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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36040 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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All being said, though, even if your thesis is true, so what? If the civil rights movement is indeed a destructive plot by triple-parens them, I can't get myself to think this is particularly immoral, given that they have a pretty solid case for retaliation/self-defense in destroying whatever it destroys. I also don't think I can't oppose it based on self-interest, because I think so far I've been a net beneficiary even taking into account all of its failings and wrong turns and local negatives.

I am not on board lepidus's claims in any real way, but I have seen several conservative rabbis make points that are...similar to his. Their points have generally boiled down to something like, "Jews are so overwhelmingly irrationally afraid of white gentiles oppressing them, that they will enable any outside force to be against that force, no matter how self destructive." I first saw this point right after 9/11 when a lot of progressive Jews were on the "stop Muslim hate" train, and they would be pointing out quietly that Jews would be pretty screwed if Islam became a political force in the US. I saw some similar takes after Trump took office. But conservative rabbis represent a very small % of Jews.

Their points have generally boiled down to something like, "Jews are so overwhelmingly irrationally afraid of white gentiles oppressing them, that they will enable any outside force to be against that force, no matter how self destructive."

Probably has to do with context. Islam in America doesn't seem very attuned to the more fundamentalist preaching exported from Saudi Arabia. Cases of Muslims planning or engaging in religious-based violence in America are rare, perhaps exceptionally so.

Cases of Muslims planning or engaging in religious-based violence in America are rare, perhaps exceptionally so.

There are relatively few Muslims in the US. But quite a few Muslim terrorist incidents. And plenty of smaller incidents where Muslims and Jews are in proximity, such as NYC, though these don't seem to be tracked on a national level.

I'm seeing 15 on Wikipedia for the US, that seems rare to me. Also, what's the source on the Muslim-Jew incidents?

What do you mean, rare? The boogeyman of the left, white nationalism is at 11, if wiki is the scale we're using.

Some of the other categories contain even more islamic perps, like antisemitic, and palestininan terrorism. Not to mention islamic terrorism did by far the most victims, outweighing all other forms of terrorism combined.

Even the 2017 study, ignoring the twin elephants in the room, comes to that conclusion:

A 2017 report by The Nation Institute and the Center for Investigative Reporting analyzed a list of the terrorist incidents which occurred in the US between 2008 and 2016.[24] It found:[25]

115 far-right inspired terrorist incidents. 35% of these incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 29% of them resulted in fatalities. These incidents caused 79 deaths.

63 Islamist inspired terrorist incidents. 76% of these terrorist incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 13% of them resulted in fatalities. These incidents caused 90 deaths.

19 far-left inspired terrorist incidents. 20% of these terrorist incidents were foiled (this number means that no terrorist attacks occurred) and 10% of them resulted in fatalities. Two of these incidents were described as "plausibly" attributed to a perpetrator with left-wing sympathies and caused 7 deaths. These are not included in the official government database.[26]

The article wiki uses as source here is confused. Its central, vehement point is that far more resources should be devoted to far-right terrorism, yet its own (and in my opinion, already cherry-picked) statistics show that despite the government's focus on islamic terrorism, it remains the greater threat. Imagine what would happen if we suddenly equalized all forms of terrorism to foil 55% (the mean of the two threats) : far-right deaths would be reduced by 24, islamic deaths would jump by 79.

Suspiciously absent from that wikipedia article are black supremacist attacks, like waukesha. And the dallas and NY police killings (quote from a perp: "I want to kill white people, especially white officers"), although mentioned in the introduction, are not in the categorized list. But I guess it's just "isolated incidents", they needed the space for a couple of anti-abortion attempted murders.

What do you mean, rare? The boogeyman of the left, white nationalism is at 11, if wiki is the scale we're using.

I mean that Wiki is listing 15 attacks in 20 years, with the clear outlier being 9/11. I didn't say anything about how rare or common white nationalist attacks were.

You said "Muslims planning or engaging in religious-based violence in America are rare, perhaps exceptionally so." That 'exceptionnally rare' is 100% false.

But okay. You mean then, that terrorism is rare in general. That may be true, but so are wars. And one can cause the other, as 9/11 or sarajevo '14 have shown.

I was engaging with anti_dan's point about why Jews are in practice supporting Islam post-9/11, but yes, I would say that terrorism is absolutely rare in modern America. So you're right, it's not exceptional. My mistake.

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