Breivik's purported Christianity

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Hesperado, Jul 27, 2011.

  1. Hesperado Don't immanentize the eschaton Registered Senior Member

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    My beef with PC MC only regards the issue of Islam; other sociopolitical issues on which I think PC MC may be more or less erroneous are relatively less important. The PC MC stance on these other sociopolitical issues may not be a coincidence; but I tend to veer away from grand unifying theories whereby what's supposedly wrong with "liberals" is a broad cafeteria of issues, their myopia to the problem of Islam being only one of them (thus many in the still inchoate anti-Islam movement, had Islam not come on the radar for them, would be railing against gay rights, feminism, evolution, etc.; while now they frame the problem of Islam within that larger framework -- but I tend, as I say, to veer away from that, not only because I find it distracting and polarizing, but also because I tend to be liberal with regard to other issues (see my quote in my profile).

    Well, over time I have come to use the term "PC MC" to denote the remarkable phenomenon throughout the West of a seeming majority who are on all points of the spectrum (Left, Right, Center) and are both "elites" and ordinary people (as well as the vast sociological spectrum between these two rather quaintly conceived poles) who subscribe to a rather complex paradigm of a worldview by which massive amounts of evidence about the outrageously anti-liberal speech and actions of Muslims based on their Islam is rather consistently whitewashed when it is not positively defended.

    I've devoted several essays on my blog to detailed and lengthy analyses of this, and have come to the tentative (and still evolving) conclusion that the West has undergone a major paradigm shift in worldview over the past half century or so (with roots going further back -- indeed, in one essay I trace them back to Montaigne of the 16th century: cf. Montaigne: Godfather of PC MC?), whereby certain virtues of the West have become to some extent irrationally taken to excess (among which virtues perhaps key in this regard being the sort of twin virtues of Respect for the Other and Self-Criticism). Any virtue may be taken to irrational excess; that does not make the virtue any less good, nor its excess any less bad. (If I had a nickel for every time I felt the need to state unremarkable truisms that should go without saying on discussion forums over the years, I'd be as rich as Bill Gates...)
     
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  3. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Interesting. Do you feel that 'liberals' who are 'PC MC' are a threat to your culture and way of life?

    What do you think of the alterviews article I posted?

    e.g. it said of Breivik

    Is this, in your opinion, a correct representation of what you see Breivik as?

    What do you think of this analysis of Breivik's motivations?

     
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  5. Hesperado Don't immanentize the eschaton Registered Senior Member

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    Not every cross-cultural sociopolitical issue or constellation of issues is as abstractly equivalent and neatly symmetrical as origami. Sometimes there are singularities. This reflexive impulse to say "all religions are the same" in a sweeping way would be like saying "all foods are the same". Yes, all foods are the same in terms of certain criteria (they all nourish; they all are eatable; etc.); but they also differ in terms of certain other criteria.

    Often this idée fixe about equality masks -- whether intentionally or incoherently -- an ulterior belief in inequality: viz., that in fact one culture out there (the West) is inferior and all others are superior to it, with the leveling of the playing field -- a kind of cross-cultural affirmative action program -- merely a rhetorical and/or conceptual step toward such anti-Western supremacism (ironically promoted most earnestly and comprehensively -- not to mention financially and institutionally -- by Westerners themselves!).
     
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  7. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    Well if they are right, it's scary because Young white men are pretty good at this shit.

    I don't think it's about color or religion, he thought he was waging KultureKampf. He completely failed in his goals, in my opinion.
     
  8. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Frankly I don't see it. I hear a lot about Westerners who talk against monotheism but I don't see them beating a path to live in societies that are not governed by monotheists. I see many people extolling the virtues of Eastern tolerance but they still "support the troops" at home. I hear a lot of talk about westerners who defend Muslims or Islam and yet there is a 50 nation army made up entirely of volunteers complicit in the bombing of mud huts filled with Muslim civilians

    I think westerners talk A LOT but their actions rarely live up to their discussions. So what kind of anti-Western "affirmative action" do you see that I have missed?
     
  9. Hesperado Don't immanentize the eschaton Registered Senior Member

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    177
    The fact that millions of Westerners, and that the majority of Western academic institutions, news media, churches, and artists and pop culture agree with you about how bad the West is would indicate it is you, not me, not seeing the forest for the trees.

    It becomes doubly ironic (and amusing) when this majority throughout the West can't even see that it constitutes the majority, and still frets anxiously about "right wingers" and "fundies" around every corner and under every bed -- when it is they (the politically correct multi-culturalists) who are dominant and mainstream!

    On the other hand, we do have the ironic curiosity of a Leftist Obama -- whose rise to the Presidency attracted the support of nearly all liberals and radical Leftists, to the extent that ultra-radical Che Guevara supporters and Maoists and other motley Trotskyites and Anarchists and even ex-terrorists who had given up on the Democratic party long ago as "corrupt" all came out of the woodwork to hail Obama as their hope -- basically behaving no differently than Bush geopolitically. However, the OBushma geopolitics is basically predicated upon a uniquely Western paradigm of Wilsonianism that rests on a fundamental incoherency of "We are worse because we are better" -- and in order to assuage our moral shame at being better, we feel we are obliged to "help" the world.

    (And what makes this Western neurosis even more convoluted -- perhaps triply ironic -- is that we more often than not do help the world; and yet meanwhile we continue to prattle on about how we are the worst offenders and are ruining the world. This massively evident cultural incoherency then, in turn, becomes fodder to be exploited by non-Westerners -- essentially using the anxious Western liberal's self-hatred against him; who in his turn, masochistically agrees and colludes.)
     
  10. Big Chiller Registered Senior Member

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    What about all the support that the United States and U.K. do receive from so much of the international community.
     
  11. Lori_7 Go to church? I am the church! Registered Senior Member

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    concerning violent events like these (which are epidemic and on all "sides"), i think it's irrelevant to focus on, or blame, or validate these rationalizations that are used including various religions, political views, or even certain literature, art, and musical preferences. the bottom line is that there are crazy violent people in the world. apparently a lot of them. and no matter what, they're going to find a "reason" to do what they want to do, when the truth is, there is no reason to what they're doing.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    I think it matters because a lot of right wingers have made attacking Muslims almost a religion in and of itself. They claim that Islam is not a "religion of peace" and that any violent act of a devout Muslim proves that the religion itself is one of the causes of violence.

    Now we have a religious Christian, one who went to mass, who planned to have a martyr's mass before going on the killing spree, who joined a militaristic Christian organization etc. Thus if this violent act of a devout Christian is treated the same way, this indicates that Christianity is a religion of violence as well.

    Since most right wingers are Christian, this is intolerable. They can combat this several ways:

    1) Claim that Christians should be treated differently, that a religious Christian is not tied to his religion as a religious Muslim is. This, of course, is quite hypocritical.

    2) Claim that he wasn't really a Christian, that he was really closer to a Muslim (or a secular humanist, or a Darwinist or something.)

    3) Abandon the attempt to link religious types and violence.

    So far 2) seems to be the most popular.
     
  13. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

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    Does it matter?
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    SAM:

    You're re-writing history.

    There have been multiple enquiries about the intelligence failures and (more importantly) failures to listen that led to the general belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

    There is no evidence that the New York Times ever "made up a lot of lies".
     
  15. Gustav Banned Banned

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  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    This and That

    It's worth noting, Gustav, that some folks might not know what you're referring to. You or I might not be surprised that Miller ended up at Newsmax, but neither would those folks who don't understand the difference between a newspaper of record and an internet propaganda outlet.

    • • •​

    By the way, did anyone catch The Daily Show?
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Pareene, Alex. "Judith Miller: From the Times to the nuts". Salon. December 30, 2010. Salon.com. July 28, 2011. http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/12/30/judy_miller_newsmax/index.html
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2011
  17. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Hehe. In the name of the fodder or American Teahad

    I guess that is evidence that we cannot always blame the media. Sometimes, people are just not paying attention.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    ... and the Son, and the Holy Brevik

    I think "In the Name of the Fodder" is more suitable for the present discussion. I would have linked to it, but I had a hard time making it play this evening. I'll try again tomorrow.
     
  19. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Presumably, they're more interested in beating the monotheists out of governing their own societies.

    Except you haven't established that the former westerners and the latter ones are the same people. The only thing they have in common, is that they were born in the same part of the word (which happens to comprise like one fifth of humanity). Which is to say this is cheap bombast.

    Like when I point out to a certain Indian who talks a lot about opposing occupation and supporting equality, that India has been running a nasty military occupation for many decades.

    The insistence on treating every westerner as a token, and then trying to pin whatever general western failing on them personally, is an offensive, intellectually-insupportable troll technique. It's nothing more than blatant culture-flaming.

    You could say that about any large group of people. Yet you only ever seem to bother making such observations about certain specific groups. This is how everyone knows that you're animated by bigotry.

    For another example: Muslims talk A LOT about how they're peaceful and don't support terrorism, and yet there is a global terrorist movement made up entirely of Muslim volunteers complicit in bombing innocent civilians. Seems their actions rarely live up to their discussions - it's all just a bunch of equivocation to avoid taking responsibility for the crimes of their culture.
     
  20. Gustav Banned Banned

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    12,575
    oh dear
    let the rending of hair, the gnashing of teeth, the wringing of hands....begin

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  21. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    "begin?"

    I wasn't aware that it had ever ceased.
     
  22. Gustav Banned Banned

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    hilarious
    billvon raises the same points
     
  23. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    So what has this dominant and mainstream majority of westerners - who think the west is bad - done about it?

    What has changed for you?
     

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