I’ve been commenting here for some time now about the price we can all expect to pay for the hatred, bigotry, and racism that the GOP has pandered to in this interminable and ugly campaign. This weekend, we begin to see the “strange fruit” harvested from these abhorrent seeds.
Authorities in Oak Creek, WI belief that a ‘White Supremacist’ is behind ‘Domestic Terrorism’ that killed seven, including the shooter.
Last night, a Mosque was destroyed by arson, the second blaze this summer.
The GOP has cynically and shamelessly pandered to these vile prejudices, over and over. The mainstream media has been shamefully silent about this blatant hate.
Now we begin to see what happens when these dark spirits are summoned in our society.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
I fear the worst is yet to come.
It’s true that it’s been GOP people like Michelle Bachmann who have raised a paranoid alarm about Muslim infiltration into government, etc, but their worries are backed up and eagerly agreed to by Democrats who call social conservatives the “American Taliban” and say that opposition to gay marriage is a form of sharia law. It’s Libertarians in both parties who fan the flames of anti-Muslim hatred.
Show a single news report of someone being killed for being hetero or being opposed to marriage equality. There are none, but without even trying there a dozens of stories of gay men and women and people just perceived as gay that are attached all the time in America, and your pathetic need to play “The Victim” at anything even close to that is laughable. No body likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll eat some worms…
My point doesn’t depend on anyone being killed for being opposed to marriage equality, does it? Nor does the rest of your comment have anything to do with my point. You’re going to have to think more before reaching for a defensive retort I think.
You said
“Their worries are backed up and eagerly agreed to by Democrats who…call us bad names”… Is just pathetic. NO THEY ARE NOT.
Idiots like Bachmann and West are not even close to being similar to Democrats in any respect. And you pathetic attempt to claim “Victimhood” is laughable – at best and disconnected from reality at worst.
But they are similar to Libertarian Democrats who often speak out against Muslims and sharia law with violent language. Look here is SomervilleTom himself railing against the “American Taliban” that Rick Santorum envisions for America. I hear just as much anti-Muslim hatred from the left as from the right, and in all cases it comes from Libertarians, who almost by definition are anti-Muslim.
Calling something the X Taliban is a reference of people trying to take their religious beliefs and make the a theocracy. Its not anti-muslim – the Taliban just happens to be muslim and they are the poster-child for this behavior. I don’t doubt that anti-muslim rhetoric exists that comes from people happen to be able to be described as ‘left’, but there’s no danger of any institutional faction of the ‘left’ to pick up on this stuff.
To be sure, there are liberals. There are even libertarian liberals. There is no libertarian anti-muslim liberal faction. Indeed, the liberal take on libertarianism is anti-fundamentalist, not anti-muslim. If you hear “just as much” anti-muslim hatred from the left as the right, get your head examined.
from the left that muslims are bad and squelch freedom and liberty, it just makes him more anti-muslim than he was before, from his white supremacy. Now it’s white-supremacy plus mainstream-feminist-righteous-indignation reacting together, with the innocent peaceful religious in the crosshairs.
You are being ignorant to try to say that muslims are fine, it’s their religion that is bad. Ummm, so is the plan then to get rid of the fundamentalism and theocracy, but keep the name or the ethnicity or something? Not sure how that will go over.
… all muslims are fundamentalists, yes? You do get that fundamentalism as a point of view is, in and of itself, legal, yes? You do get that liberals who assail theocracy understand all that, yes?
Different religions have different tendencies and problems. Its all contextual. Certainly pluralism doesn’t mix well in every context. So yes, the plan is to get rid of the theocracy and keep pluralism. Its a necessary result of the core values of liberal democracy and liberalism. Its a logical consequence of keeping society free and valuing freedom of conscience.
This is really liberalism 101 type stuff you know. Ignorant indeed. (sigh) Have fun on your planet.
I notice this in johnd more than dont-get-cute, but one way of viewing the world is with a sensor that only registers what people “like” and “don’t like”. By this nuanceless way of viewing things, defending someone’s rights is a sign of liking them. d-g-c has taken this to the extreme of imagining alliances where there aren’t any and johnd takes it to the extreme of imagining every opinion is a result of the halo effect.
Wasn’t it just last week that you and Dan from the big W were desperately trying to get people to aggree with the Libertarian Republicans, and now it is them (the self-same lot of idiots), that is fanning the flames of anti-Muslim hatred, but your own admission.
Dan is a Libertarian Republican, I think Libertarians are terrible fools, whether they are Democratic or Republican. I am a social conservative, specifically a Bio-Conservative, the sworn enemy of Libertarians. No wonder you didn’t understand the conversation we were having, if you thought Dan and I agree about everything. We both prefer Scott Brown over Warren, but beyond that perhaps nothing (I’m anti-Romney). Please don’t confuse me or social conservatives in the GOP or Democratic Party with Libertarians again. As I said at the time, you are missing the huge split.
But:
What is a “bio-conservative”?
hesitant or opposed to technological development,” according to Wikipedia, “especially if it is perceived to threaten a given social order.”
It’s just a “contrasting stance” of Technoprogressivism? Well, that explains why it’s such a dismissive summary of bio-conservativism (“defense of the natural, deployed as a moral category”? Uh, no, that’s not quite it). But that’s to be expected on Wikipedia, which is itself a product of Technoprogressivists.
In fact, the whole Internet and 99.9% of the websites and participants on the internet are going to be Technoprogressives and Libertarians. Most Bio-Conservatives don’t participate on the web and are left out of the political discourse, like Wendell Berry.
I suspect Sikhs are Bio-Conservatives, and are certainly social conservatives with strict rules against extra-marital sex and adultery, though a very impressive view of equality of the sexes, but far far removed from any kind of feminist/gay perversion of the concept of equality. Sikhs also have impressive views of racial and religious equality, and a great theology that is harmonious to my own which kbusch likened to the Idealism of Bishop Berkley but maybe is better described as Sikh. I think I’d be Sikh if I had a choice.
And I wouldn’t doubt if the shooter was more Libertarian and technoprogressive than he was sympathetic to bioconservatives, who are Muslims and Sikhs more often than Christians, though the only bioconservatives we usually identify as such are whites, while we just say that Muslims and Sikhs are “Muslims and Sikhs” even though their views on Bio-Conservativism are probably identical to a white Christians. Most Christians are Libertarians these days.
When I said “even though their views on Bio-Conservativism are probably identical to a white Christians. Most Christians are Libertarians these days.” I meant “identical to a white Christian BioConservative’s views”, not just the typical “white Christian’s.” And I meant “most Christians” as most Americans, including most non-religious or minimally Christian Americans, as well as most church-going Christians, who are generally unconcerned with Global Warming and environmentalism and BioConservatism, and instead preach and live a very selfish and self-righteous Pelagianism, a near-universal Christian Heresy that any Sikh and Muslim or maybe even any BioConservative would repudiate.
I could not possibly care any less than I already do not care.
you contribute to an anti-muslim, anti-religious, kill-the-sikhs atmosphere. Just keep it to yourself, don’t try to spread your condition to other people, and don’t participate in society with an anti-religious attitude, it’s been a capital crime throughout history so keep it to yourself.
I was replying to your delusional parsing of Bio-Conservatism and Christians (White and implied non-white) babble. What your babbling sounds like to me is “I know I live in the same “Big Republican Tent” as the White Supremist who did this, but I am not really with them — Not Really”. That is what I hear.
I will take Darwin and Einstein and Boor and Hisenburg and Schrodinger anyday of the week over you magic Grandfather in the sky. Thank you very much.
by conflating dogma and what people believe. The Roman Catholic church is against technological modification of people and cloning. There are some liberal Catholics who are environmentalists, notably Thomas Berry.
Dream of the Earth
Published by: Sierra Club, September 1988
You simply sound like a dismissible lunatic when you write “feminist/gay perversion of the concept of equality”. Feminists have actually thought a fair bit about equality and there’s an actual body of scholarly work that backs up what they say.
Contrast that with the random opinions of your obscure sect with its secret jargon (“technoprogressivism”) and its new love of Sikhs because they just appeared in the news. Because you represent precisely no one but yourself and perhaps your cat, you have to provide us something more compelling than an incoherent stew of bigotry seasoned with pseudo-philosophical polysyllables.
you have said it better than I ever could.
If all you care about is Libertarian freedom and unconstrained liberty for everyone to do the same things anyone else can do, including – ridiculously – people of the other sex, then you won’t care when society breaks down and the planet breaks apart, so it’ll be hard to convince you of anything.
My point is that the Sikh idea of equality of the sexes is not like a feminist/gay version that stresses independence and individual equality, in that it accepts that the two sexes are different and destined to become part of a pair:
…
I’m not a libertarian. I don’t believe in unconstrained liberty for everyone. There is no evidence anywhere, none, that civil equality for gays causes anything mildly bad never mind social break down. The planet’s gravity currently is very good at keeping it spherical; it is no danger of breaking apart.
Yes, if you’re going to write cultish gibberish, yes, indeed, you are incapable of convincing me or anyone else of anything. If you think that’s going to bring about the catastrophic appearance of some sort of space alien, well, I don’t find that to be cause to worry about anything other than you.
Didn’t you read Charley’s post last week, and my post last week, about global warming and other huge problems facing the planet? It’s not enough that the planet remain spherical! We need to make major changes to our lives, reduce consumption and localize, and we face considerable resistance to that idea from Libertarians. Not from Muslims or Sikhs or any religion, and not from Bio-Conservatives or social conservatives, but from libertarians.
Libertarianism includes some essential principles such as transhumanism and postgenderism and “getting the government out of marriage” and those principles are more important than protecting the economy or society from catastrophe. If a Libertarian admits that same-sex reproduction or designer babies should be prohibited, they stop being Libertarian, and that is a crisis of identity, it’s all they have. Same with reigning in the banks and day traders, and same with taxing carbon, same with tariffs. They give up one freedom, they give up the whole principle, so they stand as a big block, literally blocking non-libertarians in both parties from consensus on things that ought to be easy. Each and all of those libertarian pet projects need to be rejected, as part of rejecting libertarianism generally. Accepting one just gives the block some more blocking power.
When Democrats spend political capital on Libertarian goals of same-sex equality and transhumanism and postgenderism they become hostage to Libertarian agenda on both sides. The deals that get worked out are forced to please the Libertarians on both sides, rather than the non-libertarians on both sides, which is what we need to do to stop the catastrophes.
Spending the political capital on securing the right to reproduce with someone of any sex is just half of the problem, we also should not spend actual money and energy on enabling asexual or post-gendered reproduction, because there just isn’t enough money and energy, it would add to the strain on everything and isn’t necessary. I’ve shown how it isn’t a right, though you asserted that it is, baselessly. So if you aren’t a Libertarian, stop standing with them and helping their racket keep going.
Where the hell do you get this crap? Marriage equality is not about “securing the right to reproduce with someone of any sex”, it is about being able to determine that the person that you love and you can for all purposes be seen as a family, when it comes to:
hospital visitation rights
next of kin rights
inheritance rights
and so forth. If the couple decide to have children, that is probably not the original motivation for the wedding union. I read this crap from you and what it sounds like is that you are pathetically trying to equate marriage equality with “Frankenstein” or “Modern Prometheus” which is just garbage. Because the alternative is marriages of convenience in which gay men and women pretend to be in love with their spouse in order to fool society.
I came out while I was in the USMC and went on a grand total of one date with a woman and realized immediately that what I was doing was grossly unfair to her and to me.
To quote Hamlet, “To thine own self be true”.
To quote RuPaul, “How will you ever love someone else, if you cannot love yourself”.
While I accept that haters got to hate, this isn’t the place for it. So for your drag princess name, I christen you, “Dont-Get-Hate”. When you disinvest from this garbage, perhaps we can revisit your status.
You have no evidence for progressives or liberals becoming beholden to libertarians over same sex marriage. Libertarianism in the U.S. does not exist the way bioconservatism does because there are actual libertarians. They can be polled. Their opinions can be sampled. Actual libertarians do not tend to be feminists, for example, not even a little bit. They are not uniformly pro-gay rights. In fact what tends to unite them is opposition to taxes and government. A few years ago there was a lot of examination of them by left-wing observers. Liberals may ally with them tactically but we’re not going to beholden to them.
If you have any other imaginary dangers of which I can disabuse you I am happy to help.
talking here. I found a couple of papers at reputable sites that mention bioconservatism, but it’s all fringe stuff at this point. Reminds me a bit of The Last Horseman. Remember him? Surfing the apocalypse so you don’t have to?
Jiggle these concepts around and you find that transhumanism is using technology to mess with people, ontologically speaking. I guess sex changes would count here. I worked with a transexual yesterday. I guess that she qualifies for postgenderism too. I think we’re supposed to stop saying, “To each his own” and get worried where this will all lead.
I guess conservatism has run out of things to worry about.
Or perhaps that there’s a dollhouse (but not a cute one) with a doll named Liberalism, another named LIbertarianism, and the Cinderella doll named Bioconservatism. We are merely hearing reports of how these dolls talk with one another.
*
One could regard opposition to “transhumanism” as a sort of inability to tolerate change.
I apologize, but this latest Bioconservatism needing to be “King of the Mountain” at the expense of basic Human rights will drive me to drinkin’. Literally.
I had a suspicion that was where this was headed: John Howard/Hosty land. Apologies to the one I invariably confuse with the egg and sperm guy.
Your views are noted and discounted accordingly.
“It has nothing to do with bigotry.”
Black people never got mugged or killed walking through white neighborhoods.
But white people often got mugged or killed walking through black ones.
Times have changed and no one ever talks this way anymore. Doesn’t mean the statement isn’t true. Check out a Google map of murders in Boston and you tell me what conclusion you would draw.
I’m not making that point though. I could probably say it has nothing to do with race.
Or I could politicize it and say that Democratic polices (because they run all the cities and pretty much have authored all our urban policies) cause African Americans to kill each other.
This has nothing to do with Republicans. A crazy person who thinks Sikhs are Muslims killed people and that is tragic.
This smells of the “all Republicans aren’t racists, but all racists are Republicans” nonsense. To which I respond “all Muslims aren’t terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”
Chicago, but if there are middle-class black neighborhoods there, I’m betting you can walk safely there. A black man probably won’t get murdered on the Upper East Side of New York (though he’s got a good chance of a stop and frisk), but his chances in a poor white neighborhood are a lot higher.
Look at your Boston murder map or Springfield for that matter: murders may be taking place in the places where people of color live, but the victims are overwhelmingly bystanders or targeted, usually because of gang activity.
Please speak for yourself, but it seems to me that you guys seem to have a less nuanced idea of racism than some of us do. There’s prejudice and there’s racism. Prejudice are beliefs that we all have. Racism is putting prejudice into effect aka prejudice plus power.
There are different ways that prejudice is put into power. There are heinous actions that the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans disapprove of like lynchings or shooting innocent sikhs at worship. We haven’t eliminated this kind of racism, but we’ve made great strides since the Civil Rights Era. Then there is discrimination such as redlining–intentionally refusing to sell homes to black people in white neighborhoods. Chicago was famous for that. There’s a reason so many black or Hispanic people live in the ethnic enclaves.
Then there is structural racism, situations in which social structures discriminate against people. There may not be active prejudice causing the racism, but the effect is the same. Schooling is probably the best example. Most black kids attend schools that don’t give them the same opportunities as the mostly white kids in my school get. That’s not due directly to prejudice, but it’s an outgrowth of the history and the structure of our society.
I’m probably most vocal on calling out the GOP for its racism. There are a lot of people–particularly down South–who vote Republican who are racist. The party’s guilt, however, is due to election dog whistling and targeting minorities in voter suppression. It also due to the Party’s embrace of people like Rush Limbaugh who thrive on racism: ““Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
Oh, I’ve been to Niece and the Isle of Greece while I’ve sipped champagne on a yacht
I’ve moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed ’em what I’ve got
I’ve been undressed by kings and I’ve seen some things that a woman ain’t supposed to see
I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.
These are not Scott Brown’s Kings and Queens! Please, I have some standards. Although I still troll around here. What does that tell you.
I have no clue what you’re talking about. But that’s all right, I often don’t know what I’m talking about.
And that’s an awful song. You start “MacArthur Park” and I’m leaving.
I was confused by your comment title “I’ve never been to Fighting White”.
As soon as I read it the very first time, my internal voice was all like, ” I’ve been to Niece and the Isle of Greece, but I’ve never been to Fighting White” and it still did not make sense.
Fighting White is melting the dark
and so on and so on.
A-well-a everybody’s heard about the bird B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word A-well-a bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word.
Sorry, need to clean the palate.
facts, you’re not tense or nervous nor can’t relax.
Bob’s your uncle.
But I don’t but that it’s a GOP thing. I think the Democratic party including black leaders practice it if I go with your schooling argument.
Also if you look at the murder map you would wonder why more resources aren’t targeted at it. Could it be that the police department is unable to do anything (and if you look at crime solving rates in Boston, you would wonder). Who’s fault is that?
I was responding to Tom’s bomb. He implies this shooting is the GOP’s fault.
I can’t defend Southern bigots and I should have to. I don’t toss up every Democrat reject across the country and expect people on BMG to explain them.
The “reverse racism” meme rears its ugly head!
What Tom is saying is that the racist/bigotry atmosphere contributes to the loonies taking ACTION by burning mosques and killing people. And yes, the fact Michelle Bachmann is crazily and stupidly with ZERO facts accusing a Muslim-born woman in the administration of BEING IN THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD just for being a brown person of a different religious origin contributes to nuts like this dude SHOOTING BROWN PEOPLE.
and I bet Sikh’s don’t like be referred to as “Brown People”
The point is that a white supremacist massacred people he thought were non-white (strong evidence suggests that he, like many ignorant white supremacists, thought Sikhs were Muslims).
I think that when the GOP intentionally and pervasively panders to these vile prejudices, it should be prepared to take the heat when the racists and bigots it has pumped up and reinforced commit these horrific crimes.
I suspect that Sikhs are far more concerned about being targeted for killing than for being referred to as “Brown People”.
He thought they were either “apathetic” meditating monks or Sharia-Law imposing Muslims who repressed women and didn’t allow pre-marital sex. He didn’t just open up on people with brown skin, he went into a temple.
I will re-iterate the point I’ve been making on this thread and that has been irresponsibly rejected by everyone: when Libertarians on the left rail against the American Taliban and say that social conservatives are trying to impose a Sharia Law by stopping gay marriage, and when they say that Muslim nations and Islam itself should be reformed to be less fundamentalist, anti-gay and more feminist and pluralistic and secular, that gives righteous justification to xenophobic Libertarian racists on the right, who hear from all sides that them muslims are bad and anti-freedom.
Ten bucks says this guy was Libertarian and motivated by anti-religious beliefs, not racism.
You don’t know anything about what he thought. You are being (largely) ignored because your comments have nothing to do with this topic.
Multiple news reports describe “Page as a ‘frustrated neo-Nazi’ who participated in the white-power music scene, playing in bands called Definite Hate and End Apathy.” Mark Potek, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said:
A mountain of evidence says that he WAS, in fact, motivated by racism. Your comments to the contrary or delusional, deceitful, or both.
He could have found plenty of Jews and blacks and gays at the mall, in fact, a Sikh Temple is probably the last place one would expect to find Jews, black people, and gays. I think he wasn’t looking for brown skinned people, he wanted to kill religious fundamentalists who he thought threatened his Libertarian Pelagian heretical idea of Christianity which is basically atheism.
When people on the left call for war against the Taliban and agree with the LibertarianRepublicans about how we need to go over there and stop all this muslim repression of people, it is like pouring gasoline on the smoldering embers of racial hatred, giving it a green light, a fresh breeze. You form a chorus with the hate groups against religious people and thus you should feel responsible for the strange fruit hanging around you.
Like many white supremacists, there are strong indications that the shooter thought that the Sikh’s were Muslim.
I’m not going to bother responding to your delusional fantasies about “libertarian Republicans”.
OK, but if thought they were muslim, he probably thought they were fundamentalist orthodox Muslims at a mosque. That’s still not where he’d expect to find blacks, Jews, and gays, and if he was angry at muslim immigrants, rather than at the religion, he’d probably have gone into a muslim neighborhood or restaurant or something, rather than a mosque or temple.
You seem to be projecting a lot of your own baggage onto this shooter. Perhaps you want to think this through a little better, because you are starting to sound like an apologist for the shooter, or else, why are you bringing “Blacks, Jews, and Gays” into this, and trying to parse whether he was angry at immigrants versus a religious sect, or any “Other” religion.
I was saying that he was motivated by an anti-religious, anti-fundamentalist, anti-sharia libertarianism, not by racism. SomervilleTom cited the SPLC guy saying
. So I said, it wasn’t racial, it wasn’t anti-jew or anti-gay or anti-black, it was anti-religious. I’m saying the same thing that Pat Robertson said about it, basically, not that you’d be impressed by that. You guys want to be able to continue being anti-religious and anti-sharia law without accepting that it contributes to innocent people becoming targets of libertarian athiest hate.
The words I used, in the thread starter, were “hatred, bigotry, and racism”.
The domestic terror unleashed by a white supremacist surely meets that description, your clumsy attempts at sophistry notwithstanding.
It is patently ridiculous to say he is some kind of libertarian. Most folks like him have authoritarian personalities. They are not even 0.1% libertarian.
In fact, it is probably simpler to say that he was motivated by raw tribalism. The Sikhs were not of his tribe. The details didn’t matter to him.
In principle, sure, a true “libertarian” cannot also be a Nazi, but that doesn’t stop people from being libertarian about some things and downright Nazi about some other things, depending on the audience and the context. These aren’t college professors we are talking about, they notice these internal conflicts in their lives, they just go by feeling. The selfishness and anti-government and anti-church tenets of Libertarianism fit nicely with self-righteous racial and cultural superiority complexes and xenophobia.
And to not waste this space, I’ll add that I’m not talking about just the people who identify as libertarian, I’m referring to a libertarian streak that finds a common ground in liberals and conservatives, a belief that people should be allowed to do whatever they want and government should get their hands off and stop meddling and just let people alone. In liberals, the anti-authoritarianism merges seamlessly with anti-religious sexual liberation and individualism, feminism, and general you-go-girl attitude. In conservatives, Libertarianism objects to government banning prayer in schools and forcing people to pay for contraception and welfare and affirmative action. So the same selfish meme grows in people who have nothing in common, except pretty much everyone knows they can say “the government sucks, I’m a libertarian” and find agreement, because that’s safe to say, absent whatever context they are talking about. But that’s how it sits and grows and paralyzes politics with anti-government extreme selfishness that serves no one’s ultimate goals.
You must enjoy your nonsense convoluted.
An authoritarian personality does not require libertarian streaks of any sort to go around massacring lesser beings outside his tribe. And if you must bring up Nazis, the actual ones had remarkably little in the way of libertarian streaking.
Were you a thinker as careful as Hannah Arendt, I might believe you were onto something but as it is you’re just a strange cultist more worried about silly things than actual things for which worry is merited.
Come on it’s hard not hear echoes of the same old-time white supremacy and xenophobia in modern Libertarian screeds. The same resentment and fear of loss of power and entitlement that used to result in guys riding around at night in white robes and burning churches now is channelled into Ayn Rand websites, 10th Amendment “States rights” and 2nd Amendment dweebs, Ron Paul supporters, etc.
I think the anti-religious attack on the Temple was a real thing that was fueled by Libertarians and Objectivists and anti-Muslim feminists and gays, even if it was carried out by a devoted white supremacist who doesn’t qualify as a Libertarian or feminist or know who Ayn Rand is. My point was, and still is, when SomervilleTom and other progressives raise an alarm about the coming American Taliban and how terrible and backward and oppressive muslims are, it gives ignorant racist xenophobes an excuse, a command really, to go out and attack muslims, or fundamentalist religious people in general. The angry frustrated men are pointed toward innocent religious people by feminist damsels in distress screaming about losing their freedoms to swarthy bearded men, and then given a push by white cowardly intellectual Libertarians who also think religious fundamentalists are the enemy of all their technoprogressive libertarian transhumanist freedoms. So I’m not going to sit here and be blamed, as a conservative GOP supporter, for contributing to this crime, when I have more in common with the victims than the perpetrator and his cowardly instigators.
I wrote nothing — absolutely nothing — about “American Taliban”. I wrote nothing about Muslims.
Your misogynistic rant about “feminist damsels in distress” is pure fantasy, and insulting at that.
You are not a victim. So long as you carry the flag for the hatred, bigotry, and racism of the GOP — and your hatred and bigotry is on full display in your last comment — then you most certainly WILL be blamed as a conservative GOP supporter for contributing to this crime (at least by me).
I know Sikhs. Some of my friends are Sikhs. You have nothing in common with these victims. I’ll leave it to the reader to conclude how much you have in common with the perpetrator and his hate groups.
The comment of yours that I linked to above on Monday says
I found that by searching for “American Taliban” and it isn’t a perfect example of the usage that the End Apathy dude might have come across. I can’t tell if you are saying that Santorum envisions theocratic anti-gay anti-feminist fundamentalism that has little to do with whether it is Islam or Christianity, a generic taliban on American shores, or a specifically American brand that is anti-Islam at the same time it is anti-gay, anti-feminist, etc, and he’s inciting us to a Holy War. But it’s unclear enough that only the dogwhistle tones come through, which is that Santorum is as bad as the Muslims. It certainly doesn’t sound like a pro-Islam pro-Muslim statement.
This does seem like some kind of bad 50’s exploitation film, but no it is a recent protest against Sharia: (warning: not Piixelated, French version):
And perhaps you should direct your friends to Wikipedia so they can read about Sikhi. Seems like maybe they were Sikh. Again you are confusing racial ethnicity with the theology and belief. The shooter went to a mosque or temple, he attacked the religion, the fundamentalism, not the ethnic group.
I tried to embed the video of feminists protesting Sharia law but it didn’t work, so I’ll link again to the post on LibertarianRepublican where the urgently anti-muslim pro-war Libertarian Eric Dondero embedded it.
Wow! It is like you are looking at some organizational chart of world religions and drawing conclusions from their relationships as facts when the only place this organizational chart exists is in your delusion. How else can you possible think that a neo-Nazi is doing the bidding of feminist and gays. As a republican, of course you have more in common with the victims, because republicans have been trained to always be the “Victim”. By Occum’s Razor, it make far more sense that the shooter was motivated by the Anti-Mosque garbage that the Republicans cried about for nearly a year because a Burlington Coat Factory a few blocks from ground zero was going to become a Muslim community center. Oh, but then you wouldn’t be the victim, would you?
True, the anti-Mosque garbage was probably a big part of his rage, more than I had been considering. And that was an outgrowth of 9/11 revenge patriotism against the Muslims who attacked America’s freedoms, and “hate our freedom” as Bush said, I think. But that’s my point, the guy was motivated by the appeal to freedom from sharia fundamentalism that came from left and right after 911. Bush and Cheney wer telling men to defend our freedoms, and their daughters dignity, defending everyone’s right to be drunk party girls or gay or whatever, because we all love that freedom. But in doing so he changed the GOP to cater to the 10th Amendment Libertarian Rich and away from the conservative responsible moral people who care about the environment and justice and things like that.
I stand by my comment about Rick Santorum, made last February. I wrote nothing about “American Taliban” in this thread. In fact, I’d like to offer a bit more context:
I think most Muslims are able to distinguish between “Muslim” and “Taliban”, just as I am able to distinguish between “Christian” and any of its extremist right-wing fundamentalist cults.
Since you seem incapable of appreciating even the slightest nuance, let me try and be more explicit: I was (and am) saying that the fundamentalist literalist extremism of Rick Santorum is as dangerous as the fundamentalist literalist extremism of the Taliban. I think the similarities between Rick Santorum’s brand of extremist fundamentalism and the Taliban greatly outweigh the difference.
NOT “Muslim”. NOT “Christian”. Not even “religious”. I wrote “Taliban”, and I meant it.
Let me just replay a paragraph from last February (emphasis added):
No matter how much you weave, writhe and wriggle you cannot avoid the truth that the explosion of ugly murders and domestic terror that we now see follow from the gasoline spread all over the floor by the GOP all year.
He attacked people he thought were the Taliban, not Muslims. The proof of that is that he went to a place where he thought the most orthodox and religious fundamentalists would be. There was lots of anti-Taliban gasoline spread by Libertarians and feminists, stop denying this, stop saying that muslims are good, its their religion and culture that must be stopped. I’ll accept that the GOP and Christian evangelists have spread anti-Muslim gasoline too, but I still say they are Libertarian Pelagian heretics closer to atheists than to believers.
There’s been a big change, there’s a historic opening of Robertson seeing Muslims and Sikhs as fellow believers in God, if not in Christ, but close enough it seems, maybe to appreciate, possibly even learn from, rather than try to convert or eradicate. Now it’s the feminists (and Ann Coulter) that are trying to convert or eradicate the Muslims, but this time believing Christians may disown them now.
They would not have been at a temple. Because atheist does not mean “at war with religion”, it means “does not believe in any God”. Being an atheist/ (Rcovering Catholic) myself, if these guys had been atheist, I would know and they are not. So please stop making up rules randomly.
You’re all over the map with delusional fantasies, all to avoid admitting the obvious truth that you know as well as I.
I’m done responding to you here.
“sharia fundamentalism that came from left and right after 911”
No such thing ever happened from ‘the left’. With ever comment you prove more and more your thinking is on another planet.
What in heaven’s name makes you say it’s an “anti-religious attack”? These guys were not some kind of radical atheists — well, maybe except in your fantasies.
Whine your whine about black people never getting mugged to the family and friends of Travon Martin. Do you think Billie Holiday was singing about WHITE people?
Admit it or not, it was the GOP who spent its entire primary campaign season firing up racists, bigots, homophobes, and xenophobes. Which Democratic official spouts vile hatred comparable to the racist rubbish of Michelle Bachmann?
This has everything to do with Republicans. Do the right-wing crazy extremists run for Republican or Democratic seats? The Democratic party in Tennessee is running away from Tea Party candidate Mark Clayton — can you cite a similar flight of a state GOP committee from an extremist right-wing candidate?
The terrorist who struck the Sikhs in Wisconsin was a white supremacist racist. Which party’s rhetoric in Wisconsin (or North Carolina, where he apparently lived) do you think is more likely to have inspired him?
The GOP has been stoking fear, anger, and bigotry for a very long time. The scapegoats have been “illegals”, “black”, “Muslims”, “liberals”, “gays” — it doesn’t matter. It is a party that has built its brand, identity, and momentum around anger, hostility, false victimhood, and — more than anything else — unrestrained self-interest.
I don’t know anything about Chicago, but I do know you’re running ragtime in this comment.
I don’t know his political affiliation.
I put this comment out there to counter your wild post.
You are just using the left version of “all terrorists are Muslims”
… those non-white Hispanic websites and news people running to his side.
Oh wait…
Is your racism showing again? Are you arguing that his ethnic identification as Hispanic meant that he wasn’t racist?
Careful, some might interpret this comment as even more racist than your others.
You sound old enough to remember the Marquette Park and Cicero riots where MLK had a brick thrown at him? Or the giant history of white on black violence throughout the first half of the 20th century? Chicago is one of the few cities in the US where you can honestly say certain neighborhoods got ethnically cleansed. This is an astoundingly ignorant statement. Even today there have been consistent reports of anti-Hispanic, anti-Chinese and anti-black violence in Bridgeport and Canaryville which are desperately trying to stay white. And roving gangs of mostly black and hispanic teens beating people in all white River North. Having lived here for six years I can say that the racial issues in Chicago are far worse than they are in Boston.
If you want to go back that far I need to point out that virtually all the opponents of the Civil Rights movements were Southern DEMOCRATS!
Racist attitudes/actions in Chicago (like the killing of Black Panthers in a raid in the 60’s) were PERPETRATED BY DEMOCRATS.
The city has ALWAYS BEEN RUN BY DEMOCRATS. So if you have something bad to say about Chicago that’s where you should focus your blame.
In fact Democrats run all the major cities and that’s where all the problems are. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
… equate those democrats with the current party. Don’t be deliberately obtuse in your equivocation. It demeans you.
Unless you want us to think you are that dumb.
If Tom can claim that Republicans are responsible for a climate that produces white supremacists, then I make claims that racial issues in the South were originated by Democrats and that race issues in cities are perpetuated by Democrats.
Of course it’s simplistic. It was meant to be. I could easily say that all urban issues, bad schools, crime, poverty, etc are urban Democratic politicians’ fault and they are the real people that should be called out.
I think it’s common knowledge that racist Democrats controlled the deep South during the Jim Crow era.
I can and have made the claim that the GOP has taken the mantle of those racist Democrats from several generations ago. The Democratic Party ejected its racist Southern participants in the aftermath of the 1968 convention, and the GOP eagerly embraced them. The south has been Republican since then.
I claim that the GOP is pandering to racism, bigotry, prejudice, and fear in order to keep itself in power precisely the same way that those old-school Democratic Party racists did, and for precisely the same reasons.
I claim that the GOP and Tea Party is pandering to and banking on these vile prejudices — and that they are emulating the practices of those racist Southern Democrats who blazed the racist trail before them.
I find it shameful that our mainstream media and most of my fellow progressives remain silent in the face of these flagrant appeals to our most base elements.
Minority populations in this country for the most part live in Blue States, or urban areas. All of which are controlled by Democrats.
You can talk about Republican “messaging” or whatever you want to call it, but it has far less effect on the lives of minorities than the policies and actions of Democratic politicians.
You can call me racist all you want. I once lived in MI and Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit was a bad person, and Democratic politicians beat a path to his door. Subsequent mayors were almost as bad (we’ll see if Dave Bing can make a difference).
I live right next to Lawrence and Mayor Willy Lantigua is bad for all the citizens of that city, and he is supported 110% by Gov Patrick and the rest.
So in my mind you’re all phonies. Decrying racism while at the same time voting for it.
Go ahead blame all murders on the Republicans, and continue down the line. Rising sea levels, poverty, unrest in the Middle East, etc etc. It’s all the Republicans fault.
nt
Democrats of the old south fostered their racism into both policy and culture.
The question is, is there anything that current Republicans can be accused of fostering?
Um, yeah.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Eliminationists-Radicalized-American-Right/dp/0981576982
Because I know it takes time and effort to write these. But BMG is becoming an echo chamber for those who just cut and paste the words bigots, racists, and homophobes. They tried tomblame the Tea Party on the Colorado shooter, so not surprising Tom links this slug to the Republican Party.
The Unabomber killed a few people, and a copy of Al Gore’s book was in his campsite. Should we blame Democrats for that?
Three words for Tom, SHAME SHAME SHAME
Uncle Tomblame?
ignore Tom’s post and many, many of the other posts to which you you reply. In fact, you could have a whole new life.
And let us echo, I mean explore, in peace.
Because I had you pegged as a Paleoconservative, or maybe a neo-con who has been mugged (in a black neighborhood.) An Abrahamist perhaps?
Now I get it. You’re a Neo-Thomist!
I think Tom is better than this.
Tom is a very blunt person who doesn’t sugarcoat his views and sometimes can take conclusions too far, that said I think he does have a point that there is a large amount of anti-Muslim extremism in your party that’s it’s mainstream leaders, John McCain excepted, have done little to dispel and in some cases fan. No way Newt actually buys into this Sharia law nonsense, but its all I hear from my right of center friends on facebook. Not to mention the high rates of people believing in birtherism or that the President is a Muslim, something I have actually had arguments with. There is even a fake copy of Dreams of my Father circulating in bookstore that contains passages ‘confirming’ the truth that the President is a Muslim.
Only McCain and Colin Powell back when he endorsed Obama made the salient point that Muslims fight and die for America and have every right to be President too. Or the 9/11 mosque last year. To be fair this guy was a real far right neo-Nazi lunatic, but the protests in Chattanooga to birtherism to the Obama is a secret Muslim meme to the rabid protests about the mosque are all real and are contributing to the atmosphere of intolerance towards Muslims and Middle Eastern and South Asian Americans in general. And I have heard very little from your side about this. Also most of this thread was horridly hijacked.
You can see/hear in this clip that one of the researchers studied the actual shooter.
He explains how he lived in a hate sub-culture.
And the subject of Republican messaging never comes up.
No speculation, just facts. The source is PBS, so stuff it.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/social_issues/july-dec12/hate_08-08.html
I watched the clip.
Not surprisingly, I heard something different from you. Several of the memes featured in this clip come up ALL THE TIME in GOP campaign messaging, especially from the Tea Party. The “whites are discriminated against” is the most obvious one — this underlies the opposition to affirmative action. Closely related is the meme that “whites are on the verge of extinction”. In the Trayvon Martin case, and the “Castle Doctrine” in general, we find the meme that your-favorite-scapegoat are preying on whites. Blacks are most frequently mentioned in that context.
The entire “Second Amendment Solution” meme resonates with the view cited in this clip that violence, even unprovoked, is justifiable as self-defense to “save the race”.
In my view, these memes resonate with GOP messaging. I’m reminded of religious anti-abortion activists who speak fiery public messages calling for the assassination of “abortionists” and then claim to be appalled when “isolated disturbed individuals” actually do so.
In any case, there certainly nothing “conclusive” here. Your suggestion that I “stuff it” makes you sound like one of the thugs we’re talking about here. Is that what you intended, or is it simply a failed attempt to be macho?
If you think “stuff it” is thuggery there is something wrong with you.
I think that we need a new stimulus to create jobs by changing Somerville into a proper grid and get rid of all its stupid squares.
The only road that should not be orthogonal is the McGrath & O’Brien which should be expanded to 10 lanes.
When you write “stuff it”, just what do you think the phrase means? Are you so accustomed to verbally abusing and bullying those around you that you no longer notice just how rude and offensive your words are?
I’m sorely tempted to reply in-kind, and I’m so far able to resist.
I note that you, as usual, have no interest in actually discussing the piece you cited. You cherry-pick a few tidbits that don’t explicitly reject the garbage you’re spouting and announce that the clip is “conclusive”.
It is “conclusive” only to those who drew their conclusions long before watching it.