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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20952 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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I went into the shop this morning and rolled my eyes when the front page of the Irish Independent referred to the perpetrator as a "Texas man". But later in the sub-heading he was mentioned by name. The online version of the article even refers to him as an "Islamic State-inspired killer". Perhaps, in Irish journalism, nature is healing?

I guess, to be fair, he really is a Texas man rather than someone from Saudi Arabia with thin ties to Texas. Details are still emerging, but this is an African-American born in Beaumont that served in the US military and was later converted to Islamist ideology. He is probably also a literal crazy guy. I'm as quick to blame Islam as just about anyone and I'll certainly do so again here, but it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

Served at the same base as the Vegas bomber too.

Reminds me of when I heard that Sabrina Rudin Erdely was in the same journalism class as Stephen Glass.

it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

Exactly what I was getting at. The average Irish person, upon hearing "Texas man", thinks "white, God-fearing GOP voter, probably living on a ranch which contains a small arsenal of firearms". Upon hearing "Texas man commits terrorist attack", the average Irish person would probably assume that such a person committed a Dylann Roof or Timothy McVeigh copycat crime. Mentioning him by name later in the sub-heading immediately disambiguates this (I'm not saying it's impossible that a white man might convert to Islam and change his name to "Shamsud-Din Jabbar", but such a sequence of events certainly sounds unlikely), and emphasising that his attack was inspired by ISIS disambiguates it further still.

Such honesty and forthrightness is to be commended from the Independent, considering that they published an entire article about the stabbing in Dublin in November 2023 without once naming the assailant or mentioning anything about his ethnic background.

I wonder if there's some kind of geographic component to Coulter's law: maybe Irish journalists are willing to specify the ethnicities of criminals who commit crimes in far away countries, but are reluctant to do so when it happens at home (or in neighbouring nations). Or perhaps not: the New York Times is no less cagey when reporting on the Dublin riots, refusing to name the perpetrator and continually referring to "unconfirmed" reports that he's Algerian (by which they mean "unconfirmed at the time the riots unfolded" - by the time this article went to press it had been conclusively established that the perpetrator was Algerian).

This is a trait endemic to journalism as a whole; 'Lying via omission' is a well-worn skill that allows Journalists to selectively leave out information while allowing themselves to claim 'At no point did I give false information or lie.'

There are reasons why the public opinion on Journalism is so low.

Oh of course, I'm well aware. It's one of those things I never stop being appalled by no matter how often I encounter it. I guess it must work on a majority of their readers or they'd have stopped by now.

I think it takes seeing malicious reporting on a particular issue either close to the reader or that's something they happen to know a lot about in order for someone to stop trusting most journalism by default. I think most people just haven't been black-pilled in that way yet.

It'd be interesting to do some kind of academic research into this: what concentration of inaccurate or knowingly misleading reporting, in what timeframe, must a reader be exposed to before they apply healthy scepticism to a) that journalist in particular; b) that outlet in particular; and c) mainstream journalism in general? What is the level of bullshit you must be exposed to in order to overcome Gell-Mann amnesia? We could call it "Gell-Mann saturation point", where more naturally sceptical/distrustful people have a lower GMSP than more naïve or trusting types.

Uh, does the tendency for African Americans to convert to Islam, is that widely known in Ireland? Like the phrase ‘Texas born shamsud Al-din’ makes me think of a local black convert, very possibly having spent time in prison, almost certainly with ties to antisemitic black nationalism. Does an Irishmen get the same impression?

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man. Trying to put myself in the shoes of an Irishman less terminally online than me, I imagine such a person, upon hearing his name, would assume he was a first- or second-generation immigrant from the middle East or North Africa, and would probably not assume he was a black convert. I've had to explain the concept of "Yakub" several times in the past year, and without exception, no Irish person I've encountered was familiar with it or the Nation of Islam. (Funnily enough, I did once find a discarded Black Hebrew Israelite flyer on the largest street in Dublin.)

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man.

Arabs are white. Not politically, but physiologically. Both 19th century scientific racists and modern scientists with access to DNA tests will acknowledge this, at least in the middle of long academic monographs.

Way to miss the point, Arabs are not "white", Arabs are Arabs. Physio-capitalism, Bio-leninism, or whatever the queer autists on on X are calling it this weekend is completely irrelevant.

Moderns Arabs have material sub-Saharan African admixture. They also exhibit substantial inbreeding, so their psychological and behavioral characteristics are likely "worse" than one would expect.

Some Arabs are pale enough they could pass as southern Europeans, sure, but the average one doesn't look caucasian to me.

Actually as far as I’m aware, citizens of most Gulf Arab countries have a non-negligible amount of African admixture from the days of harem slavery. African female slaves were not made infertile the way African male slaves were. I think in places like Yemen in particular the African admixture is particularly significant.

Second gen MENA immigrant sounds not implausible to an American but I suppose the weird interplay between Islamic and black culture that makes it not my default assumption is less known about overseas- by all appearances this guy was an actual Muslim and not part of some weird heretical cult.

Yes, I think many if not most Irish people are wholly ignorant of the role Islam plays in black American culture. To the extent that they are aware of the role of religion in the culture, it's limited to black gospel churches and so on.

Funnily enough, I'm reminded of a joke in an Irish sitcom which riffed on this. Dan and Becs was a short-lived sitcom about a young Dublin couple: Dan, an aspiring writer-director who works for the national broadcaster; and Becs (Rebecca), an aspiring actress/model. At one point Dan tells Becs about a concept he's come up with for a film revolving around a female Islamic suicide bomber. When Becs asks if she can have the lead, Dan tells her he thinks the role calls for a MENA actress. Becs is outraged, and says something to the effect of "Who says an actor has to be the same race as the character they're playing? Will Smith played a Muslim!" (A joke that instantly dates the show to the late 2000s: Becs is exactly the kind of spoilt privileged middle-class Anglophone girl who, if the show had come out eight years later, would have been horrified at the concept of a white actor playing a non-white character).

I think for a lot of Irish people in particular (and Western people in general), when they hear "Muslim" they immediately think "MENA". I've encountered many people who seem genuinely flabbergasted upon learning that there are plenty of Muslims who aren't MENA (Indonesia, Chechnya, Bosnia etc.), and plenty of MENA people who aren't Muslim (and not just apostates but e.g. Palestinian Christians).

I mean ‘Muslim=Arab’ is pretty ingrained in western culture, but I think most Americans are well aware that Arab Christians(or ‘middle Eastern Christians’ if they’re still in the old country) are a thing- most Americans would stereotype them as either hardworking small business owners(if they’re in the US) or oppressed foreigners we don’t do enough to help(if they’re in the Middle East).

The idea of not-Arab Muslims isn’t anyone’s assumption but it doesn’t surprise anyone here- people know lots of black Africans are Muslim, Pakistanis are just like Indians but Muslim, the more in the know might be aware Indonesians are, etc.

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