Why the Left Will Not Admit the Threat of Radical Islam

[Jemmy Bloocher]

I wish I had an actual citation, but I remember reading in The Freethinker
(National Secular Society magazine) that they had researched the UK male
prisoner population and 98% of them professed to have a faith/believe in a
God(s). Atheists don't get caught for crimes! Obviously there's much more
to it than that; it's about 20 years since I read the article.
On 11 Jan 2016 23:12, "David Ewers" <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:

> I should probably be minding my own business (I've stuck my hand in the
> middle of more than one dog fight, duh...), but I'd like to say a word on
> Kai's behalf.  Some of you probably know Kai a lot better than I do and
> maybe you're giving him a hard time (pardon me, then) but he helped me with
> some writing recently and in my experience he's far from the image of a
> raving reactionary I'm seeing here.  I don't think much of the Maverick
> Philosopher's self-evident choir-preaching (calling people cowards is
> hardly the best way to invite dialogue...) and my knee jerks left with the
> best of them, but maybe we shouldn't be so smug.  I haven't heard any good
> solutions to the refugee crisis coming from the left.  Have you?  Aren't
> you frustrated by that?
> I'm no xenophobe either, but I don't know how I would feel if thousands
> and thousands of traumatized Syrians arrived in Oakland amid total chaos
> and lack of planning.  I suspect that knowing my own country's lousy
> corporatist foreign policy is largely to blame wouldn't make the
> possibility of real instability any less scary.  The fact we seem to be
> flying blind is scary (and infuriating).  We need ideas.
> By the way, I do think the Maverick Philosopher stumbled on one right
> thing about secular humanist types; in contrast to the idea (expressed in
> some circles) that atheists are more likely to become amoral monsters, I
> think there's something to the notion that an atheist is less likely to be
> willing to die for an idea (worse news for the MIC?).
>
> That's my two cents...
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2016, at 12:16 PM Jolly good day we are having, Jemmy Bloocher
> wrote:
>
> I actually did read most of it, but yes, as a 'terrorist sympathiser'
> (David Cameron tm) I can't say I agreed with er...any of it. It's because
> of course I'm a hatefilled leftist knob.
> On 11 Jan 2016 20:00, "David Morris" <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/11/1467475/-Cartoon-The-Junior-Militiaman-Playset?detail=facebook
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 1:54 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "Leftists" is the new dirty word, it seems.
>>>
>>> Kai?  Are you now a "Rightists?" (Is that a word?) You have made
>>> ideological bed-fellows with some very wing-nutty types.  I know you are
>>> too smart for that, deep down.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Danny Weltman <danny.weltman at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I learn so much interesting stuff about how much I hate when I read
>>>> what other people think about me. I had no idea I harbored so much bile in
>>>> my heart or that one of my best analogues in literature was Mephistopheles.
>>>> It's really an eye opener. Maybe with enough time and help from the Right,
>>>> I can divest myself of my hate of Westerners, Americans, Christians, and
>>>> the Enlightenment and join the Right in hating Islam. Until then I guess
>>>> I'll have to rest content with being a reactionary. At least now I know how
>>>> it feels to be called one!
>>>>
>>>> Danny
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 11:18 AM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This business about the how the left is reactionary was my favorite
>>>>> bit:
>>>>>
>>>>> *Leftists are fundamentally negative and oppositional.*  In* Faust*,
>>>>> Goethe refers to Mephistopheles as *Der Geist der stets verneint*,
>>>>> the spirit that always negates.  That is the spirit of the Left:
>>>>> destructive, nay-saying, reactionary.   So leftists take the side of
>>>>> Islamists because the latter oppose traditional American values despite the
>>>>> deadly threat Islamists pose to their own values.  Compare Robert
>>>>> Tracinski
>>>>> <http://thefederalist.com/2015/05/19/why-does-the-left-kowtow-to-islam/>
>>>>> :
>>>>>
>>>>> The left is fundamentally reactionary. It is a reaction against
>>>>> capitalism and against America. The left are defined by what they are
>>>>> against, or more accurately who they hate. So they are drawn to sympathy
>>>>> toward Islam because it is not-us: non-Western, non-American, neither
>>>>> Christian nor a product of the Enlightenment. And I guess that’s what the
>>>>> two ideologies have in common: they are both reactions against the supposed
>>>>> evils of the West. Which explains why leftists tend to find themselves
>>>>> uncomfortable and look for excuses to retreat when they are called upon to
>>>>> defend the West against this rival group of reactionaries.
>>>>>
>>>>> If that resonates with you in some way, I guess maybe the rest of it
>>>>> will make sense too.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 10:08 AM, Mark Thibodeau <
>>>>> jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Pfff... this is ludicrous, asinine, sputtering cant.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Zero philosophical or even political value.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> J
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 4:17 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/05/why-the-left-will-not-admit-the-threat-of-radical-islam-revised-and-expanded.html
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > -
>>>>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160111/a23e4bf2/attachment.html>