Afghanistan

[Dill]

(08-23-2021, 04:53 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Clearly you knew enough to list Albania.  I get why you stopped there though, the rest of the list would be rather depressing for you.
 
Not only have you done so, you've defending doing so.

Comparisons are absolutely fine.  But when comparing groups to the worst kind of human scum, Taliban, Nazi's, ISIS, etc. one better ensure that the comparison is apt and not just on a few subjects.  The comparison itself is so inflammatory it should only be made in extreme circumstances.  But you've been told all of this before.

I believe I apologized for that statement, which you throwing back at me multiple times since does not exactly speak well of your character.  Regardless, pointing out a time I did the same thing you are currently doing does not absolve you, it merely indicates your attempt to deflect.

I'll make it even easier for you.  Name a Muslim majority country in which you could publish a picture of Muhammed and not have to fear for your safety.  Then compare that to reactions to Maplethorpe in this country.  Then ask yourself what would have happened to Maplethorpe if he had use Islamic imagery in his "art".

I get why this is uncomfortable for you.

1. I "stopped" at Albania because you only asked me to list "a" country. And I still don't know what you mean by "types." The only countries where women and "homosexuals" are treated with near equality are the advanced industrial nations. 

Now you want me to "name a Muslim majority country in which you could publish a picture of Muhamed and not have to fear for your safety." Then compare that to "reactions to Maplethorpe." What I am "asking myself" is what is what point are you driving at. I am willing to grant that there are some Muslim groups who attack people for creating images of Mohammad. They do it in Western as well as "Muslim-majority" countries. I'm "uncomfortable" because I don't see any point in following this track beyond trying to use the actions of a small minority to accuse the entire religion. This just looks to me like more ethnocentric moral evaluation, with no attempt to understand why people behave the way they do--beyond blaming one religion. This doesn't refute my analogy to US groups who turn to religion to make sense of cultural challenges. 

2. Of course "comparisons are fine." Because it matters very much "if some people share some facets of another ideology" and those facets happen to be values, behaviors, and policies critical to development of authoritarian control.  Discussion of such is important to the maintenance of liberal democracy--especially now. And ruling out comparisons/analogies to authoritarian regimes as invalid in principle is a kind of censorship, an anxious censorship at that because of what such analogies might reveal. So that is why I defend in principle the right to make  social scientific/historical comparisons between the 3rd Reich and current US adminstrations or another. Doing that is not just another way of calling people "Nazis"--at least for people operating social scientific discourse for social scientific purposes. 

It is the use of terms like "human scum" that is "inherently inflammatory, not perfectly "apt" comparisons between groups who react to cultural challenges by strengthening religious indentity. 

3. I don't recall whether you have apologized for the ISIS remark. But I'd rather that you just stop doing that sort of thing altogether. I am not a supporter of ANTIFA or MS-13 either. I "throw it back at you" when you accuse me of "painting people I dislike as analogous to the worst groups" etc. I.e. when you are accusing me of doing what you do, when that is what I never do. A cross-cultural comparison of reactions to modernity is not just another way of using the Taliban to transfer your "scum" lable to some group of Americans. 

Again, the question is whether you can distinguish between analysis offered in the social scientific mode, which doesn't assign lables like "scum" and "animals" to human beings, or political demogoguery which frequently does. If you cannot make that distinction, then of course, analogies involving authoritarian political behaviors will just seem another kind of accusation--"inherently inflammatory."