Fascism and the Republican Party

[GenericEnigma]

Incels: The Minions of Christofascism | Free Inquiry

Culture wars are nothing new to our modern, interconnected societies, and perhaps they are simply a part of the human condition. These days, however, confli ...

secularhumanism.org

These days, however, conflicts of culture and ideology are saturated with self-replicating ammunition—a deluge of uninformed opinions and disinformation—delivered through a supply line of infinite capacity: the internet. When these mythical ministrations are received by a frustrated and philosophically illiterate group of alienated young men, the combination of conspiracy theory, misinformation, and confirmation bias can be explosive.

Take the classic angry young man, feeling shut out of the hedonistic pleasures promised by torrents of advertising, achingly lonely and sexually stymied by his isolation. Now throw into the mix a powerful dose of confirmation bias, based on revered old texts and scriptures, telling him that all of this pent-up pain and want is the result of his being taken down several notches in the great pecking order in favor of the very thing he desires most. That’s a volatile combination and the perfect brew for creating soldiers for a culture war.

That is what we find when we peek behind the curtain of what is known as the “incel”1 movement, or the “involuntarily celibate.” Members of these online groups perpetuate the fallacy that they are owed status, sex, and influence, but they are thwarted by what they see as the unjustified and corrupt influence of feminism. They argue that their wants are the natural order of things and deem that the agency of women is at fault for their failure to secure sex and/or a romantic relationship. This self-reinforcing position emboldens these men to disregard the personhood of women as it appeals to their desire for a resurgence of an imagined “golden age” of gender roles.

Now, where on earth could they be getting such ideas?

The incel movement has much in common with other factually vacant ideologies such as Christofascism—an ideology that would force a dictatorial, ultraconservative Christianity at the center of public and private life—and white supremacism. Each of these antiquated social constructs utilizes the same patriarchal pedagogy with an unyielding deference to male authority as parallel to God.

I hope you find this helpful.

I experienced this personally. Though I broke from rigorous religion at a young age, that culture informed my character during formative years and still affects me to this day. My worthwhile challenge in life is to defeat it.

This is one facet of toxic masculinity supported by religious patriarchy. Anyone - ANYONE who cannot see this social dynamic is most likely trapped and controlled by it - or purposefully using it to their advantage.

Man big, strong. Woman small, weak. Even cloaked in sympathy or protectiveness, it's such a fucking caveman attitude.

 

[cannabineer]

I experienced this personally. Though I broke from rigorous religion at a young age, that culture informed my character during formative years and still affects me to this day. My worthwhile challenge in life is to defeat it.

This is one facet of toxic masculinity supported by religious patriarchy. Anyone - ANYONE who cannot see this social dynamic is most likely trapped and controlled by it - or purposefully using it to their advantage.

Man big, strong. Woman small, weak. Even cloaked in sympathy or protectiveness, it's such a fucking caveman attitude.

It’s not bigotry if it’s in the Bible. Yuh right.

(The massive irony is that there’s none of that in the New Testament. Weaponized dominionist pastors use cherries picked from the Obsolete Testament to shackle the imagination of their flock.)

 

[Fogdog]

If one listens to a Trump rally, his cries for retribution are accompanied by cheers and applause of his audience. It IS reminiscent of Hitler's rallies but are more like other recent events taking place in other countries, such as those that led up to a successful 2019 coup in Bolivia. White crosses like the ones carried into the Capitol Building by MAGA insurrectionists were also prevalent during and after the fascist coup that Bolivia experienced.

A field guide to Christofascism
On the specter of a white cross at the U.S. Capitol putsch
PAUL BOWERS
JAN 21, 2021

A field guide to Christofascism

On the specter of a white cross at the U.S. Capitol putsch

brutalsouth.substack.com

excerpts:





This brings me to Bolivia, where the 2019 coup led by interim president Jeanine Áñez bore one striking similarity to the United States’ “Stop the Steal” movement: It had a strong current of support among Christians.

In November 2019, Áñez stood in Bolivia’s presidential palace grinning and clutching an enormous copy of the four Christian gospels. Right-wing nationalists had seized power after throwing out the results of an election that the incumbent socialist Evo Morales had won.
Signs of the cross were everywhere during the conservative ascent, from the numerous Bibles held aloft by the golpistas to the insignia of the fascist youth group led by Interim President Áñez’s ally, Luis Fernando Camacho.
“God has returned to the palace,” Camacho said. “To those who did not believe in this struggle I say God exists and is now going to govern Bolivia for all Bolivians!”

Áñez, Camacho, and their allies succeeded where the U.S. right wing failed on Jan. 6 this year. Where the U.S. merely had a putsch in the Capitol building, Bolivia had a successful coup many years in the making. Whereas in the U.S. police merely turned a blind eye to the Trumpists’ open organizing on social media, in Bolivia the police and military ultimately threw their support behind the coup.

What followed was predictable. The Áñez government massacred protesters, granted immunity to police forces, sought to reverse the successful anti-poverty measures of the preceding socialist administration, launched a manhunt for one of Morales’ top aides, and banished indigenous symbols and religious practices from the halls of government.

In the year between the coup and Morales’ MAS party regaining power in a landslide second election, the Áñez administration pushed the country back toward the Cold War ideal of the Bolivian Fascist party, which had modeled itself around Francisco Franco’s Catholic republic in Spain.

Concluding paragraphs:

For those of us who count ourselves as followers of Jesus, it should nauseate us to see, as Eduardo Galeano wrote, “the sign of the cross on the handles of swords.”
Sölle’s words rebuke us again today:

At a mass meeting a thousand voices shouted: ‘I love Jesus’ and ‘I love America’ — it was impossible to distinguish the two. This kind of religion knows the cross only as a magical symbol of what he has done for us, not as the sign of the poor man who was tortured to death as a political criminal … This is a God without justice, a Jesus without a cross, an Easter without a cross — what remains is a metaphysical Easter Bunny in front of the beautiful blue light of the television screen, a betrayal of the disappointed, a miracle weapon in service of the mighty.

A church that celebrates power and laughs at weakness is not the church of Christ. It is a church of something else, and it’s worth our time to name it.

A parting image

New report details significant role of Christian nationalism in January 6 attack on the Capitol

An essential new report issued jointly by BJC and the Freedom From Religion Foundation provides a comprehensive look at the way Christian nationalism motivated and permeated the January 6, 2021, insurrection by documenting and examining the imagery, prayers, and other statements of the rioters...

bjconline.org

 

[Fogdog]

I experienced this personally. Though I broke from rigorous religion at a young age, that culture informed my character during formative years and still affects me to this day. My worthwhile challenge in life is to defeat it.

This is one facet of toxic masculinity supported by religious patriarchy. Anyone - ANYONE who cannot see this social dynamic is most likely trapped and controlled by it - or purposefully using it to their advantage.

Man big, strong. Woman small, weak. Even cloaked in sympathy or protectiveness, it's such a fucking caveman attitude.

Why do you think that you were able to see the bullshit when so many others have only dug themselves deeper into the pile? Was there a moment of epiphany or words from somebody that sent you into a different direction or were you like that all along?

 

[cannabineer]

Why do you think that you were able to see the bullshit when so many others have only dug themselves deeper into the pile? Was there a moment of epiphany or words from somebody that sent you into a different direction or were you like that all along?

I have had a similar experience. I’ll stay my response until Generic has weighed in.

 

[OldMedUser]

All these established religions are just brainwashing and I'm so glad I wasn't raised in such a household. Catholics are about the worst I've dealt with but I haven't had much contact with non-western religious types so my experience is limited.

 

[cannabineer]

Fascism has a home in an upscale beach town

California town proposes ban on Pride, Black and women’s history celebrations | California | The Guardian

Far-right council members in Huntington Beach introduce agenda item to switch focus to US wars and America’s independence

amp.theguardian.com

 

[GenericEnigma]

Why do you think that you were able to see the bullshit when so many others have only dug themselves deeper into the pile? Was there a moment of epiphany or words from somebody that sent you into a different direction or were you like that all along?

There was always this still, small voice in the back of my mind shrinking away from groupthink. I remember a specific memory at age six, watching the five-year-olds and thinking: what a bunch of suckers. Hehe. I didn’t truly start to listen to that voice until I was about 14.

Why me? To oversimplify, probably the neurodivergence. It allowed me a bit of sound insulation in an otherwise overwhelming social cacophony.

 

[cannabineer]

There was always this still, small voice in the back of my mind shrinking away from groupthink. I remember a specific memory at age six, watching the five-year-olds and thinking: what a bunch of suckers. Hehe. I didn’t truly start to listen to that voice until I was about 14.

Why me? To oversimplify, probably the neurodivergence. It allowed me a bit of sound insulation in an otherwise overwhelming social cacophony.

That.

I came to religion at eighteen after growing up barely Catholic but effectively atheistic. Entering college took me from a very sheltered childhood to the tumult of urban campus life. A stacking of psychological stresses brought me to the end of my rope, and I had a God-experience. To this day I remain in awe of it, but I also know the capacity of the human mind, especially under stress, to experience things our young science cannot describe, let alone explain.

In the next months, I looked at summary texts about various religions. The closest fit by far was provided by several read-throughs of the New Testament. This led me to the campus Christian fellowship and from there into the pentecostal camp. I tried my damndest (so to speak) to attain a union with God by practicing their religion, but always there was the dissatisfaction with the complete absence of result.

And the usual exhortation “you need more faith!” failed the test of reason. My unquiet little voice, watching from the corner, kept me from becoming submerged in the mindless obedience our evangelical pastor preached.
I’d say the turning point came in a one-to-one with that pastor, in which he suggested that my incessant quest to square faith with reason was sinful. The Gordian knot was revealed: what sort of decent God would give me the joy of a sharp mind, only to command me not to use it?
From there I embarked on a forty-year slow spiral away from practicing and then believing, followed by the painful process of becoming aware of how cultishly manipulative modern evangelical practice is.

The complacent atheism of my youth was cataclysmically converted to intense religiosity, which then faded seamlessly to my current agnosticism combined with a very real alarm about evengelicals in secular politics.

 

[GenericEnigma]

That.

I came to religion at eighteen after growing up barely Catholic but effectively atheistic. Entering college took me from a very sheltered childhood to the tumult of urban campus life. A stacking of psychological stresses brought me to the end of my rope, and I had a God-experience. To this day I remain in awe of it, but I also know the capacity of the human mind, especially under stress, to experience things our young science cannot describe, let alone explain.

In the next months, I looked at summary texts about various religions. The closest fit by far was provided by several read-throughs of the New Testament. This led me to the campus Christian fellowship and from there into the pentecostal camp. I tried my damndest (so to speak) to attain a union with God by practicing their religion, but always there was the dissatisfaction with the complete absence of result.

And the usual exhortation “you need more faith!” failed the test of reason. My unquiet little voice, watching from the corner, kept me from becoming submerged in the mindless obedience our evangelical pastor preached.
I’d say the turning point came in a one-to-one with that pastor, in which he suggested that my incessant quest to square faith with reason was sinful. The Gordian knot was revealed: what sort of decent God would give me the joy of a sharp mind, only to command me not to use it?
From there I embarked on a forty-year slow spiral away from practicing and then believing, followed by the painful process of becoming aware of how cultishly manipulative modern evangelical practice is.

The complacent atheism of my youth was cataclysmically converted to intense religiosity, which then faded seamlessly to my current agnosticism combined with a very real alarm about evengelicals in secular politics.

This is tragic to me. Not so much in a sense of sorrow, but in vicarious confusion and frustration. Appropriate, at least in my mind, how this topic emerges in a thread on fascism.

I thumbed a ride from a trucker on I-70 out of Grand Junction. His goal was to save my soul. All my spriritual pursuits were sinful and flawed, he taught me. All religion, all paganism, all occultism is false. Read of the Christ in private and seek his wisdom. Pray on his words. Let no one else decipher them for you.

I thought the guy was kooky dooks. But he was the first to introduce me to the reality of the numinous being infinitely personal. It would be many years before I would realize my own peace/piece had been right in front of me all along: landscape. That day was just as anti-climactic in my search for the transcendent as it is to this story.

I read "Siddartha" as a young man. I read it again not too long ago. Based on that experience, I look forward to reading it as an old man.

My disdain for totalitarians utilizing the human hunger for the numinous could be summarized by a desire to tattoo my face with Voltaire's invective on absurdities and atrocities.

 

[Sativied]

Thought I had "human nature" down at 58 yrs.,NOT

I mistakenly thought so too a few times… but, I recently found another clue:



So most people don’t. I’d be curious to hear from the other 50-70% that doesn’t, but I don’t think they have given it much thought.

That’s a nice way of putting it though, a “rich diversity“.

 

[cannabineer]

… I’d be curious to hear [the thought process] from the other 50-70% that doesn’t [maintain an inner monologue] …

 

[Fogdog]

I mistakenly thought so too a few times… but, I recently found another clue:

View attachment 5354569

So most people don’t. I’d be curious to hear from the other 50-70% that doesn’t, but I don’t think they have given it much thought.

That’s a nice way of putting it though, a “rich diversity“.

We don't all have contradictory inner thoughts that drive our behavior?



This goes a long way toward describing pop culture.

And fascism.

No wonder I struggle to understand their existence.

 

[Fogdog]

There was always this still, small voice in the back of my mind shrinking away from groupthink. I remember a specific memory at age six, watching the five-year-olds and thinking: what a bunch of suckers. Hehe. I didn’t truly start to listen to that voice until I was about 14.

Why me? To oversimplify, probably the neurodivergence. It allowed me a bit of sound insulation in an otherwise overwhelming social cacophony.

I can't recall a time when I seriously considered the existence of a supernatural being watching over all of us to be real or even perfunctorily useful. I grew up attending my mother's choice of church which was part of a coalition called the United Church of Christ. It was nothing like what MAGA Christians observe.

My theory about organized religion follows a Darwinian line of thinking. Societies that grow, prosper and defend themselves better than others survive. Witness what happened to cultures that practiced human sacrifice as a part of their religion. They have pretty much disappeared. That practice was a loser in the competition of societies and culture. The ones that have stuck around tend to be things like those found in the 10 commandments. Don't kill, don't fuck your neighbor's wife, don't lie, things that center around building trust within a family, society or community. Cooperation is key. Societies where people cooperate do better. At this level, religion is a social organizing tool and those that help a society compete better succeed over others. Personally, I prefer to live in a society where I can trust that my neighbor will not kill me and I have recourse if he threatens or tries to do so. In this way, religion is not a thing to be in awe of, it's just a way that humans have found to help them survive.

Lately, I've been struck by some ideas that came from reading about artificial intelligence, which necessarily led to reading about human intelligence and consciousness, which is not the same as intelligence. I'm not working all that hard on it but there are some observations that can't be denied showing that what we can see, hear and feel through our senses does not extend into our full existence. The "God experience" that Canna described for example. Or dreams. Or what happens to practitioners of meditation. Or what people describe seeing and hearing when near death and then come back. So, maybe there is some mystical, imperceptible level of existence that we experience but can't see except in special cases. And maybe it's a good thing that our ancestors couldn't see it because envisioning the totality of all existence might not be helpful when a predator was about to make a meal of them.

Oh and, Fuck Trump

 

[cannabineer]

I can't recall a time when I seriously considered the existence of a supernatural being watching over all of us to be real or even perfunctorily useful. I grew up attending my mother's choice of church which was part of a coalition called the United Church of Christ. It was nothing like what MAGA Christians observe.

My theory about organized religion follows a Darwinian line of thinking. Societies that grow, prosper and defend themselves better than others survive. Witness what happened to cultures that practiced human sacrifice as a part of their religion. They have pretty much disappeared. That practice was a loser in the competition of societies and culture. The ones that have stuck around tend to be things like those found in the 10 commandments. Don't kill, don't fuck your neighbor's wife, don't lie, things that center around building trust within a family, society or community. Cooperation is key. Societies where people cooperate do better. At this level, religion is a social organizing tool and those that help a society compete better succeed over others. Personally, I prefer to live in a society where I can trust that my neighbor will not kill me and I have recourse if he threatens or tries to do so. In this way, religion is not a thing to be in awe of, it's just a way that humans have found to help them survive.

Lately, I've been struck by some ideas that came from reading about artificial intelligence, which necessarily led to reading about human intelligence and consciousness, which is not the same as intelligence. I'm not working all that hard on it but there are some observations that can't be denied showing that what we can see, hear and feel through our senses does not extend into our full existence. The "God experience" that Canna described for example. Or dreams. Or what happens to practitioners of meditation. Or what people describe seeing and hearing when near death and then come back. So, maybe there is some mystical, imperceptible level of existence that we experience but can't see except in special cases. And maybe it's a good thing that our ancestors couldn't see it because envisioning the totality of all existence might not be helpful when a predator was about to make a meal of them.

Oh and, Fuck Trump

To your last paragraph, Huxley’s The Doors of Perception speaks to all that. He presented a core thesis that we develop a perceptual filter at earliest age, that sort out a stream of incoming data as Important.

Mescaline gave him (as he says) a look at the vast stream of perceptions and their attendant cognitions that normally are shut behind the doors.

 

[Sativied]

We don't all have contradictory inner thoughts that drive our behavior?

View attachment 5354595

This goes a long way toward describing pop culture.

And fascism.

No wonder I struggle to understand their existence.

Yeah I thought it would be very close to 100% instead. Perhaps that could be the common ground where left and right can meet, cause apparently they don't understand it themselves either.

So, maybe there is some mystical, imperceptible level of existence that we experience but can't see except in special cases.

If you're not familiar with it, look up the double slit experiment. I don't think there's any reason to assume mystical, though relatively that word works.

 

[cannabineer]

Yeah I thought it would be very close to 100% instead. Perhaps that could be the common ground where left and right can meet, cause apparently they don't understand it themselves either.


If you're not familiar with it, look up the double slit experiment. I don't think there's any reason to assume mystical, though relatively that word works.

Quantum science is often counterintuitive. I seem to remember reading that much of the paranormal can be explained as a sort of quantum leakage.

Between here and there, I expect our science to be in need of some paradigm shifts. Some of what we take for granted now may just go the way of humors, phlogiston and élan vital.

 

[Fogdog]

If you're not familiar with it, look up the double slit experiment. I don't think there's any reason to assume mystical, though relatively that word works.

You got the sense of my questioning. I was using the term, mystical, in the sense of the greater unknown that is so large it can be awe inspiring, not in a religious sense but just the sense we all have -- that there is more than our perception gives us. Some call that religion.

The double slit experiment resolves to a three-space observation that we can relate to. But it opens the question about the nature of reality and consciousness. To me, it is a paradox that the matter that makes us, exists in, and is part of universes that our senses tell us nothing about. We are made of matter that is much more than what our science and knowledge tells us about it.

As described in this article: https://neurosciencenews.com/physics-consciousness-21222/

After more than 100 years of neuroscience we have very good evidence that the brain is responsible for the creation of our conscious abilities. So how could it be that these conscious experiences can’t be found anywhere in the brain (or in the body) and can’t be reduced to any neural complex activity?

The essay describes work to this date based upon neuroscience that fails to describe the source of consciousness. So, they turned the problem on its head:

when we change our assumption about consciousness and assume that it is a relativistic phenomenon, the mystery of consciousness naturally dissolves. In the paper the researchers developed a conceptual and mathematical framework to understand consciousness from a relativistic point of view.
According to Dr. Lahav, the lead author of the paper, “consciousness should be investigated with the same mathematical tools that physicists use for other known relativistic phenomena.”

The way the article describes the work, the solution may be imminent but really, they just found a different way to analyze and measure the phenomenon. I think it's reasonable to predict a break-through but also to expect we'll learn there is much more we don't understand.

Still, though, we aren't going to find a God in all of this, just better understanding of what we mean by the word, reality.

Oh, and Fuck Trump

 

[CCGNZ]

I mistakenly thought so too a few times… but, I recently found another clue:

View attachment 5354569

So most people don’t. I’d be curious to hear from the other 50-70% that doesn’t, but I don’t think they have given it much thought.

That’s a nice way of putting it though, a “rich diversity“.

That's DEEEEEEP, I've always seen the 'human race" as "richly diverse", "those amazing animals".

 

[Fogdog]

Republicans are allies with the guy who does this to people willing to stand up to him:

Associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny say he has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle nearly three weeks after contact with him was lost.

Imprisoned Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Located In Penal Colony 3 Weeks After Contact Lost

Associates of Alexei Navalny say he has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle nearly three weeks after contact with him was lost.

www.huffpost.com

Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they had not been able to reach him since Dec. 6.

His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said he was located in a prison colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
Navalny is “fine — at least as much as possible after such a long stage” and a lawyer visited him, Yarmysh told The Associated Press.
The region is notorious for long and severe winters. The town is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the harshest of the Soviet Gulag prison-camp system.

“It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, said on X.

They sent a sick man who is recovering from poisoning that was perpetrated by the same man that Trump serves and Republicans are aiding with their denial of funds to help Ukraine defend itself.

Navalny has been behind bars in Russia since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests.

Donald Trump, the man that MAGA Republicans are probably going to nominate as their candidate for President of the United States is promising them that he'll put the "vermin" who oppose him into prisons. In earlier statements he made while holding the office of POTUS, he talked about his admiration of dictators like Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un, all of whom operate prisons with horrendous conditions. And MAGA controlled House of Representatives are trying to make it all happen here.

Oh, and Fuck Trump.