White Supremecists Slay 49 in NZ Mosques

[Dill]

(03-18-2019, 11:45 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote:

Quote: Wrote:There is a definitional issue here as well, as all people sent to Gulags were not "political" prisoners. One must allow that the Soviet Union had at least SOME garden variety murderers and thieves and the like.  According to historian Michael Ellman, about 34.4% of Gulag prisoners in 1939 were "counter revolutionaries," while another 21.7% were ambiguously classified as "socially dangerous" elements."  Also muddying the waters is that Gulag commandants often freed people who were unable to work or near death, to drive down death statistics.  Even so, we are probably still 10 million short of your 12 million figure. (See Ellman's "Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments," p. 1156,

This is a fair point, however, it's not as decisive as you seem to think.  Do you really think that everyone categorized as a criminal was an actual criminal?  One of the best ways to discredit a person and the ideology they represent by showing them to be a reprehensible person, i.e. a murderer or a pedophile.  Your own source acknowledges the category as nebulous.

"Decisive"? 

There is nothing in anything I have so far written which supports an assumption that I think "everyone categorized as a criminal was an actual criminal."  I clearly acknowledge how "muddy" these NVKD categories are, adding that people were also freed to drive down death statistics.  Recognizing that, among a population of 170+ million, there may have been some 4-5,000,000 non-political murderers and thieves, does not ignore that people might be defined as such whether they really were or not. 

But back to the question of double standards, I have to ask why ordinary criminals who would have been imprisoned and executed under the Czar or any other regime have to be counted as "victims of Communism."  No one trying to accurately assess the Soviet Union's record will do that after 1991.

What is clear, from the record we have, is that the total number of Gulag-related deaths is way below that often bandied about on the internet. We are speaking here of an error on the order 9-10 million off, not a few thousand, or even 10s of thousands mislabeled for political purposes.

I should add (and this is not directed at you SSF, as you actually take the trouble to read some history, but to fans of internet memedom) the notion of comparing how "bad" dictators are primarily via body counts is objectionable on a number of grounds. It tends to drive historical distortion, fostering double standards and very elastic categories. (Think of how the U.S. military used politically defined body counts to measure success in Vietnam.)

Were someone to decisively show that Hitler had only killed 3 million Jews rather than 6, I would not immediately think--"Aha, so he is not as bad as they say."

Abandoning the old, no longer supported numbers in favor of newer, more accurate ones, should then be viewed as a vote for greater historical accuracy ("truth" this is sometimes called), not defending a dictators.   Said another way, a belief that we should keep the old numbers because a lesser body count defends Stalin (somehow) abandons this evidence-based standard in favor of--what?

[Dill]

(03-18-2019, 12:34 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: It's the same reason why people do the same with the Japanese. The US dropped two bombs on them, and they are our allies now (and China is evil) so a lot of people forget about the mass rape and genocide they did in China, or mass rape and slavery they did in Korea. Or how 1 out of every 3 POWs held by the Japanese didn't survive (I don't believe that's counting those whose surrender they declined to accept and outright killed on the battlefield instead).

But hey, they make anime now.

I doubt anyone but the Japanese has forgotten "what they did in China."

They, and Germany, are our allies now because their fascist regimes were switched out for liberal democratic ones.

Remembering the difference in regimes is important, more so than talking about Japanese or any population as responsible for war atrocities.

[Vas Deferens]

(03-18-2019, 03:26 PM)michaelsean Wrote: Yeah they'd mow down you and anyone around you.

well at least said repercussions of not forwarding an email about 'democrat shooters' would not be 'ideological'.  they would just be crazy.  because white.

[Matt_Crimson]

(03-15-2019, 10:12 PM)Dill Wrote: Sure.  Your conclusion is about "problems they create," which in this case, I'm assuming, would be terrorist murder.  Does that accurately represent your point? Or did you have other problems in mind?

Mass shooting of people in a night club in one event, and in  a mosque in another, are not comparable as terrorist acts if one was done because some crazy guy was fired from his job and his girlfriend left him, and the other was perpetrated because of who the victims were and what they represented--and with the intent to terrorize all members of that group. 

But if people in one Synagogue are killed by a white supremacist because they are Jews and people in another synagogue are killed by an Islamist because they are Jews, then I would say the acts certainly are comparable as terrorist acts. And the perps are comparable as actors--especially if their goals form mirror images of one another. They would legally be tried under the same statutes in the U.S.--at least until there is one distinct set of statutes for White Supremecists and another set for Muslims.

The premise to your conclusion is a kind of tautology--only Muslims can become Islamic extremists.  If I am a Baptist, I cannot be a Muslim extremist.   Followed by a second tautology--only white people can be white supremacists. "White" can be a fuzzy category, but even if you have a clear idea of what you mean, neither tautology implies that terrorist acts are not comparable because only a "white person" can do one kind and only a Muslim can do another. Race and religion are not built into any current definition I can think of.  Your tautologies don't shed light on the situation any more than any other claim true by definition, e.g., that only terrorists commit terrorists acts. They don't make things "incomparable" which are already subject to general definition.

So, so long as there is a general legal/political definition of terrorism not based upon ethnicity or religion, then the acts will be comparable. It cannot follow then that such acts are incomparable if perpetrated by a racially motivated group in one instance and a religiously motivated in another. 

I think you're misunderstanding what I am saying here.

 
I'm saying that white supremacy and Islamic extremism aren't really all that comparable because they do not currently create the same problems in a way that represents how dangerous one actually is as opposed to the other in today's world. I'm not denying that you can compare a white supremacist terrorist attack to an Islamic extremist terror attack and draw some similarities from the two attacks. I'm saying that when looking deeper into the complexity of the issue and going beyond the surface questions of "Who killed what people and why" the two really don't stand up well to comparison in today's world.
 
Even if you just look at it from the standpoint of terrorist murder, I believe the argument still stands because the influential factor plays a big role in these murders. The probability that someone will act out in the ideology of Islamic extremism is significantly higher than someone acting out within the ideology of white supremacy. This is why I brought up the fact that "Only whites can be white supremacists but anyone can be an Islamic extremist" because more people can be and have been influenced by Islamic extremism than people have been influenced by white supremacy in recent times because more people are proportionately able to be influenced by Islamic extremism, including whites. Islam isn't exclusive to Arabs, whereas white supremacy for the most part is exclusive to whites only, thus creating an advantage for Islamic extremism to be the more dangerous of the two.
 
This is one of those "problems" I was talking about, and why comparing the two as if they’re on a similar path is silly.
 
The idea of white supremacy being "on the rise" is laughable in comparison to the continuous flow and rise of Islamic extremism. If you look at the KKK alone it's nowhere near what it used to be. Its membership numbers are currently reported to be around 12,000 members when in the past they had around 4 million members at the early days of their organization and around 6 million at their peak. Yet even at these high numbers they weren't able to keep themselves afloat and remain as a serious threat to American Democracy. But the media somehow wants people to believe that white supremacy is this monstrous problem in the present day even when whites are increasingly becoming a minority?
 
This is why I'm stressing the point that we need to bring the conversation more towards the realms of what is happening now when discussing the "rise" of white supremacy. Too often people are distracted and bring up the past and start talking about Nazi’s as if that's really all that meaningful to the argument of how dangerous white supremacy is in comparison to Islamic extremism in today's society. What Nazi's, the KKK, etc… did 80 years ago is irrelevant when determining how dangerous white supremacy is now.
 
I'm not denying that it's important to look at why these groups became what they were back then, because I believe that actually is important in a historical sense. But to try and use that history and take the number of people that were murdered and apply it to the argument to try and act as if white supremacy is becoming or is as big of an issue as it's ever been is absolutely ridiculous.
 
The National Socialist Movement is considered the largest Neo-Nazi group in the United States and only consists of an estimated 400 members. Add that to the 12,000 KKK members that currently exists and you still don't even come close to filling just a third of the Bengals stadium. The truth is, this media narrative that "White supremacy is on the rise" is a deliberate attempt to stoke fear among the general population and ignore the fact that the time for white supremacy is over and that Islamic extremism is replacing it as the prominent problem in the world.
 
Just because five hundred white guys were sitting on their couches and saw Donald Trump win the presidency and went "YEAH GO WHITE PEOPLE" and decided to join some racist groups that vary in sizes ranging from a track and field team to a high school gym class, does not mean "White supremacy is on the rise" in any real meaningful sense that translates into a massive problem of white supremacy taking hold of the world. But that’s what the media wants you to believe.
 
The world has changed Dill. Whites are increasingly becoming a minority and the world as a whole is becoming increasingly more moral. This is not a great recipe for white supremacy.
 
To act as if white supremacy is some huge problem like it was in the past is to deny the fact that the world has been substantially progressing towards a more moralistic environment, and that any regressions popping up in today's society are nothing more than anomalies in current times where the immoral ideology of white supremacy is fading more than it is "rising". As I mentioned earlier, the fact that "Only whites can be white supremacists but anyone can be an Islamic extremist" gives a far greater advantage to Islamic extremists. Even more so, the increasing moralistic view of the world that I just mentioned also adds to this advantage, because more people are losing their sense of "superiority" and becoming more accepting of different races, cultures, religions, sexes, etc.....
 
This is why I have such a problem with the comparisons. They don’t translate how these comparisons matter realistically today, and when examining the realities of these two groups, you will find that they aren’t really all that comparable.
 
“The New Zealand white supremacist Trump lover wrote a manifesto that mimics ISIS”
 
So what??
 
Everyone should be afraid that a bunch of white people are going to come out of the forest now and start shooting people? I mean honestly Dill, what is this comparison really trying to say by comparing this guys manifesto to the rhetoric of Islamic extremist groups like ISIS? That white supremacy is becoming or currently is just as dangerous? What a comedy show.
 
ISIS was the fastest growing extremist group the world had seen in recent times. People were joining them by THE THOUSANDS, from across the globe and they were taking over large portions of land and violently executing anyone who stood in their way and continually drove a message of establishing a caliphate at home and then establishing one throughout the entire world.
 
What white supremacist group compares to that today that you know of? What white supremacy group is doing close to anything that ISIS accomplished? 
 
Again, this isn't about whether there's some surface level comparison when it comes to comparing these white supremacist attacks to Islamic extremist attacks. Of course there is, but in the context of current day happenings the two ideologies really aren't comparable in the severity of the problems that they create today that go beyond "This group attacked this building and that group attacked that building and they both killed people". Islamic extremism is more influential, more destructive, and more divisive than white supremacy has been in the last 20 years and the problem only seems to be growing while white supremacists needed someone like Donald Trump to help boost their numbers.

So then, why are we even spending time to compare them? I know why. Because the media is all about building a narrative and having people believe the garbage they’re putting out. Fear white supremacy! Fear the white man! Trump’s America is gonna kill us all! 

Spare me….
 
The turnout for the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017 that turned deadly has been estimated to have had roughly over 700 individuals who came out to support the rally. You ever notice that the media never says anything about the fact that the following year (2018) when a 2nd Unite the Right rally was held only about 30 people showed up to support the rally while over a thousand protestors came to counter them? Yet they continually bring up the Charlottesville rally from 2017 and the violence that extended from it and how Donald Trump emboldened them. Why is that? Because it doesn't fit the narrative of how white supremacy is "On the rise". 

A more accurate headline would be "White supremacy is fluctuating, but overall it is declining". What we're seeing with white supremacy right now isn't some significant rise that is going to threaten American democracy, or even the world at large. What we are really seeing with white supremacy today are its last ditch efforts to prevent the extinction of white identity that is being threatened by the overwhelming push of cultural diversity and moralistic values.





 

[jj22]

I think it's sad the the American POTUS has to answer if he's a White Supremacist. But these terrorist keep mentioning him by name. Could you imagine if terrorist mentioned Obama or Hillary as much as they do Trump after they've gone on killing sprees?

[*michaelsean*]

I think Matt C makes his point well. White supremecists are made up of scum and morons, and lean heavily toward the moron. Most of them thankfully will do a damn thing to anyone. That doesn't mean you ignore them because there will be a few willing to do something, but I don't think they are the danger to the country some people believe them to be. They have no power.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-18-2019, 03:06 PM)Dill Wrote:
Studying anti-communism AS AN IDEOLOGY has been a subfield of Cold War history for decades.  Over the last 10 years it has expanded well beyond that.

For example, check out this introduction to the Jan. 2018 issue of the Journal of Contemporary History, entirely dedicated to anti-communism in the interwar years.

Naming the Enemy: Anti-communism in Transnational Perspective
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022009417735165

Here is the abstract:
In this introduction to the special issue on transnational anti-communism, Marla Stone and Giuliana Chamedes present the contours of a comparative approach to the study of anti-communism, raising issues of its origins and impact, and calling for attention to anti-communism as a discrete ideology with a defined set of beliefs and practices. The special issue of six articles, edited by Stone and Chamedes, focuses on anti-communism in the interwar period in a range of locations, including India under British rule, colonial Madagascar, Italy, France, Britain and the United States of America. The essays emphasize comparative issues regarding the emergence and consolidation of anti-communist movements and practices in the 1920s and 1930s, and they argue for the transnational and international character of interwar anti-communism, and for its profound implications for both national and global politics.

Notice that the articles in this journal focus only on a subfield of this subfield. 

Here is another article from the same journal from last May.
The Johnstone Affair and Anti-Communism in Interwar India
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022009416688257?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.1

For some less recent examples in book form
M.J. Heale's American Anti-Communism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970  (1990).
https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/american-anti-communism

Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century America by Cyndy Hendershot  (2003)
https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/anti-communism-and-popular-culture-in-mid-century-america/.
(Hendershot is a literary critic, not a historian, but this work does a good job of explaining how anti-communism permeated everyday American during the Cold War, even in such seemingly innocuous cultural forms as cartoons (Rocky and Bullwinkle).

Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History (2011) by Larry CePlair.
https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Communism-Twentieth-Century-America-Critical-History/dp/1440800472

Those are just some works in which "anti-communism" appears in the title. There are many other articles, books and conference papers dealing with the subject as well without this reference. As I say, a subfield of history--and not just of U.S. history.

I fear we are in danger of delving deep into a semantic argument here.  That being said, I take issue with labeling anti-communism as an ideology on its own.  The opposition to this form of government is largely due to how it contradicts the basic principles of the free-market capitalist system that we operate under.  Consequently, you would be anti-communist simply by being pro-capitalist.  Additionally, the atrocities committed under every single communist government, to varying degrees, would hopefully provoke an anti-communist sentiment in anyone who believed in the freedom to have an opinion that differs from that espoused by the state. 

I will concede that, like anything, being anti-communist can be carried to an extreme as our friend Senator McCarthy did.  Even at that extreme it does not, in my opinion, qualify as a stand alone ideology.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-18-2019, 03:54 PM)Dill Wrote: "Decisive"? 

There is nothing in anything I have so far written which supports an assumption that I think "everyone categorized as a criminal was an actual criminal."  I clearly acknowledge how "muddy" these NVKD categories are, adding that people were also freed to drive down death statistics.  Recognizing that, among a population of 170+ million, there may have been some 4-5,000,000 non-political murderers and thieves, does not ignore that people might be defined as such whether they really were or not. 

But back to the question of double standards, I have to ask why ordinary criminals who would have been imprisoned and executed under the Czar or any other regime have to be counted as "victims of Communism."  No one trying to accurately assess the Soviet Union's record will do that after 1991.

You're arguing against a point I haven't made.  I'm saying "X" number of people were called under Stalin.  I'm not making a "X" number of people were killed by communism.  While I have no doubt that some prisoners of the Czar were still alive when Stalin took power I don't know that they existed in numbers significant enough to alter the numbers killed by Stalin in a statistically significant way.

Quote:What is clear, from the record we have, is that the total number of Gulag-related deaths is way below that often bandied about on the internet. We are speaking here of an error on the order 9-10 million off, not a few thousand, or even 10s of thousands mislabeled for political purposes.

We aren't just talking about Gulag-related deaths though.  You also have to account for the Holodomor, which at even its lowest estimates killed millions.  Stalin also had people killed at whim and brutally crushed any opposition to Soviet rule in Eastern Europe.  Part of the reason for the poor showing of the Soviet military in the early stages of the Eastern Front was Stalin's brutal purge of thousands of officers from the Red Army done to consolidate Stalin's power base.

Quote:I should add (and this is not directed at you SSF, as you actually take the trouble to read some history, but to fans of internet memedom) the notion of comparing how "bad" dictators are primarily via body counts is objectionable on a number of grounds. It tends to drive historical distortion, fostering double standards and very elastic categories. (Think of how the U.S. military used politically defined body counts to measure success in Vietnam.)

Were someone to decisively show that Hitler had only killed 3 million Jews rather than 6, I would not immediately think--"Aha, so he is not as bad as they say."

This I don't disagree with at all.

Quote:Abandoning the old, no longer supported numbers in favor of newer, more accurate ones, should then be viewed as a vote for greater historical accuracy ("truth" this is sometimes called), not defending a dictators.   Said another way, a belief that we should keep the old numbers because a lesser body count defends Stalin (somehow) abandons this evidence-based standard in favor of--what?

When I made the arguments in previous posts about why some have defended, minimized or mitigated the actions of Stalin I was not referring to you, but to the general practice and the reasons for it. As I stated before Stalin, Mao and Hitler were all monsters of the highest order.  Personally I see no need to rank one of them above the others, they are all equally worthy of contempt.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-18-2019, 12:42 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: While I agree with your overall point, here, this falls into the false narrative that communism is somehow responsible to Stalin's bullshit. Stalin's rule wasn't a communist one because he was a dictator and communism as an ideology requires democracy.

I'd put more credence in this argument if every single "communist" government on Earth follows the exact same pattern.  They are all a one party autocracy and they almost all invariably fall under the sway of a single leader.  Communism as strictly defined by Marx has never existed because it's completely unworkable in my opinion.  In any event, there is a extremely well established track record of what happens when a government becomes "communist" and Stalin's USSR is right in that wheelhouse.

[fredtoast]

(03-18-2019, 05:22 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: What we are really seeing with white supremacy today are its last ditch efforts to prevent the extinction of white identity that is being threatened by the overwhelming push of cultural diversity and moralistic values. 

Wow.  

Did Matt really just claim that white supremacist organizations have a legitimate purpose?

"It is not terrorism.  It is self defense."

[Dill]

(03-18-2019, 05:22 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Just because five hundred white guys were sitting on their couches and saw Donald Trump win the presidency and went "YEAH GO WHITE PEOPLE" and decided to join some racist groups that vary in sizes ranging from a track and field team to a high school gym class, does not mean "White supremacy is on the rise" in any real meaningful sense that translates into a massive problem of white supremacy taking hold of the world. But that’s what the media wants you to believe.
 
The world has changed Dill. Whites are increasingly becoming a minority and the world as a whole is becoming increasingly more moral. This is not a great recipe for white supremacy.
 
To act as if white supremacy is some huge problem like it was in the past is to deny the fact that the world has been substantially progressing towards a more moralistic environment, and that any regressions popping up in today's society are nothing more than anomalies in current times where the immoral ideology of white supremacy is fading more than it is "rising". As I mentioned earlier, the fact that "Only whites can be white supremacists but anyone can be an Islamic extremist" gives a far greater advantage to Islamic extremists. Even more so, the increasing moralistic view of the world that I just mentioned also adds to this advantage, because more people are losing their sense of "superiority" and becoming more accepting of different races, cultures, religions, sexes, etc.....
 
This is why I have such a problem with the comparisons. They don’t translate how these comparisons matter realistically today, and when examining the realities of these two groups, you will find that they aren’t really all that comparable.

A thoughtful response, in which your point is made much clearer than in your initial post. Given the length, though, it will be more manageable if I respond in parts, so here is part I.

Let’s start by affirming where we agree:

First, I agree that globally, white supremacist ideology is more limited in reach than Islamist. People in China and India are not flocking to political parties and groups advocating deportation of non-whites.

Second, I agree that more people are presently being killed by Islamists in the Middle East and Africa where state control has broken down.  The body count is higher in global numbers.

Where we do not agree:

First, you say that if “Whites are increasingly becoming a minority and the world as a whole is becoming increasingly more moral. This is not a great recipe for white supremacy.” I say you have this exactly backwards. The message of white supremacy appeals precisely to white people in places where they feel their numbers and/or privilege is challenged and diminished by immigration.  As a result of this appeal, the world is not becoming “more moral” (by non-supremacist definitions).  Rather, we see countries in Central Europe, like Poland and Hungary, moving from liberal to illiberal democracy—following the footsteps of Russia. In Germany is not in danger yet, but the first far right party to enter the Bundestag since the end of WWII won 94 of 598 seats in the 2017 election.  Similar danger in France and Italy. This turn to the right involves tens of millions of European voters.  Add to this the increasing turn to illiberal government outside Europe (though not motivated by white supremacy), and this represents to me a more serious Global danger than terrorism perpetrated by Islamists, mostly against other Muslims in Africa and the Middle East.

Second, in the US, where there are many more white people worried about impending minority status than there are Muslims, the threat of white supremacist terrorism is greater.  The last five years have shown a rise in the number of hate crimes, according to sources like the FBI and the Southern Poverty law Center.  While Islamist terrorism worldwide (including the US) has dropped rather precipitously over the last three years, right wing terrorism has taken a sharp upturn in the U.S. https://qz.com/1355874/terrorism-is-surging-in-the-us-fueled-by-right-wing-extremists/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/politics/global-terrorism-index-2018/index.html

So it's not a matter of 500 guys sitting on a couch or some such. It is matter of statistical occurrence--e.g., 37 right wing terrorist attacks in 2017 vs. 7 from Islamists.  

[*michaelsean*]

(03-18-2019, 07:42 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Wow.  

Did Matt really just claim that white supremacist organizations have a legitimate purpose?

"It is not terrorism.  It is self defense."

No he’s speaking from their perspective.

[fredtoast]

(03-18-2019, 08:18 PM)michaelsean Wrote: No he’s speaking from their perspective.

You mean his perspective.

Read his entire post.

[*michaelsean*]

(03-18-2019, 08:25 PM)fredtoast Wrote: You mean his perspective.

Read his entire post.

Jesus Christ he’s black. Does nobody remember his story when a cop approached him for changing a tire in a store parking lot? Clayton Bigsby jokes aside, I don’t think he’s a big fan of white power.

[Dill]

(03-18-2019, 05:22 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: The idea of white supremacy being "on the rise" is laughable in comparison to the continuous flow and rise of Islamic extremism. If you look at the KKK alone it's nowhere near what it used to be. Its membership numbers are currently reported to be around 12,000 members when in the past they had around 4 million members at the early days of their organization and around 6 million at their peak. Yet even at these high numbers they weren't able to keep themselves afloat and remain as a serious threat to American Democracy. But the media somehow wants people to believe that white supremacy is this monstrous problem in the present day even when whites are increasingly becoming a minority?
 ...........
The National Socialist Movement is considered the largest Neo-Nazi group in the United States and only consists of an estimated 400 members. Add that to the 12,000 KKK members that currently exists and you still don't even come close to filling just a third of the Bengals stadium. The truth is, this media narrative that "White supremacy is on the rise" is a deliberate attempt to stoke fear among the general population and ignore the fact that the time for white supremacy is over and that Islamic extremism is replacing it as the prominent problem in the world.
 .................
So then, why are we even spending time to compare them? I know why. Because the media is all about building a narrative and having people believe the garbage they’re putting out. Fear white supremacy! Fear the white man! Trump’s America is gonna kill us all! 
............
A more accurate headline would be "White supremacy is fluctuating, but overall it is declining". What we're seeing with white supremacy right now isn't some significant rise that is going to threaten American democracy, or even the world at large. What we are really seeing with white supremacy today are its last ditch efforts to prevent the extinction of white identity that is being threatened by the overwhelming push of cultural diversity and moralistic values.

Part II.  "White supremacy is fluctuating, but overall it is declining" is not a more accurate headline. What is your source for such a claim? Certainly not the FBI nor Rand nor the U. of Maryland or any of the reputable databases tracking terrorism.

Further regarding sources, I want to address your constructing a monolith called "the media," and then endowing it with an intent to "stoke fear."

The US media are not monolithic and include organizations as different as Fox and the NYT, not to mention foreign English language sources commonly accessed in the U.S. like The Economist and The Guardian. Also, there is a large difference in quality--some adhering strongly to journalistic standards, others tending to sensationalism. Further, few news organizations have an "intent" in the sense in which you use the term, which is more applicable to state media. Certainly neither Breitbart nor Fox, examples of right wing media, could have the intent you impute to the media in general.

Then there is the question of why a monolithic media would want to "stoke fear" about right wing terrorism. They are doing their job when they report it, and currently that means noting it is on the rise. I cannot think of a singe media source that wants me to believe white supremacists are a threat to the "world at large" in some immediate sense. Who really says "Fear the white man. Trump's America is gonna kill us all"?  This is reminiscent of the exaggeration people like Rush and Hannity impute to "leftists" whenever Trump is criticized by the MSM for his inability to condemn right wing violence as right wing violence--the guy who insisted on using the term "Islamic terrorism" in contrast to Obama.  

Finally, is it not possible that your perception of Islamism as a greater threat TODAY in the US is itself owing to media framing?

[Matt_Crimson]

(03-18-2019, 07:42 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Wow.  

Did Matt really just claim that white supremacist organizations have a legitimate purpose?

"It is not terrorism.  It is self defense."

(03-18-2019, 08:25 PM)fredtoast Wrote: You mean his perspective.

Read his entire post.

What?

Okay first of all, I'm black.

Second of all, I'm a black man who was born and raised in Alabama who has experienced his fair share of white supremacy and even grew up in a small town where the KKK marched every year to display their racist ideology.

So if you're insinuating that I'm some kind of white supremacist apologist you're sadly mistaken.

[fredtoast]

(03-18-2019, 08:38 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: So if you're insinuating that I'm some kind of white supremacist apologist you're sadly mistaken.

Not insinuating anything.

Just making a direct quote where you claim that white supremacists are just acting in self defense.

[Belsnickel]

(03-18-2019, 06:45 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I'd put more credence in this argument if every single "communist" government on Earth follows the exact same pattern.  They are all a one party autocracy and they almost all invariably fall under the sway of a single leader.  Communism as strictly defined by Marx has never existed because it's completely unworkable in my opinion.  In any event, there is a extremely well established track record of what happens when a government becomes "communist" and Stalin's USSR is right in that wheelhouse.

But communism as defined by Marx is the ideological communism. You're talking about people defending communism as an ideology, but to defend the ideology is to defend Marxist communism, not Stalinism, Maoism, or any of the perverted less-than-half-assed attempts at communist governments. Ideological communism isn't workable, especially on a nation-state scale. Pure democracy also isn't, nor anarchy, nor capitalism, nor many other ideologies. However, critiques of those ideologies should be based on the ideologies themselves, not the corrupted versions of them people throw together.

I make derogatory comments about capitalism all of the time, but I know at its core capitalism is about the fair distribution of resources based on a free-market economy. It isn't the corrupted neo-liberal shit show that is currently screwing over the working people in this country and many others. If we are ever going to improve our societies, we must understand what the ideologies really are and where we have strayed from them. We must look at where others have gone wrong in applying these ideological viewpoints so we can continue to improve our current society. When we push false narratives about what an ideology is or isn't it harms the efforts towards progress.

[Dill]

(03-18-2019, 06:14 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I fear we are in danger of delving deep into a semantic argument here.  That being said, I take issue with labeling anti-communism as an ideology on its own.  The opposition to this form of government is largely due to how it contradicts the basic principles of the free-market capitalist system that we operate under.  Consequently, you would be anti-communist simply by being pro-capitalist.  Additionally, the atrocities committed under every single communist government, to varying degrees, would hopefully provoke an anti-communist sentiment in anyone who believed in the freedom to have an opinion that differs from that espoused by the state. 

I will concede that, like anything, being anti-communist can be carried to an extreme as our friend Senator McCarthy did.  Even at that extreme it does not, in my opinion, qualify as a stand alone ideology.

There are actually several forms of anti-capitalism. The one rooted in Catholicism is much less exercised about the critique of capitalism and more about the materialism (in the philosophical sense).

I agree that there is potential for confusion when deploying the term "anti-communism."  I cannot think of anyone on this message board who is pro-communist or who would defend any Stalinist state which has existed.  I'm pretty sure that if I suggested we convert the US to that, everyone here would oppose me, thus becoming "anti-communist" regarding that specific goal, and not in favor of communism anywhere. But I would also say that most on this message board don't think much about communism at all. They would be less likely than a real anti-communist to see communism where others saw only socialism or social democracy.

Anti-communism as an ideology is something more developed, transmitted in schools and books, and deployed to political effect. People have made it their life's mission to "spread the word" and oppose communism. In the US, one can trace it to documents like the NSC-68, which set the terms for 40 years of U.S. foreign policy by defining the "logic of totalitarianism" which rendered (so they thought) the behavior of Stalinist states predictable. In the US, more so that other places, it is specifically opposed to capitalism (as if this were a political system), as well as an undefined, abstract "freedom" supposed to naturally permeate the North American air. Ironically, that document also mentions how, in the coming Cold War, the state must become ever more vigilant regarding the thoughts of its citizens and make a "case" to them about why Communism was bad--e.g. because it sought to control people's thoughts.  Nothing like this in previous history, really.

And historians and political scientists study anti-communism AS an ideology in part because of its systemic character, but mainly because of its policy consequences, which have not squared well with the values the US has claimed to uphold against communism. They can track how it affects policy, how it competes against other views of the world as presidential advisors debate whether to intervene in Korea or Chile or Guatemala, or to support the Bay of Pigs landing, or to get out of Vietnam or to open trade with China or to sign SALT II. 

It is valuable to study anti-communism today, long after the Cold War, not just because it is "history," but also because as a kind structure for organizing foreign policy around stark, binary oppositions (good/evil, freedom/slavery, them/us, rational/fanatical, democracy/totalitarianism, tolerance/intolerance), it has remained in place for some in the US foreign policy establishment, only now Islam is filling the functional nodes formerly occupied by Communism. (Anti-communist Islamophobe Sebastian Gorka comes to mind here.)

[*bfine32*]

(03-18-2019, 08:38 PM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: What?

Okay first of all, I'm black.

Second of all, I'm a black man who was born and raised in Alabama who has experienced his fair share of white supremacy and even grew up in a small town where the KKK marched every year to display their racist ideology.

So if you're insinuating that I'm some kind of white supremacist apologist you're sadly mistaken.

You don't come around here much do you?