political Islamists to enforce on the media-shrunk global village in which we live the standards and methods of the least enlightened, and to suppress the civic rights and intellectual liberties it has taken us centuries to win. The danger is not that the standards of medieval-minded religion will become the international norm, that the bigots will gain the de facto right to regular what others are allowed to say and do.
No, the great fault lies with those who provoked and outraged the bigots by exercising the right  in Denmark, in far-away northern Europe  to mock and caricature Islam. The issue is that they have been provoked. The danger is that they will be provoked again. Self-censorship is thereby set firmly at the control panel.
Everything about this craven appeasement of rampant reaction stinks to high heaven. But what stinks most of all is the fact that what the bigots now try to do internationally is what they have done, and do, and intend to continue doing, to secularists, dissenters, heretics, non-compliers, liberals, and socialists in the countries where they are strong or dominant.
The AWL has an Iranian member whose family was wiped out when disapproving Islamists set fire to a cinema in Iran in the 1970s, before they took power in the “Islamic Revolutionâ€Â. Large numbers of people in Islamic countries, or coming from them, have similar stories to tell.
In the countries where they are strong or dominant, the political Islamists are the enemies of virtually everything socialists and liberals believe in. They have rooted out liberalism, secularism, and socialism, and persecuted and murdered those who could not be intimidated and cowed.
The craven surrender of the liberals and the liberal left therefore betrays not only themselves, and what people like them used to stand for. It betrays those fighting the bigots in their heartlands – the enemies and too often the victims of the religio-fascists in the Islamic world.
The issue is free speech, but it is not just that. It is not just a matter of finding and adhering to general and universal principles. The right to criticise and mock and denounce religion is not just one right among many similar rights. The freedom to criticise religion is, in history, the root out of which all other such freedoms have developed.
It was a long, slow development from the assertion by heretics and protestants – by Albigenses, Hussites, Wycliffites, Lutherans, Calvinists – of their right to disagree with the Catholic church and with each other, to our erstwhile right to freely express atheistic contempt and condemnation of religion  all religion.
It was not a matter of reaching an amicable agreement with the religious in the time of their strength and predominance. It was a matter of drawing a line between them and us and standing on it, of fighting them tenaciously to win the right to dissent and mock and criticise their entrenched bigotry.
Marx wrote truly in 1844, of a German society where religion had only recently been dominant and all-pervasive:
“The criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticismâ€Â. In history that is what it was.
It took us centuries of battles between dissenters and established religion, and the stages with which it was symbiotically entwined, to win the rights that the short-memoried invertebrate liberals now cravenly surrender!
The secular and social rights we have, the freedom from power-inflated superstitions armed to the teeth with the coercive power of a state, the right to think for ourselves and express our thoughts  all these we owe to the heretics who risked and often lost their lives in the struggle to let non-clerics read what they thought was the word of God, the Bible, and construe it for themselves in their own way.
The translator of the Bible whose work was the main basis of the King James version, William Tyndale, was in the early 16th century part of a free-thinking religious underground: he was kidnapped by Papal agents and burned at the stake. In 1880s Britain Charles Bradlaugh had to win four elections in succession before he gained the right for elected atheists to sit in the House of Commons as MPs without first hypocritically taking a religious oath. There were many many battles in between Tundale and Bradlaugh  and afterwards too. All that is being betrayed and prostituted by those who meekly accept the diktats of medievalist-minded political Islam. So are all those who now fight an equivalent battle for the same rights in Muslim countries.
The search for a common formula of “free speech†and “free criticism†acceptable to both the devoutly religious and the devoutly anti-religious, conciliating radically hostile world outlooks, is a nonsense, and a snare and a trap for one of the “sidesâ€Â.
The idea of “tolerance†and “free speech†held to by serious liberals and democratic socialists is incompatible with any fervently (that is, seriously) felt fundamentalist religion. According to such religion, God made the world and rules over it.
The founders of the faith were his instruments, guided by him, realising his will. The texts and tenets of the faith are the Word of God, conveyed through prophets and messengers, who merely spoke or transcribed his words. The rules, customs, and rites have been established under the direct guidance of God.
There is only one God. There is, there can be, only one truth  the truth of the religion, that is, God’s truth, which the true believers personify.
Those who do not accept that truth are in error. They are the enemies of the truth, of God’s truth, of God himself. They are in a state of abominable sin. They resist and fight against God himself, as revealed to us by God’s messengers and prophets. Their lives are no more than a period of waiting outside the gates of Hell. They are instruments of Hell in life. They are instruments of the Devil, the vile anti-God, God’s enemy and ours.
They do not have the right to speak – or even an inalienable right to live. And so on.
A consistent and serious religious outlook on the world is in its most profound nature an absolutist, a totalitarian outlook. Such the “great world religions†of Christianity and Islam were in the periods of their vigour, rise, and conquests by word and deed. Such, much of Islam still is, and large and reviving parts of Christianity.
Between coherent, seriously-held religion and the principles of liberty and tolerance, there is no possible modus vivendi. The non-religious have to fight for and win their rights against convinced bigots. That is how, in the history of Europe, our rights were won. That is how the struggle is now in the Muslim countries.
The idea of accepting that you may be wrong, that the opposite viewpoint to yours and your fellow sectarians’ may be right, or that both they and you may be partly wrong  and therefore that your faith is only partly right  in short, of tolerance and respect for other views  that, where it pervades the religious, as for example it pervades most Christians in Britain now, is a product of the decay of religion, of its retreat before science, reason, and secular society. It points to its demise.
Our freedoms of criticism, inquiry, and expression were not won by reason, sweet or bitter. They were won in conflict, in war, by tests of strength of the conflicting forces.
They were won against the bigots of Christianity. They will be won in the Muslim world in conflict with the bigots of Islam. It is those locked in the now very unequal conflict with the religious bigots of Islam that the invertebrate liberal appeasers of aggressive bigotry betray, as well as betraying the proud tradition which it is the duty of Marxists to sustain and maintain.
[My emphases]
For what it’s worth, the White House response to the cartoon conflagration—we respect your right not to like what was said; we reject your claim to ownership over criticism—was precisely the right tack. Unfortunately, the majority of our newspapers, many of our domestic progressives and liberal democrats, and the bulk of European elites, simply rationalized the illiberal demands of the de facto spokesmen for Islamism as perfectly reasonable within a multicultural paradigm.
And thus, our insensitivity was what drove these “victims” to riot and violence.
So yes, the British Marxist tirade against such nonsense (more proof we are living in a bizzarro world, by the way) is a nice splash of cold water, sure. But if many liberals don’t believe the terrorists when they declare their intent to kill us, what makes us think they are going to believe a bunch of Marxists telling them that they’ve been used as useful idiots?
(h/t Craig Caughman)
****
related: Agora sends along his translation of a piece by Helle Merete Brix for Sappho in Denmark that touches on the Mohammed cartoon controversy.
God damn it, I hate it when I have to agree with fucking Marxists! (spit)
Dude. This has got to be the least campy Marxist rag article in the history of ever. I mean–only one ‘bourgeois’, a paltry single Marx quote–this could almost have been written by a functioning member of the real world.
10 to 1 the guy who wrote it’s eighty years old. At least–every younger Marxist’s since had his balls lopped off by Edward Said.
“bizzarro world” is quite an understatement. A fierce defense of Western Liberty…well said by a British Marxist. I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or get drunk. Maybe all three…
– Only those that have been laboring under some naive notion that the left has any real deep seated honorable beliefs that go beyond the next five minutes, or reflect anything more than an anti-conservative emotional angst, would be the least bit surprised by this sort of turn of events. Its exactly what you come to expect from the “people of the moral relativism”.
– In a world of rampant “equivalencies” there are no issues at cross purpose, nor ironies from the same. All things are plausible in the name of the cause. All stances on issues are reversible on a moments notice. The political version of the “Plastic Man”. Unfortunately instead of “all things to all people” they’ve become “nothing to anyone”, except of course their own hard core believers. Its as if the “Party of Socialism” has transformed into the party of all things asocial.
– They seemed to have evolved to a cult that specializes in being on the wrong side of every issue. Perhaps the real flaw in relativism is, that while it allows you to morph issues to your point of view, it does so at the expense of common sense and real world workable solutions, wherein history teaches over and over that evasion and denial never solves anything.
I see it as a realization of the need for self defense. Those that deny the existance of G-d, as marxists must, will be the first to go under the new European sharia.
After the Jews of course.
– Speaking of ironies wouldn’t it be bizarre if the Marxists were forced to appeal to the Christians and Jooooossss for protection…..
well, to be fair, Christopher Hitchens has been doing a fairly intense amount of writing on the subject, and he’s an avowed trotskist.
tw: schools, as in, just because all the socialists hanging out on the campus quad are twats, that doesn’t mean Marx intended it that way.
Our freedoms of criticism, inquiry, and expression were not won by reason, sweet or bitter. They were won in conflict, in war, by tests of strength of the conflicting forces.
Don’t agree with ^ statement. Our freedoms are won by reason first.
Maybe I just need to review the context, but any way the statement is set, I won’t like it. Plus, I think your remarks about taking the language back imply that reason has to whoop first. A just conflict?
I agree. No one should be forced to kowtow to religious fanatics.
That is why what is going on now in South Dakota, effectivel approving coathangers as medical instruments for poor women seeking abortion is so disgraceful.
Oh, were you talking about the Toon Wars? I thought everyone agreed. Flemming Rose was a schmuck but that’s no reason to riot. Anyone seriously think he’s a hero? Or that’s a reason to riot? Meanwhile, America’s homegrowns lunatics advance ever closer to theocracy. And don’t kid yourself. That is exactly what the Robertsons and the Dobsons and the Randalls are angling for. And they’ve said so, repeatedly.
THREADJACKER!!!!!
Why ris, I thought the topic was coercion by religious lunatics. Or are you of the opinion that the only religious lunatics are islamists but not our very own homegrown loopy christianist dopes?
A pox on all of ‘em, sez I.
Ayn Rand once told Buckley that he was too intelligent to believe in God. (She was wrong, obviously.) Someone should tell the author of the above article that he’s too intelligent to believe in Marx.
When the people of South Dakota cross over the border of Minnesota to force them to abolish abortion under threat of violence, then you will have a point tristero. Until then, keep banging your head against the wall because it is about as effective at your attempts at analogy.
This, of course, doesn’t even take into account the fact that this new law still has to pass constitutional muster, which it may not. Best to start you out slow, once concept at a time.
BECAUSE OF THE STRAINED ANALOGIES!!
Call us when Dobson issues a fatwa and then some crazed christo lunatic kidnapps a truck driver from Iowa, saws his head off, then posts the video on the internet. Or perhaps when Operation Rescue holds a protest that gets out of hand and they burn the Belgian Embassy in Washington. ‘Till then please do Jeff and the rest of us a favor and chill with the non-sequitors.
Typical marxist. Starts out with a call to arms for all those in favor of freedom (freedom of religion and freedom from religion) then finishes with a call for the end of all religion (with the noted exception of his own.)
Yeah, he’s going to win alot of converts. Quite frankly I don’t want this guy on my side in any fight.
Marixsts 1, EuroWobblies less-than-zero.
Go Marxists!
T/W: wrong. Cut it out, Jeff!
A Marxist calling a liberal a useful idiot. Hmm.
Well, he would know one when he saw one, right?
nawoods,
McVeigh had numerous ties to radical christianists. About a year or two ago, a huge christianist armory was uncovered by sheer accident. There were active plans for terrorism. Eric Rudolph bombed abortion clinics. Other christianists post the names of doctors on websites, harass women seeking medical advice, and so on. Randall Terry has made his willingness to see a theocracy quite well known. As has Dobson. If Dobson chooses to let others do the violence, that merely means he is not legally culpable. Morally, he’s culpable.
I strongly suggest you read the works of people like Morecraft and Rushdoony before you pretend that these people are any better than the Toon Warriors. The problem is exploitation of religion by ruthless political operatives, whether the dominant culture is Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Hindu.
Or do I detect some… cultural relativism at work? Is Eric Rudolph or Tim McVeigh morally superior to an al Qaeda thug? How so? Perhaps we should ask their victims that question. The ones that survived, that is.
Are you saying that the people of SD support this law unanimously, and that, therefore, no initiation of force will be required to enforce it within that state? If that were the case, the law would be unnecessary.
tristero
Your inability to grasp the obvious continues to amaze.
McVeigh? Dead. Dead, dead, deadity dead. Courtesy of the state and a jury that no doubt had plenty of christians on it.
Rudolph? Locked away forever, but should be dead. Think there were any christians involved with that? Did the majority of Americans just shrug their shoulders at his crimes? No. How large is his cheering section? So small as to be almost invisible.
Randall Terry and James Dobson are free men who are allowed to express whatever opinion they wish about the direction this country should move, as are you. They have exactly no chance of establishing a theocracy. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. It just ain’t gonna happen.
Do you get it yet?
No. Do you think that all laws require the coercion of christian dupes?
Some Guy,
True enough, but I think Hitchens has woken up somewhat and he smelled the coffee of reality a while ago. He simply keeps his protestations of Ice Pick Skullism going to keep his bona fides straight.
But, again, your point is well made.
Que? Christianists? What the hell is a christianist? McVeigh was not a ‘christian” terrorist. Step away from the bong.
Yes. Eric Rudolph bombed abortion clinics. And he was captured while taking food from a dumpster behind a grocery store in rural NC after living like a hermit in the Appalachians for years(in other words, there wasn’t much of a movement supporting him was there?). He is now on trial. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in this country, christian or not, who does not wish that jackass punished to the full extent of the law.
Here tristero. Go through these and report back to us on how many of these are related to “christianist” vs. jihadis.
Oh well. If the people in the state of South Dakota voted these guys in, and these guys approved this law, then by extension, SD approves of this law. This country is still a representative republic, last I heard.
If the 1973 USSC hadn’t taken the individual states’ rights away, this would have been solved years ago. And please don’t start in on the “Tyranny of the majority” meme – the minority have no bigger right to tyranny than the majority.
TV (Harry)
A christianist is someone who exploits the holy symbols of Christianity for political gain. Similar to an islamist. It is not that an unusual term. In fact, William Safire wrote an article about it for the NY Times.
I don’t smoke pot, nawoods.:As you surely recall McVeigh was video’ed at the Davidians. He had numerous ties to Elohim City. The militia movement is made up almost entirely of radical christianists.
In fact, numerous people helped Eric Rudolph hide, which is the only way he could manage to elude capture for so long. As for people not wanting Rudolph punished, ask those in “rural NC.” And I would not characterize a bombing murderer as a “jackass.” Osama bin Laden is far worse than that. So is Rudolph. Unless you indulge in “cultural relativism.”
William Krar, another christianist and militia member was caught with more WMD – one cyanide bomb, the makings of at least one more – than have been found to date in Iraq. A little bit of googling will turn up numerous far right christianist groups – Christian Identity, Army of God – who have advocated, and perpetrated violence. Christianist violence is no joke. If the aboveground bastards like Dobson or LaHaye are too clever to be caught pulling the triggers or lighting the fuses, that doesn’t get them off the hook morally.
Are christianists different than islamists? Of course. Are there as many of them as there are islamists? Proportionally, I think most experts would agree there are. Do christianists tend to riot? Potentially, yes and definitely, if you count some of the more obstreperous abortion clinic protests. During the final days of Schiavo, there was a little remarked standoff between the local police and the state authorities, who had been instructed to seize Schiavo. They had been urged to do so by various christianists, for example these clowns . Fortunately, the state officers backed down (see here).
In opposing their attempts to establish theocracies, I fail to see any reason to make any moral distinction between any group, islamist or christianist, zionist, hinduist, etc, that hides behind the skirts of its priests to advance a purely secular agenda. Yes, the particulars are always very different, but only a “cultural relativist” would think one is less worthy of moral contempt than another.
If you want to argue that fellow travellers like Robertson are not in the same league as Rudolph, then it is only right to argue that there is a distinction between islamists and radical, violent islamists. In which case, the issues at stake in the Toon Wars become far more complicated than the black/white story of press freedom issues Flemming Rose’s apologists are so anxious to propagate.
What’s your point with that link, nawoods? Did I deny that radical islamism is a major danger? I did not. It is a profoundly serious danger. Did I say the people who rioted over the toons, who killed or who died overt it, were anything other than cynical manipulators or pathetic dupes? I did not. That is exactly what they are.
So, radical christianism is less widespread outside the US than radical islamism. So what? Are you saying that radical rightwing christianism isn’t a serious problem in the US? It most certainly is.
The major problem is political extremism disguised as religious zealotry or devout belief. Political extremism so virulent that its followers call for assasinations, nuclear bombings, and in some cases even acquire weapons of mass destruction. It is a problem that transcends a particular religious tradition. To ignore the homegrown American brand of this danger and confuse Islam with islamism – thereby creating paranoid fantasies of a clash of civilizations – is to make a very serious error in judgment, one that is guaranteed to make it impossible to effectively fight the people who truly are trying to destroy this country, namely political fanatics who disguise their agendas behind their profession of religious “orthodoxy.”
So. . .you actually read all 1,124 pages of ‘Roots of Christian Reconstruction’? Let me rephrase that, actually–you were even able to *find a copy at all*? Holy shit, man.
Feh. Rushdoony, Kingdom College, and the ‘dominion theology’ folks–taken the class, read the scary literature, got the T-shirt. Am not trying to argue that one guy arguing for legally stoning gays is any ‘better’ (as a person) than another. Am simply arguing that the lunatic with an enormous popular following and/or *actual* government power as well as no significant opposition is . . . slightly more dangerous than one or two arcane peripheral religious figures better known to guilty Unitarians and theology professors than your average dippy McMansion megachurch attendee and praise band enthusiast (and they’re all going straight to the hot place anyway–did you know that you’ll go to Hell for listening to Rock n’ Roll in church? I shit you not–check your dogeared copy of ‘Institutes of Christian Law’
.
Excuse me, Alex, but you are dead wrong on the lack of influence of the “Christian Reconstructionists.”
In case you don’t know this, it was one of the wealthiest of Rushdoony’s acolytes who was the initial funder (Ahamson) of the Center for the Renewal of Society and Culture at the Discovery Center. In other words, “intelligent design” creationism would not be a public issue of any importance whatsoever without Reconstructionist funding. Furthermore, it is Rushdoony’s political philosophy, aptly summarized in a book he endorsed, Joe Morecraft’s “With Liberty and Justice For All” that serves as the foundational basis for many christianist efforts.
Yes, it is more complicated than that. Rushdoony loathed the Falwells of the world. But just as the secular right implemented the program of the Birch Society but ditched their rationales, so have christianists tried to implement the theocracy of Rushdoony while ignoring his reasoning.
No, I haven’t read Roots of Christian Reconstruction. But if I can get a copy, I will read it. Perhaps not entirely, but enough to get the point. I have read other things by Rushdoony, however.
So is it your claim then, tristero, that this country is indistinguishable morally from, say Iran, because we have groups that might like to see a theocracy imposed or who are willing to use violence to attain that end? Is that your contention?
I certainly would not argue that extremism that crosses the line into violent behavior regardless of the belief of the perpetrator is excused just because I share a belief with one and not the other. I don’t think you’ll get any defense of Rudolph, McVeigh or any other terrorist here.
The difference is that the adherants of Christ do not condone such behavior and openly repudiate it. The adherants of Mohammed not only approve of the terrorist actions by Islamists, the actively support and incite such action.
This is an asinine statement. Even if you include Rudolph and McVeigh as “Christain Fascists” the sum total of “Christains” murdering is no place remotely close to the numbers killed in the name of Islam.
If you equate “protest” to “riot”, then I guess all of the protests of the Left in the last four years have been “riots” equal to the burning of cars and buildings in France, the burning of buildings and businesses all over the world and the killings resulting from those Islamic “protests”.
There is absolutely no danger of a gay man or lesbian woman being stoned to death by Christians, a young woman being hanged by Christians because she was raped or a young man being lashed by Christians because he held hands with a woman not his wife. That is the difference between zealous believers here and the rest of the world.
You need to hang this one up. You’re over your minutes.
It is a problem which exists to different degrees in different religions and in the different societies which espouse them in different eras. It does not lend itself to glib equivalence, it cannot be ‘dealt with’ in every one of it’s very specific manifestations in the same way, and each of these specific manifestations is *not* equally dangerous.
As for “political fanatics who disguise their agendas behind their profession of religious “orthodoxy.—–that’s a very curious thing to say. Why do you assume that a man who wants to impose religious government obviously does *not* actually believe anything he himself says he believes? Fun as it may be to assume that the prissy fundamentalists are all *really* whoring, child-molesting, wife-beating, drunken and drugged-out hypocrites–I see no reason to assume that, say, Bin Laden must not *genuinely* think that killing unbelievers is his religious duty. And when a man is ready to kill himself for his expressed religious beliefs, what ulterior motive can he really have?
Forgot my disclaimer:
I am an atheist. People who are Christians, Jews, Islamists, Buddists, Hindus or any other belief system do not bother or intimidate me. I’m just thankful I’m free to be an atheist, here, in the good old USA. I would not have that freedom in most eastern or middle eastern countries. My belief, or more accurately, my lack of one, would be a capital offense.
Anyone who sees the handfull of whacko nutjobs who blow up abortion clinics as the equal of the world-wide islamic jihadists is not to be taken seriously, in my book. Both are very bad, indeed. But certainly not even remotely comparable.
– Ah but you’re missing the whole point nikkolai. That tiny tiny sliver of extremists need to be inflated to prominence, in order to serve as the lefturds core demonization argument of all things Conservative.
– If you’re really generous with the numbers at any given point in time, taking all the cults/individual goofballs into account, ypou might be able to account for say 10,000 people. I doubt that seriously but lets use that for a number. Dividing that into 340 million Americans/aliens et al, you get roughly 0.00294
percent of the population.
– Really need to mount a serious eradication program against a threat of that magnitude, yes we do.
– Piff. More leftwing nattering…
Alex,
You can order the Roots of Christian Reconstruction from the Chalcedon website. I just did. It was easy, like ordering from Amazon.
Ris,
Much of your last post is just cultural relativism on your part, excusing your own culture’s extremes while unconditionally condemning a culture you hardly know a thing about. The fact is that politcal extremism and bigotry in the name of religion is awful. Period. It is unacceptable. Period. It is a perversion of genuine religious belief. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses.
You are wrong about the followers of Islam in general, as if it is reasonable to generalize about religious beliefs held by 1 billion people! You are talking out of ignorance of Islamic history, of the Qu’ran, of the hadith, of Islamic tradition. You can also find numerous violent statements in the Bible and you can find a long, long history of politicians, including those in Christian churches that have used those statements to justify atrocities. And they are still used that way.
The number of people involved in the militia movement, which is almost exclusively christianist, is enormous, and underplayed. William Krar was caught by accident. We weren’t so lucky with McVeigh or Rudolph. If the modern day American christianists have yet to equal the toll of modern day radical islamists, it sure as hell isn’t from lack of trying. Unless, of course, you think Krar, Rudolph, or Terry were/are somehow less serious about establishing a theocracy than bin Laden. They are not.
As for gay men not being stoned to death by Christians, you can’t be serious. Apparently, you haven’t heard of Matthew Shepard or the odious “Reverend” Fred Phelps who thinks that is a very good thing. And Shepard is only the most visible recent victim in the gay community. And their are numerous assaults on people because they are in some “unacceptable” way different than the local religious lunatics, not only because of sexual orientation. These are evil, ugly people.
There’s a difference between a protest and a riot. Sometimes the difference is clear. Other times less so. Sometimes a protest is defined as a riot by the powers that be. Sometimes vice versa. I would not describe the violent, abusive treatment that has occurred at some – repeat some – abortion clinics as a protest. I would call them riots. There have been protests, and not riots, by anti-choice forces as well; no one has problems with those. In other Your statements about “the Left” are ludicrous provocations.
Ris, it is sheer luck that the christianists haven’t done worse than the Murrah building yet. They can, and they surely will as long as the problem is defined as a “clash of civilizations” and not the worldwide radical political exploitation of religious belief, including within the US. That is the problem. It certainly is not Islam as a religion. (Nor is it Christianity, either.)
So when was the last abortion clinic blown up in America anyway? If we’re gonna compare acts of violence perpetuated in the name of Christ, in America, with daily acts of violence perpetuated in the name of Mohammed, in the middle-east, it might be handy to know the stats. Again I think it’s a equivalence issue that won’t stand up. The leftist posters on here seem to have a special talent for creating these two legged horses.
To claim that Nichols, McVey, Rudolf or any of the rest of these goobers, were making a case for Christianity as it is practiced in America is stretching way the fuck past the breaking point IMHO. Create fantasy facts to fit your fantasy worldview, why don’t you.
As for myself, I don’t recall reading or hearing about one in over 10 years, maybe 15. But I’m not a total news junkie either.
Alex,
“As for “political fanatics who disguise their agendas behind their profession of religious “orthodoxy.—–that’s a very curious thing to say. Why do you assume that a man who wants to impose religious government obviously does *not* actually believe anything he himself says he believes? “
I don’t care whether or not s/he believes it or doesn’t. I care only about the political action. Belief is private. I have no idea if bin Laden is sincere or cynical, or whether Pat Robertson is, and I truly don’t care. What I care is that both of them are fighting to establish theocracies in their respective worlds, they are using their profession of religious piety to pretend their political activity is “religious,”: and they must be denounced as the evil bastards they are, and stopped.
Religious belief is one thing; that gets my respect, even with religions I don’t understand. Secular political activity in the name of a religion earns my contempt, anger, and implacable opposition. Whether the person doing it has an Anglo Saxon name, an Islamic name, a Jewish name, a Hindu name, and so on.
nikkolai,
I take the blowing up of abortion clinics very seriously. As seriously as the blowing up of the Murrah building. I take William Krar very seriously. You should, too. They are comparable to the radical islamists. And their apologists/fellow travelers, like Dobson, LaHaye, and Randall, are advancing the very same agenda, but refuse to draw any kind of serious line between themselves and these nutjobs.
Sticky B,
The man’s name is spelled McVeigh. That you misspelled it is a clear indication you don’t know the first thing about what you’re trying to talk about.
I suggest you start by googling “William Klar.” Then do some research into the militia movement’s religious beliefs. And the similarity between their objectives and those of the and so-called “mainstream” folks like Dobson, LaHaye, Donohue, Robertson, and Falwell.
Then let’s chat
Why the antipathy toward the Davidians? Seems like they could have been safely ignored. If the Feds had a problem with Koresh, they could have arrested him.
Minding one’s own business seems to be out of favor. With both political parties.
tristero,
I had a long post deconstructing your moral relativism argument and lost it. So to sum it up if you believe that Radical Christians are equivilant to Radical Muslims, then you are unreasonable. And as such it has always been my policy to not try to reason with an unreasonable person.
So, piss off.
I find this analogy disturbingly appropriate, how often to you hear these same phrases in a domestic abuse situation?
You guys leave tristero alone, it’s just so wrong to pick on the retarded that way.
– Could we have a hallelujah!
TW: “….During quiet moments alone in his darkened room, he could almost feel the faceless people moving around outside his door plotting his demise…..”
I stopped reading from here on out. Any nitwit who thinks THOSE chumps wield power, or WILL wield any sort of relevant power in today’s society can take a hike.
He said nothing about any of these, nor did he need to; once again, you are being glib–a book/text is, in the end, no more than a tool in the service of a religion (as is a tradition)–the important thing is how the culture currently chooses to interpret that text or construct that tradition. The important thing is how the members of a certain religion now choose to *act*–and this knowledge is accessible to religious scholars and laymen like. What fine gloss could being a Qu’ranic scholar, well schooled in all the loveliest verses about nonviolence and charity and love, possibly give to Madrid and Bali?
I think more than luck separates NYC (twice), Madrid, Bali, etc. from Oklahoma City. McVeigh and Rudolph were half-crazed individuals, not members of vast organizations with powerful political allies. More than luck explains the fact that Theo Van Gogh is dead, Rushdie spent years in hiding, and the Danish cartoonists are even now themselves in hiding–but mockery of Christians remains a comfortable stable of modern faux-transgressive artists from the most to the least famous.
What Rushdoony-like figure has the power or popular prestige to put Salman Rushdie into hiding, or put a bounty on the heads of the Danish cartoonists? Where are the average Christians in the street brandishing McVeigh’s picture or wearing a Fred Phelps T-shirt? Where in America are the Protocols of the Elders or Zion or Mein Kampf outselling (or even approaching) sales of ‘Purpose Driven Life’? The great religious revival–megachurches and the like–in this country at present is not among fundamentalist sectarians, but is if anything the product of ‘name it and claim it’ prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen or Rick Warren, teaching a mild ‘God wants you to be happy’ consumer-friendly market-oriented kind of pragmatic and highly undemanding faith.
Where are the Islamic equivalents of liberation theologians, of the liberal seminaries? Where are the advocates for the ‘historical Mohammed’ and a contextual, critical understanding of the Qur’an–outside of these same Western liberal schools of religion?
I don’t begin to disagree with you on the individual evil of violent fundamentalists in any tradition–Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or otherwise–I have no desire to see a ‘clash of civilizations’ and I thoroughly want to love and respect all religions and am happy to see them practiced in all their leper-kissing, column-standing, self-flagellating madness in all traditions as long as they harm no one other than the freely choosing individual believer, but you are overstating your case to the point of absurdity.
Trying to blur *all* believing madmen of all traditions together simply doesn’t work; there are vast differences in degree as I have said already–and to point out some general universal impulse to madness in religion as the problem is to abstract far beyond any hope of actually solving or fighting it.
Really?
So, screw Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, Leonardo Boff, the Catholic priests of the Basic Ecclesical communities gunned down in the streets for their *left wing* activism in the face of militant death squads in Latin America, the liberation theologians generally, Benedita da Silva, Mensa Otabil, the 19th century Transcendentalist and Unitarian anti-slavery activists, . . . and so on, so on, and so on?
Really?
Hold on one second. I must have missed something. When did McVeigh turn into a “christian” terrorist? Where has he ever stated that his attack was meant to set up theocratic government in the US?
And the point was to illustrate just how absurd your your fear of christian terrorists is. Such beings do not exist in this country. There is no way whatsoever to compare Jerry Falwell to Mullah Omar or Osama Bin Laden.
The minute the lefties needed a straw man.
Remember your history? Generally when a third-world shithole burned down an embassy, they got a first-world army up their ass.
Times have changed, I guess…and not for the better.
tristero
I mispelled the name of an obscure psycho loser, who committed a heinous act of terrorism somewhere in the neighborhood of a decade ago and it disqualifies me from the conversation? You arrogant, condescending fuck. You come on here and spew bullshit, but thten refuse to engage someone because mispelling a name proves their unworthiness to enter the conversation? However you spell his name, I don’t think he’ll be in the history books 100 years from now.
Anyway……answer the question if you know the answer. When was the last time an abortion clinic was blown up in the US in the name of Christ? Your equivalence arguments between Christianity in America and Islam in the Middle-East are ludicrous and I don’t really care what kinda fuckin’ nutbags you Google.
Hey, next time you guys shred a lamer twit like Tristero like this, leave a bit of the carcass for me.
Sheesh, you think you got buddies …
Good luck getting a straight answer from tristero, sticky B.
That’s essentially where I left it with the little twat on a past thread.
Apt still.
Damn….I was hoping for a few more hallelujah’s… crap
TW: ….So okkkkk you guys didn’t think it was the spleen….fine
Hallelujah.
AND back to the subject
Most of the “Marxists” one meets these days are really Stalinists, though if pressed they’ll admit to Leninism. This essay sounds much like the original thing.
We tend to forget that Marxism, as originally practiced, was a strain of liberalism—Marx was arguing that workers (as free individuals) should, and eventually would, band together to oppose the forces that oppressed them. There’s even a subset of Marxism that is recognizably libertarian (Bakunin & co.) Check Norm Geras for a slightly different version of the same vein of thinking.
It was Ulyanov and Trotsky, together, who introduced what Jeff calls “identity politics” by regarding the Working Class as an identifiable thing (using Marx’s identity-word, Proletariat) in which individuals were merely cogs whose identities were irrelevant. Ulyanov then posited the Cadre, or Vanguard of the Proletariat, which (being better educated and more socially aware) would educate and lead the Proletariat to Socialism. Having thus reinvented the Nobility, Lenin takes his place in the mainstream of European thinking, and the rest, as they say, is History. (Stalin’s contribution is, in the end, eugenics—one creates New Soviet Man by executing everybody who doesn’t fit the specs. Lenin trended that way, but Stalin institutionalized the notion.)
An originalist Marxist believes that the Crisis of Capitalism has to come first, and that in order for that to happen capitalism has to (appear to) succeed in a big way. Only when it does will the concentration of wealth Marx predicted become onerous enough to inspire the workers to organize; before that there will always be a way for the capitalists to buy off the Proletariat by sharing a trivial amount of their loot. You can even find a few of them bright enough to argue that the best way to hurry Historical Inevitability is to help capitalism succeed because that will bring on the Crisis sooner. This writer would appear to belong at least somewhat in that category.
The vast majority of Leftists one finds these days are millenialists—think “Jim Jones”—who believe that some action of theirs (preferably destructive and/or disruptive) can bring on the Crisis of Capitalism and Triumph of Socialism sooner. Despite being (as mentioned) identifiably libertarian, this notion comes ultimately from Bakunin and his allies (“I do not forget to smash the State!”—meaning “in addition to the capitalist oppressors”). Unlike Christian Millenialists, who tend to go off to a mountaintop to wait, then come back with sheepish expressions (or commit seppuku in disappointment), the Left Millenialists tend to be a right royal pain in the butt to anybody who just wants to get on with it—and they have a strong tendency to see anybody as wilfully destructive as they are as an ally, hence… well, you fill in the blanks.
All of which is a longwinded way of saying that I find the essay gratifying, but not really surprising. The writer is an originalist Marxist, and despite the fact that such folks are as full of s*t as the Municipal Water Treatment Facility they are, in fact, firm, staunch members of the liberal tradition and should be treated as such. It’s their successors that are the problem. We tend to joke about sectarianism and schism on the Left, but you should pay at least enough attention to such things to recognize the major strains. It does make a difference. actus, for instance, is a Fabian (which is not a Marxist sect) with Leninist leanings.
Regards,
Ric
nawoods  Well, the folks at Waco proved they were Christian terrorists by getting run over by a tank…
– Still it must have been a 24 carat bitch for those Komrades that had to tend to Lenins corpse on bowling night, even if it did mean a sure thing 140….
OK, BBH, I have no idea where that came from. None.
– An old Bob Newhart routine kelly. Talking about the peasants that had to tend to Lenins corpse ( they kept him mumified and on public display some place in Moscow right up to at least the 90’s if I recall). Newhart pictured them getting stuck on bowling night and having to drag him along, and even a corpse would score a 140, called a “blind”.
– I keep forgetting I’m such a dinosaur around here…
TW: …Hes got a good set of hands for delivery but a terrible hook…..
Alright, I just burst out laughing, BBW. That’s comedy and Newhart was one of the best.
Guess there’s more than one dinosaur around here.
Thanks for the laff!
Trying to blur *all* believing madmen of all traditions together simply doesn’t work
No, perhaps not. It’s pretty hard to fit Mohammed and Howard Dean under one common rubric. But they’re certainly both mad men.
Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.
– By whispering imaginary 4 step plans in your ear while you sleep…..
Critical Determination of Religious Fascism of given a Nation state
1. Openly declare membership in a minority religion.
2. Publish insults directed at majority religion.
3. Solicit non-believers to convert to said minority religion.
If any of the above actions results in prosecution or punishment by govermental bodies or religious organizations with governmental authority, shove a boot or two up tristero’s ass.
Trist, sorry. The fact that this conversation can only occur in the much-feared hyper-religious Amercia must stick in your craw. Otherwise you are just auditioning for the Argument clinic.
Cheers,
‘dam
Ric,
I don’t know….Fabian was a hot teen idol, I can’t picture actus as such.
Serious, Ric. Thanks for posting, always informative. I do enjoy your insight.
trist:
Christian Fundamentalist: “If you don’t believe, you are destined to Hell for all eternity.”
Muslim Fundamentalist: “If you don’t believe, I will cut your head off and the heads of all like you.”
There’s your moral relativism, asshole.
With apoplogies to another popular analysis of typical Leftist cant (to be read in a shrill, hurried, almost breathless tone):
Blah blah blah Pat Robertson blah blah blah Dobsons blah blah blah Terry Randalls, blah blah blah religious lunatics blah blah blah homegrown loopy christianist dopes blah blah blah blah blah blah radical christianists blah blah blah Eric Rudolph bombed abortion clinics blah blah blah post the names of doctors on websites, blah blah blah harass women seeking medical advice blah blah blah Randall Terry blah blah blah theocracy blah blah blah Dobson blah blah blah coathangers blah blah blah poor women seeking abortion blah blah blah Morecraft blah blah blah Rushdoony blah blah blah christianist blah blah blah exploits the holy symbols of Christianity for political gain blah blah blah Nichols and McVeigh blah blah blah Davidians. blah blah blah Elohim City blah blah blah militia movement blah blah blah William Krar, blah blah blah far right blah blah blah Christian Identity blah blah blah Army of God blah blah blah LaHaye blah blah blah Schiavo blah blah blah Murrah Building blah blah blah theocracies blah blah blah Robertson blah blah blah radical rightwing christianism blah blah blah blah blah blah homegrown American blah blah blah religious “orthodoxy†blah blah blah Falwells of the world blah blah blah Matthew Shepard blah blah blah “Reverend†Fred Phelps blah blah blah.
I’m finally starting to get it……
Well, for what it’s worth after all the above commenterizing, ^ statement from JG’s final comments is just pretty darn good!
Waitaminnit.
Wasn’t there some recent news about that case? That the facts didn’t fit the storyline the press shoveled out?
Jihad? We Christian militia men don’t roll like that. And, hell, there must be TENS of us out here.
Matthew Shepard was robbed and beaten by meth addicts (versus choir boys following the orders of church elders), n’est pas? He was gay, and it made him a perfect poster-boy.
Yep, but it’s too late. The media have shaped the meta-narrative on this case and it will remain ever thus, undiluted by the real facts.
That was why “Brokeback” was so poignant, right? It reminds everyone of Matthew Shepard. Or, more accurately, the media narrative of Shepard. A movie that nods to a media-creation.
I love it. This is like watching the teacher’s pet being called an idiot by the kid from special ed. I guess one of the new hallmarks of modern liberalism is a complete lack of any instinct for self-preservation.
Fucking MARXISTS, man.