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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On November 06 2017 09:50 ShoCkeyy wrote:This is really important and we should not let this tragedy hide this.
Yes this is pretty interesting,and also relates to one reason that many people feel that the system isn't working for them,and then proceed to vote for trump.
But the discussion about definition of terrorist,how trump is horrible and how his voters are idiots who are just to stupid to see that the system is also working for them is way more important,that can go on for pages if not years. Its worse then reddit,honestly.
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Canada11354 Posts
On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves.
It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking.
On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population?
Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of white terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret.
In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers.
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Norway28674 Posts
On November 06 2017 09:50 ShoCkeyy wrote:This is really important and we should not let this tragedy hide this.
lol, right after Nevuk posted that that the identity of the guy was 'Devin Patrick Kelley' I decided to google him. Top youtube video is some 'Paul Beglie' super-patriot talking about the incident. Top liked comment responding to it ends with "Don't let this incident take the spotlight off the Clinton crime family."
Aside from that, it's a bunch of people saying he's a muslim convert, probable antifa, even sjw is mentioned. Another asks if it's the start of persecution of Christians in America. A couple mention MK Ultra.
Youtube commentary field truly is internet hell.
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On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: Show nested quote +"It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers.
White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick.
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Canada11354 Posts
On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick.
Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago.
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Norway28674 Posts
Are there anyone here who disagree with Dylann Roof being a terrorist? I guess asking the most right-leaning posters in general (but I also assume that you agree that he is one). My impression is that most white mass shooters don't state a political motivation and this would also be my definition. It's probably more apt to criticize always attributing terrorist motives to non-white shooters - an arab who does a mass-murder suicide would be branded as a terrorist even if he didn't explicitly voice his support for IS whereas a white guy would be considered 'a guy who just snapped'. And I'm positive there are indivudla media segments where they misrepresent stuff, but like, is there a single white guy who clearly was a terrorist where media on a generic basis pushed this under the rug?
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On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago.
*since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11
http://time.com/3934980/right-wing-extremists-white-terrorism-islamist-jihadi-dangerous/
EDIT: They (most of them) were from Saudi Arabia
On November 06 2017 11:12 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Are there anyone here who disagree with Dylann Roof being a terrorist? I guess asking the most right-leaning posters in general (but I also assume that you agree that he is one). My impression is that most white mass shooters don't state a political motivation and this would also be my definition. It's probably more apt to criticize always attributing terrorist motives to non-white shooters - an arab who does a mass-murder suicide would be branded as a terrorist even if he didn't explicitly voice his support for IS whereas a white guy would be considered 'a guy who just snapped'. And I'm positive there are indivudla media segments where they misrepresent stuff, but like, is there a single white guy who clearly was a terrorist where media on a generic basis pushed this under the rug?
I already linked a CNN article talking about Roof with 0 mention of terrorism
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Canada11354 Posts
On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11
Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed.
The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists.
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On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amp
https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states
http://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724
Just google.
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On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists.
It's not "convenient" it's when "Terrorists" became a brown/black only club in universal corporate media opinion (and much of the population).
If you weren't foreign I would presume you're being intentionally dense on the US, post 9/11 point.
That you don't know them proves my point. Because according to the FBI they are killing a committing a lot of attacks and killing a lot of people.
EDIT: Worth noting that the Charleston shooter DID NOT get charged with domestic terrorism.
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Norway28674 Posts
On November 06 2017 11:26 Ayaz2810 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amphttps://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-stateshttp://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724Just google.
That second link makes a really strong case for this being underreported. 150 attempted acts, 65 'successful' ones. I thought I was pretty well informed on this, but that is significantly more than I would have imagined.
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On November 06 2017 11:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:26 Ayaz2810 wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amphttps://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-stateshttp://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724Just google. That second link makes a really strong case for this being underreported. 150 attempted acts, 65 'successful' ones. I thought I was pretty well informed on this, but that is significantly more than I would have imagined.
it's been very well documented in many ways that most people's perceptions of problems are quite different from the actual problems.
which of course makes a major problem for a democracy, as it means most people are acting and voting based on a poor understanding of the situations.
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On November 06 2017 11:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:26 Ayaz2810 wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amphttps://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-stateshttp://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724Just google. That second link makes a really strong case for this being underreported. 150 attempted acts, 65 'successful' ones. I thought I was pretty well informed on this, but that is significantly more than I would have imagined.
People like you are why Fox is so popular in America and part of why Trump won. Not saying that negatively. We just have a lot of people who don't know.
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On November 06 2017 11:46 Ayaz2810 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:On November 06 2017 11:26 Ayaz2810 wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amphttps://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-stateshttp://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724Just google. That second link makes a really strong case for this being underreported. 150 attempted acts, 65 'successful' ones. I thought I was pretty well informed on this, but that is significantly more than I would have imagined. People like you are why Fox is so popular in America and part of why Trump won. Not saying that negatively. We just have a lot of people who don't know.
I don't thinkt that the average Trump supporter is unaware of the degree of violence that exists, it's just that they don't care. And I think giving the response to these crises or lack thereof they are not the only ones.
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On November 06 2017 11:50 Nyxisto wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:46 Ayaz2810 wrote:On November 06 2017 11:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:On November 06 2017 11:26 Ayaz2810 wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The joke flew over your head.
It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines.
The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US.
So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_594c46e4e4b0da2c731a84df/amphttps://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-stateshttp://www.newsweek.com/homegrown-terrorism-rising-threat-right-wing-extremism-619724Just google. That second link makes a really strong case for this being underreported. 150 attempted acts, 65 'successful' ones. I thought I was pretty well informed on this, but that is significantly more than I would have imagined. People like you are why Fox is so popular in America and part of why Trump won. Not saying that negatively. We just have a lot of people who don't know. I don't thinkt that the average Trump supporter is unaware of the degree of violence that exists, it's just that they don't care. And I think giving the response to these crises or lack thereof they are not the only ones.
Fair point.
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Canada11354 Posts
On November 06 2017 11:27 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. It's not "convenient" it's when "Terrorists" became a brown/black only club in universal corporate media opinion (and much of the population). If you weren't foreign I would presume you're being intentionally dense on the US, post 9/11 point. That you don't know them proves my point. Because according to the FBI they are killing a committing a lot of attacks and killing a lot of people. EDIT: Worth noting that the Charleston shooter DID NOT get charged with domestic terrorism.
Yay. Google sheets opens .csv
Actually, looking through the list of wound/ death counts (thank you for that by the way), I think the issue is Jihadists are more efficient, and so it shows up on the news. The biggest kill counts belong to Jihadists, the biggest wound counts, also Jihadists. And there are a whole bunch that are indistinguishable from homicide that I do not think should be on the list. For example, under Black Separatist, Micah Xavier Johnson shows up as a terrorist. Perhaps if I knew more about the case, I would think differently. But as far as I can tell, he was a lone attacker that went rogue. What he did was terrible, but I don't think he was a terrorist (at least the way I think of terrorism).
Another thing that is rather interesting is that at least the way the study is counting, they are really quite good at stopping Jihadists vs Far Right wing.
There are 247 items on the list. I count 33 of them Far Right Wing. There are a handful of other ideologies, which puts the rest at easily 200 attempted acts by Jihadists... but the majority are prevented. Some of the Far Right Wing ones would be hard to prevent though. One that is counted is: "Aryan Soldiers Kill Homeless Man." Doesn't really sound like a plot that require a lot of planning- more like opportunistic homicide, so good luck with prevention. Also- no way that will make the national news cycle.
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On November 05 2017 04:57 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2017 04:40 IgnE wrote:On November 05 2017 04:12 Danglars wrote:On November 05 2017 03:46 kollin wrote:
Do the supporters of Trump in this thread think that a nationalist agenda can ever realistically be a good one? Depends on the aspect, but seeking America's benefit in foreign policy and not surrendering national sovereignty for ephemeral shit is definitely a good one. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. I have to qualify nationalism because trade protectionism slips under that hood these days. I like free trade. I think the net benefits to America are in our national interest. I don't mean cutting these five thousand page deals with some free trade, some protectionism, sections on labor and environment and all this other shit, which would be the TPP. "Our interests are eternal and perpetual." That's quite a clause right there, with implications that do not seem fully fleshed out. I like that quote for the contrast. It's Henry John Temple addressing the British Commons. Allies may reconsider their relationships and enemies former enemies may make their peace and change. It's the interests of the country that you're looking out for. We have an interest in preserving free trade with our allies. We have an interest keeping foreign terrorists from immigrating to our country and killing our citizens. We have an interest in shipping routes near China. I'm not taking that to be a superlative with zero caveats. I'm huge on free speech but still consider distribution of child porn and incitement to imminent unlawful acts to be necessary restrictions of free speech.
The phrase "we have an interest …" repeated over and over is quite striking, and serves as an opening which I think illuminates some of the relationships between conservative values, such as those discussed in the Flight 93 election piece that you reference, and which have been generally referenced by the conservative posters here, like xDaunt.
There's a certain communistic impulse within liberal (and I mean here "classical liberal" or "neoliberal" not the debased American sense of the word) political economy in which the vast plurality of people are reduced to a common denominator through the operation of the law of large numbers. So we get economic rationality, monetary incentives, and public policy which are all crafted towards a statistical community of individuals which are presumed to share a large (or at least important) set of preferences and values. That is the only way we can really talk about a nation, with a People, all with a shared set of interests, to begin with. In the American conservative affinity with nationalism, there is always this communistic side which seems to be in tension with the prime virtue of individual liberty.
I have posted in the past about the "aestheticization of politics" in the era of Trump. Walter Benjamin theorized this development in response to the rise of Fascism, saying:
"The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values."
What is this difference between political right and expression? This difference between politics and aesthetics? Maybe we can look to the notion of the vita activa, elaborated by Hannah Arendt years after the war.
The Political and the Economic
As Giorgio Agamben points out: "The Greeks had no single term to express what we mean by the word 'life.' They used two terms that, although traceable to a common etymological root, are semantically and morphologically distinct: zoē, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods), and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group.
Arendt, drawing on ancient Greek notions of the human, the polis, and the good life (eudaimonia), proposed that the vita activa encompassed three "fundamental human activities: labor, work and action. They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man. Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor … Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in, and whose mortality is not compensated by, the species' ever-recurring life cycle. Work provides an 'artificial' world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings … Action the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world … this plurality is specifically the condition—not only the condition sine qua non, but the conditio per quam—of all political life."
Politics, or life in the public sphere of the polis, was a life among equals. It was also a life completely separate from the life of the household, or oikos. It was the realm of human action, and the realm in which humans could leave some trace of themselves behind after they die, through deeds and actions. Humans, as unique individuals, were the mortal animal, neither immortal like the gods, nor immortal as simply an exemplar of a species perpetually renewed in the cycle of procreation. It was in action, and the opportunity to do something that exceeded your time-bound, enclosed, private existence that something like the divine spark shone through your mortal coil.
The advance of modernity brought with it what Arendt calls "the rise of the social." The emergence of society is commensurate with the shift of economics (i.e. oeconomia from oikos) from the private to the public sphere. Economics, centered on labor, comes to dominate both work, as in the rise of societies of jobholders, and action, which devolves into "behavior." Society expects from its members "a certain kind of behavior, imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to 'normalize' its member, to make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement."
The rise of society not only affects what old-school orthodox Marxists might call the "superstructure" or "culture" by virtue of imposing a socially accepted "behavior" on its members. It also elevates labor, and the production of commodities through labor, as the foremost concern of the state. Property, in the form of land and slaves, tied to immortal agricultural cycles of birth and death is turned into capital, on a rectilinear temporal trajectory of accumulation. I think most of us here would agree that the "rise of the social" which is linked to the rise of capitalism had led to a number of advantages: material wealth has fantastically increased, owning slaves is no longer a necessity for freeing one to engage in higher pursuits than labor, etc.
The elevation of economics as the foremost public concern, however, also ushers in the rise of the nation-state, which subsumes its members into a national household focused on laborious production of commodities and operating under a social code of consumerist conformism. Homo sapiens becomes Homo laborans, and political life, at least Arendt's interpretation of the ancient Western conception of political life, all but disappears. The public realm is no longer populated by equals within a political body, but by individual sub-households (of single people, married people, and nuclear families) whose organization is completely aligned with the communal national household for the maximization of gross domestic product. Political questions are entirely subsumed into economic questions. The only thing left to citizens in between the workplace and home life is Benjaminian "expression" through a limited consumerist palette.
Western Culture
xDaunt has suggested numerous times that "the West" and its values are under attack. His tentative proposal for what he meant by "Western values" included:
"traditions of individual liberty, inalienable rights, political plurality, rationalism, and the rule of law"
He has also previously suggested, not without reason, that Western values go back at least to classical Greece.
I want to suggest that this conservative notion of "individual liberty," circumscribed as it is within a nationalism defined by the economic logic of the national household, is ultimately dehumanizing and inadequate, and is so within the very philosophical traditions that conservatives claim to uphold. Similarly, conservative paeans to things like "rule of law" are blind to their fascistic tendencies, as they pay homage to Law out of one side of their mouth, while asserting the necessity of strong sovereign power operating within a perpetual state of exception.
Dauntless juxataposes "individual liberty" to "inalienable rights." This Jeffersonian/Lockean invocation draws on a long tradition, certainly influenced by Christianity, of the sacredness of human beings. In humanitarian discourse universal and inalienable human rights, tied to the sacredness of individual human life, are the basis for modern liberal democracy, and are opposed to the capricious, brutal exercise of sovereign power.
Agamben's investigation of sacred life, Homo sacer, begins with that figure in Roman law of a "life that cannot be sacrificed and may yet be killed." The Homo sacer, whom Agamben identifies with the bandit, or the outlaw, may be killed by any law-abiding citizen without legal consequence, yet cannot be sacrificed (i.e. punished by the Law). As such, the Homo sacer is seeingly outside the law. But it is in being excluded from the juridical regime of the body politic, and in being exposed to death from fellow humans, that Homo sacer is paradoxically included within the Law insofar as the sacred life is affected by juridical power. The human life of the Homo sacer is included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed). The Homo sacer, of course, no longer participates in political life, and so properly lacks bios or the way of life of an individual within social relations. Agamben calls the remainder of such a human life, on the threshold between the animal and the human, "bare life."
Drawing on Carl Schmitt's political theology, and in particular his formulation of sovereignty ("Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception"), Agamben argues that sovereign power is a relation of exception and takes the same form as that of the Homo sacer: the inclusive exclusion or alternately, the the exclusive inclusion. While the Law operates within an ordered regime that applies to the "normal case," its operation is assured by sovereign power which functions according to a paradox: "I, the sovereign, who am outside the law, declare that there is nothing outside the law." The sovereign decision, then, operates on an exception that is neither a rule (having not yet been instituted) nor a fact (since it is not yet a rule), but a "zone of indistinction" in which the sovereign decision is both and neither. The rule of law applies to the exception in no longer applying, in withdrawing from it. Agamben gives the name "ban" (i.e. "from the old Germanic term that designates both exclusion from the community and the command and insignia of the sovereign") to this relation of exception.
So in relation to the Homo sacer everyone within the politico-juridical order acts as sovereign, able to act (kill) on the exception as exception, outside the rules. And contrary to the humanitarian discourse, wherein the sacredness of human life is a bulwark against the overextension of sovereign power, the sacralizing of human life, turning it into "bare life" as such, is the originary activity of sovereignty:
"It is the originary structure in which law refers to life and includes it in itself by suspending it … the relation of exception is a relation of ban. He who has been banned is not, in fact, simply set outside the law and made indifferent to it but rather abandoned by it, that is exposed and threatened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, become indistinguishable … The sacredness of life, which is invoked today as an absolutely fundamental right in opposition to sovereign power, in fact originally expresses precisely both life's subjection to a power over death and life's irreparable exposure in the relation of abandonment."
The Greeks took for granted that freedom was exclusively located in the political realm. Freedom, or "individual liberty," was not simply the freedom to contract one's labor, as it appears to be in market-oriented, liberal conceptions. The "unhappiness" (i.e. the opposite of [i]eudaimonia) of the slave, for the Greeks, was the result of the slave's inability to participate in the political realm. The poor man, as Arendt says, "preferred the insecurity of a daily-changing labor market to regular assured work, which, because it restricted his freedom to do as he pleased every day, was already felt to be servitude, and even harsh, painful labor was preferred to the easy life of many household slaves." By reading Arendt's "rise of the social" in light of Foucault's notion of biopolitics and Agamben's idea that the originary activity of sovereignty is the inclusion of bare life into its ban, we can see how the modern nation state is the culmination of this logic, extending the national sovereign household(s) over as much of the earth's bare life as possible.
The expanding inclusion of bare life operates according to its own self-sustaining logic, as the expansion and originary activity of sovereign power. Any as everyone knows, the so-called fundamentals of an economy are essentially demographic. Bare life reproduces itself, being organic, as life itself. So sovereign power, as the production and inclusion of that life, as bare life, subject to the power of life and death, on the threshold between man and animal, is also intimately bound up in capital reproduction as a means to the reproduction of bare life (both as births and as the inscription of life activity as labor, which nowadays includes even the most basic activity, that of providing attention).
The maximization of biopolitical activity, as the inscription of bare life within mass culture, necessarily leads to the state of exception becoming the rule. Conservatives can talk about Obama and the decay of the "rule of Law" all they want, but these formal actions ("activist judges" and executive orders) are only the ordinary exercise of sovereign imperial power within a constant state of exception, almost wholly consolidated on 9/11, and exemplified in actions ranging from the imposed curfew during the search for Dzhokar Tsarnaev to wide-ranging surveillance of every person on the planet. These latter actions are at best wholly ignored by most conservatives, while at worst cheered on in the name of "security," itself something fundamentally connected to the logic of biopower and the inclusion of bare life.
The point I want to emphasize here is that by turning the earth into a communal [i]oikos you turn it into a hierarchical system of households, wherein the "rule of law" is the fascist vitae necisque potestas (right over life and death) exercised by sovereign power and its representatives according to the interests of the "People," and where human action, and human freedom itself, have disappeared under the crushing weight of the imperial decree to produce more. The "rule of law," for conservatives more than most, is "the rule of the sovereign."
Clash of Civilizations
The "Culture War" which obsesses the Right operates primarily in the register of myth, by which I mean Roland Barthes's conception of myth, as "depoliticized speech" (i.e. "myth has the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification") that serves to naturalize the status quo and its dehumanizing priorities. Myth serves, Barthes says, as a "pseudo-physis," which, drawing on the Greek word, physis implies a kind of constructed, artificial nature, which operates as a "a prohibition for man against inventing himself." All political questions today, as illustrated by the endless discussions on this board about the "practicality" of a Bernie Sanders, or the obsession with the electability of Hillary Clinton, are burdened by the weight of history. That history, shrouded in myth as it is, has narrowed the scope of human action to create a society of laborers, or a society of jobholders, and tells us that that is all there is.
Do you wonder why all of the electable, successful "conservative" politicians only ever operate along the economic axes of taxes, privatization, deregulation? Why does it seem like everyone is a RINO? Similarly, why did Obama struggle to push any truly progressive legislation through when the Democrats had Senate and House majorities? Why did Obamacare turn out to be a chimeric public-private beast? Well, there are pragmatic considerations. Politicians can't do the "impossible." It is just that the impossible in America is determined by the weight of American myth.
Earlier I said that flows of immigration and cultural mixing were necessary to the continued accumulation of capital within the imperial regime of the liberal democratic order, as defended and exemplified by the US. xDaunt replied by saying that if that were true, that only implies "the need for some type of cultural defense" and equated the more progressive or permissive views in America with "defeatism" which would presumably result in the extinction of Western values, as defined above.
Now it seems that the conservative notion of "individual liberty," as the negative freedom(s) from interference and the limited positive freedom(s) of contract, which Dauntless lists as the foremost Western value, is simply inadequate. There is a certain hypocrisy, I think, in talk of defending a "Western" cultural tradition when conservative political philosophy in the US is so thoroughly allied with a fascistic biopolitics of sovereign power, as exemplified in nationalistic rhetoric about "the People." The pliability of a word like freedom is taken for granted to such a degree that there is no sense of inherent contradiction between asserting that there are identical interests common to the normalized individual members of "the People" and that "individual liberty," or the freedom to have and act on divergent interests, is under attack by the Left. The Greeks, remember, assumed that freedom only had meaning within a public, political space for intersubjective relations between equals. It can only be assumed, therefore, that conservative reference "individual liberty" is reference to the language of myth, and that the supposed cultural conflict, such as it is, is entirely confined to the economic realm, where it can be reduced to the bare exercise of power upon bare life in a relation of increasing exploitation. (As an aside, it always baffles me that conservatives and libertarians alike can claim with a straight face 1) that wealth inequality is not a serious concern when the rising tide of capitalism eventually lifts all boats and 2) that all government needs to do to ensure the efficient operation of capitalism is to protect competition in the marketplace through adequate, minimalist regulation. It is so clear that wealth inequality always eventually leads to the elimination of competition.)
The plight of the refugee in all this is paradigmatic of the new order. In ordinary speech these days "sacred" has a unipolarity that it did not have in times past. The ambiguity in the sacred can be immediately seen in Agamben's discussion of Homo sacer, but is also exemplified in anthropological and sociological discussions of the sacred and profane (see e.g. Mircea Eliade). In any case most people seem to have an unalloyed reverence for human life these days. I don't know if a study has been conducted of how, when, and why this shift in the notion of the sacred occurred. Maybe it has to do with Christianity's impact on Western culture. And yet, the "inalienable rights" of human beings everywhere, connected to the sacredness inherent in human life, only attach within the sovereign ban of the nation state. The refugee, trapped between national household economies, is afforded no rights by accident of birth, and yet, in the language of international humanitarianism, is consigned to the space of Homo sacer in relation to national citizens. Excluded by law, yet included by virtue of the simple fact that they have been pushed out into the non-space between nations, where they are held by the law that excludes them; there is no space left for them.
So let's return, again, to xDaunt's question: "You're not saying that the Romans should have bent over sooner for the barbarians, are you?" Well, what are we really talking about here? You can't be completely aligned on the one hand with capital accumulation and a fascistic biopolitical regime (callousness to the plight of the worker, total emphasis on labor and productivity to the exclusion of other human activity) and at the same time say that "Western values" need defending from the accelerating inclusion of bare life needed to expand that regime. The seeds for this "biopolitical-social" are to be found in the paradox of sovereignty itself as formulated within the "Western" tradition such as it is. In a real sense, then, the need for expansion and for incorporation of the outside, including flows of immigrants, resources, and capital, is entirely within the "Western" tradition, at least insofar as it includes the potential for the reduction of the human to zoē and bare life within the political paradigm. The evolved, modern paradigm, Agamben says, has become the concentration camp, where life and law are indistinguishable. The cases of the refugee and the immigrant confirm this. The irony seems to be that contemporary conservative myth, through the use of what used to be political language, opens, supports, and justifies an ideological space where "individual liberty, inalienable rights, political plurality, rationalism, and the rule of law" have become entirely disconnected from the vita activa of the Greek polis.
Back in 1930 Keynes predicted that the working week would be drastically cut to a fraction of the 40 hours typically spent by salaried workers. Yet nearly 90 years later we don't appear to be any closer to freeing up citizens for work and action as distinct from labor. Why is this? I would tentatively suggest that this is because we have already abandoned "Western" values, or, at least, the desirable ones. Fears of a multipolar world seem misplaced or ill-conceived, at least because plurality in Arendt's framework is a precondition for action. Production and reproduction (of capital, and of bare life) have become the unquestioned public raison d'etre of the body politic. While sovereign power whose originary activity is the production of bare life, thereby becomes identified with production itself, ensuring its own continued expansion. The dialectic nature of imperial power as discussed by Negri and Hardt and Empire which featured in my previous posts can then be seen as the epitome of a particular Western tradition.
It seems, rather, that the only possible "defense" of a "Western" tradition worth having cannot be conducted via police power, either through military instruments or financial ones. It has to come through the dual operation of rhetoric within the political sphere and personal experience of the good life (eudaimonia).
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On November 06 2017 12:01 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 11:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. It's not "convenient" it's when "Terrorists" became a brown/black only club in universal corporate media opinion (and much of the population). If you weren't foreign I would presume you're being intentionally dense on the US, post 9/11 point. That you don't know them proves my point. Because according to the FBI they are killing a committing a lot of attacks and killing a lot of people. EDIT: Worth noting that the Charleston shooter DID NOT get charged with domestic terrorism. Yay. Google sheets opens .csv Actually, looking through the list of wound/ death counts (thank you for that by the way), I think the issue is Jihadists are more efficient, and so it shows up on the news. The biggest kill counts belong to Jihadists, the biggest wound counts, also Jihadists. And there are a whole bunch that are indistinguishable from homicide that I do not think should be on the list. For example, under Black Separatist, Micah Xavier Johnson shows up as a terrorist. Perhaps if I knew more about the case, I would think differently. But as far as I can tell, he was a lone attacker that went rogue. What he did was terrible, but I don't think he was a terrorist (at least the way I think of terrorism). Another thing that is rather interesting is that at least the way the study is counting, they are really quite good at stopping Jihadists vs Far Right wing. There are 247 items on the list. I count 33 of them Far Right Wing. There are a handful of other ideologies, which puts the rest at easily 200 attempted acts by Jihadists... but the majority are prevented. Some of the Far Right Wing ones would be hard to prevent though. One that is counted is: "Aryan Soldiers Kill Homeless Man." Doesn't really sound like a plot that require a lot of planning- more like opportunistic homicide, so good luck with prevention. Also- no way that will make the national news cycle.
You think inefficiency is why Dylan Roof wasn't labeled a terrorist but Micah Johnson was?
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Canada11354 Posts
On November 06 2017 12:39 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2017 12:01 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:27 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:22 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:10 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 11:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 11:03 Falling wrote:On November 06 2017 08:09 KwarK wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. The joke flew over your head. It's not that white people can't be terrorists, they very obviously can. It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines. The joke is about the public perception and the reaction to events, not the events themselves. It might be just a joke, but it seems to be making a point, which you also think. I also disagree with this: "It's that white society chooses to what is and is not terrorism along racial lines." I'm sure there are some who do. But I think people have a general, if not entirely precise understanding of what terrorism is and usually it involves some level of organization by a group that has some sort of ideological objective, broadly speaking. On November 06 2017 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes. I can't speak to the IRA conflict regarding this, and it's not for that. It's about the US. So the question would be what are some recent examples of white men in the US universally named as terrorists by corporate media and the general white population? Well I can't just make up organizations. Give me something to work with, and I can see. I gave you historical examples of whites terrorists. They were clearly labelled as terrorists in the past- the FLQ for sure. And I'd say they would be labelled terrorists in the present. As we don't currently have the Mennonite Mafia running around blowing up stuff (Mexico probably does), or the Armed Amish, or the Jehovah Witness Warriors, or the Angry Atheists Assaulting Anonymously, we'll just have to wait until something crops up and starts blowing things to smithereens. And if they do, I'm confident we will label them terrorists- even if they are the (white) Bumpkin Baptist Beret. In the meantime, I don't think it's helpful to muddy categories by throwing in (granted equally horrific) acts like the Columbine shootings (to use another historical example). Mass murder, yes. Terrorism? I think not. And I think it matters because useful to know what you are dealing with- what is the source and cause? Creating a giant category where we throw in every mass killing called 'Terrorism' blurs motivation and purposes of these killers. White right-wing/white supremacist terrorists are committing more terrorist acts and killing more people in the US than Muslim linked terrorists. Take your pick. Can you source some of that? Because it seems to me a certain group from Afghanistan got a little bit of a head start more than a decade and a half ago. *since 9/11 which was my point from the beginning of this. Yet people keep referencing things outside the US or prior to 9/11 Well that is a convenient stopping point, but okay, since 9/11 then. I want to see what some of those acts are. I'm familiar with the ones that show up in the news- school shootings (usually mass murder), Boston bomber, etc. I'm not so familiar with the white supremacist terrorist attacks, unless they were in the news and I just missed them? So if I've missed them (or forgotten them- there's so many mass killings, and I don't really dwell on them, so I can't marshal all the facts off the top of my head), then I'm open to having my memory refreshed. The references to outside of US are still relevant though. Supposing a random white American knew what the IRA or the FLQ stood for and what they did, would they agree that they were terrorists or would they think they it something else (because they view terrorism through a racial lense.) I say that the average white American would say terrorist. To partially test my belief, we could even ask our right wing American posters here if they think the IRA and FLQ were terrorists. It's not "convenient" it's when "Terrorists" became a brown/black only club in universal corporate media opinion (and much of the population). If you weren't foreign I would presume you're being intentionally dense on the US, post 9/11 point. That you don't know them proves my point. Because according to the FBI they are killing a committing a lot of attacks and killing a lot of people. EDIT: Worth noting that the Charleston shooter DID NOT get charged with domestic terrorism. Yay. Google sheets opens .csv Actually, looking through the list of wound/ death counts (thank you for that by the way), I think the issue is Jihadists are more efficient, and so it shows up on the news. The biggest kill counts belong to Jihadists, the biggest wound counts, also Jihadists. And there are a whole bunch that are indistinguishable from homicide that I do not think should be on the list. For example, under Black Separatist, Micah Xavier Johnson shows up as a terrorist. Perhaps if I knew more about the case, I would think differently. But as far as I can tell, he was a lone attacker that went rogue. What he did was terrible, but I don't think he was a terrorist (at least the way I think of terrorism). Another thing that is rather interesting is that at least the way the study is counting, they are really quite good at stopping Jihadists vs Far Right wing. There are 247 items on the list. I count 33 of them Far Right Wing. There are a handful of other ideologies, which puts the rest at easily 200 attempted acts by Jihadists... but the majority are prevented. Some of the Far Right Wing ones would be hard to prevent though. One that is counted is: "Aryan Soldiers Kill Homeless Man." Doesn't really sound like a plot that require a lot of planning- more like opportunistic homicide, so good luck with prevention. Also- no way that will make the national news cycle. You think inefficiency is why Dylan Roof wasn't labeled a terrorist but Micah Johnson was?
No. Inefficiency has more to do with why certain things hit the news cycle while others don't. That's a separate musing.
(Actually, inefficiency might be the wrong word because it seems Jihadist are trying more often, but are foiled more often. I suppose from that list, we could say Jihadists are trying more often 20:3, but the ones that get through are spectacularly successful on the whole. Far Right try less often, but are usually successful in murdering lone homeless people or shopkeepers. If the ratio is 20:3 (Jihadist: Far Right) and the results are pretty big, it's then no wonder it stays in the minds of people rather than far less frequent and with far less devastating results when looking at each individual act.)
Micah Johnson killed a lot of people (relative to that list) and so it hit the news cycle. But I don't think that makes him a terrorist. I think at minimum there needs to be some sort of conspiracy (that is at least two people agreeing to commit an illegal act.) Micah doesn't even meet a conspiracy charge. Mass murder, yes. Terrorism, no (as far as I can tell.) Likely, for that reason, Dylan Roof also shouldn't be considered a terrorist, but a mass murderer.
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