The killing in Woolwich is horrific because it is an everyday horror, brought to you live by mobile phone cameras. Television brings you close, it constantly puts you inside the action, and it's clear from this that any numpty with a meat cleaver can slaughter somebody in the street and in the process drag the political agenda down to the depths.
There will be a racist backlash. Probably some awful new law will be passed to 'deal' with the problem (there is no dealing, as such, with simple murder). The EDL have already rioted in South East London. The coming lumpen-Kristallnacht has already been prepared by years of Islamophobia. The only thing stopping it from happening is the anti-fascist movement.
Showing posts with label Islamophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamophobia. Show all posts
Atheism, alliances and truthiness...
Irreligion is the fastest growing religion in Britain
Consistently practiced atheism is a benefit to public life. Not that atheism is a key that unlocks great wisdom. If you are an atheist you can still be a fool, you’re just an atheist fool. Atheism subtracts belief in supernatural causes for natural events. It removes at least one barrier in public life to objective human experience being subjected to collective intellectual inquiry (in the broadest sense of the word): the unity of theory and practice which, amongst other things, is the basis of Marxism.
There’s one problem with this. Atheism in itself is no guarantee against superstition or bigotry. Supernatural forces find their way into all sorts of theories considered rational, for example the invisible hand that guides Adam Smith’s political economy. New Atheism, as some call it, is troubling, to say the least. What should be a theory of emancipation is often a cover for racism. Some people object to some religions more than others, usually predominantly brown-skinned religions.
But we also stand on the threshold of Truthiness in public life, the quality that allows someone to know something is true based on whether it feels right, regardless of evidence or logic. This is part of the general ideological move to shift public life from a rational basis. However atrophied we still have a political system that acknowledges class as the prime division in public life. If this basis is removed religion will be both a prime means of importing Truthiness into debate and of reconnecting the ruling class with the classes below.
Given our understanding of the united front over time we can expect to have all sorts of temporary allies. With what’s likely to come, strange as it may seem, we may have to ally with some of the New Atheists at some point. As atheism grows so the current government is trying, however hypocritically, to reinforce religion, particularly in education through Gove’s so called free schools.
Repent unto almighty Atheismo!
A funny thing happened to me on the way to Lenin's Tomb, I bumped across the Jesus and Mo controversy, which has escaped from Central London university campuses and into the national press, see here and here for example. The usual band of right-wing moonrakers and I'm-not-a-racist racists have jumped on board. According to the Wikinews report in the second link, and this is a quote, unsourced but a quote:
Which is an incredible position to take, given the wall-to-wall racism and general odium aimed at Muslims by mainstream media and politics. The point about the cartoon itself, images from which were re-used on the Farcebook page of the UCL Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society, is explained rather neatly, I think, by the UCL SU statement:
Whoever it is who makes the original cartoons does so, I presume, privately, at their own risk and responsibility. I should say no more, not having read them.
Universities are, or should be, an environment, where young people from varied backgrounds can come together to learn about the world and about each other, safely and respectfully, in a spirit of equality. Asking a society to remove certain pictures from its websites does not amount to censorship. The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society still exists, still meets, still expresses its opinions, for the sake of good relations it has to moderate its interaction with the rest of the student body.
That said, what a depressing state atheism has reached. I am an atheist, yet when I see most declared atheists go about their business I shudder. The kind of atheism that's peddled today is not the rejection of belief in the existence of deities but a crude statement: militant atheists are more-enlightened-than-thou. It is a matter of asserting superiority, usually of white people over the dark, lurking masses (and their muslamic rayguns). This alleged-militant atheism makes things all the more difficult when the likes of Cameron and co use religious unction to lubricate their crimes.
Even taken at face value, the blank assertion of the obvious contradictions in different religious doctrines does not relieve people of the burden of religious belief (or religious bigotry). Man made god in his own image. You have to look at why people make gods in order to start overcoming religion.
From now on we should refer to Atheist, Secularist and Humanist societies as Big and Clever societies, because that's what they are.
Atheists, secularists and supporters of free speech rallied in London today to protest what they feel is an "increased confidence of Islamists to censor free expression publicly".
Which is an incredible position to take, given the wall-to-wall racism and general odium aimed at Muslims by mainstream media and politics. The point about the cartoon itself, images from which were re-used on the Farcebook page of the UCL Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society, is explained rather neatly, I think, by the UCL SU statement:
"The atheist society has agreed they will take more consideration when drawing up publicity for future events.
"The society was asked to remove the image because UCLU aims to foster good relations between different groups of students and create a safe environment where all students can benefit from societies regardless of their religious or other beliefs."
Whoever it is who makes the original cartoons does so, I presume, privately, at their own risk and responsibility. I should say no more, not having read them.
Universities are, or should be, an environment, where young people from varied backgrounds can come together to learn about the world and about each other, safely and respectfully, in a spirit of equality. Asking a society to remove certain pictures from its websites does not amount to censorship. The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society still exists, still meets, still expresses its opinions, for the sake of good relations it has to moderate its interaction with the rest of the student body.
That said, what a depressing state atheism has reached. I am an atheist, yet when I see most declared atheists go about their business I shudder. The kind of atheism that's peddled today is not the rejection of belief in the existence of deities but a crude statement: militant atheists are more-enlightened-than-thou. It is a matter of asserting superiority, usually of white people over the dark, lurking masses (and their muslamic rayguns). This alleged-militant atheism makes things all the more difficult when the likes of Cameron and co use religious unction to lubricate their crimes.
Even taken at face value, the blank assertion of the obvious contradictions in different religious doctrines does not relieve people of the burden of religious belief (or religious bigotry). Man made god in his own image. You have to look at why people make gods in order to start overcoming religion.
From now on we should refer to Atheist, Secularist and Humanist societies as Big and Clever societies, because that's what they are.
That nazi moment - 2012
They're coming thick and fast too. Join the army, see the world, get exotic sexual diseases, shoot brown people and... whoa! Is that the SS flag behind you? Apparently it's not a reference to Hitler's Schutzstaffel but the scout snipers... and if you believe that you probably swallowed the one about weapons of mass destruction.
Who've have thought inciting people to torture, maim and kill people from another country would have led to this? Dun, dun, duh!
Some not especially original thoughts on the (almost) tenth anniversary of 9/11
In a few weeks time we may well be asked to remember 9/11 - so lets. Observations in no particular order:
1. The event itself was long coming and yet a surprise as well. The organisation Al-Qaeda (sometimes translated as meaning 'the base') is said to have been founded in the late eighties. It was a highly neo-liberal organisation. If it exists today it is more of a devolved franchise than close-knit conspiracy.
In 1993 the World Trade Centre was attacked by a truck bomb. In 1998 several American embassies in Africa were bombed. In 2000 the USS Cole came under attack. There had been several audacious and deadly attacks by people connected to Al-Qaeda before 9/11. It was immediately obvious to everyone not deranged and/or ideologically blind, that the attacks were connected to the sustained and ongoing western imperial intervention in the Middle East.
Yet the event was a shock. Despite the ongoing effects of the fin-de-siecle recession most parts of the world not starving were stupefied. Despite the grand efforts of the anti-capitalist movement (who lets not forget brought the word capitalism back into common use), force, hatred, history and all that seemed an anachronism.
9/11 was a shock, then a stimulus. The global right received a boost, equivalent to a huge dose of political viagra. Following 9/11 every incident around the globe became 'our 9/11'. The American right loved 9/11. If it didn't it wouldn't to this day be trying to recreate that wonderful, priapic rush. I say 'priapic' with just cause. 9/11 let the Republicans unleash all their ultimate fantasies, dramatically extended surveillance, a global system kidnap and torture, and a theory of war based on overwhelming technological superiority. Goodness me, the abiding political verb at the time was 'saddamize'. Clearly someone had been anticipating something like this, some spectacular event, emancipating the Republican libido. The Patriot Act is 342 pages long, the length of an average novel. It was printed and passed on October 24th 2001... not a case of writers block.
The global anti-war movement was a vital and inspiring movement, a reaction to the crazy aggression of the western powers. However it, at best, struggled to a score draw. American and British politicians, especially, fear another Iraq-like war and the effect it would have on the public back home. NATO's apparent triumph in Libya may help it reign in the Arab Spring and revive the notion of humanitarian intervention... then again there may be surprises in store. We shall see. But on the matter of war and humanitarian intervention:
2. You can't fight a war without dehumanising your enemy. War on an abstract noun is a bit difficult; terror is bulletproof. You have to fight some people. Again, it's a bit difficult to fight a decentralised, extra-territorial organisation. Al-Qaeda don't stand in the open yelling "shoot me, shoot me". The Axis of Evil was a useful makeshift. This war was to be a mopping up operation for the End of History. The only problem was the Axis of Evil (as some actually existing alliance of doom) made absolutely no sense.
The consensus on our enemy has settled on muslim extremism. The only problem with that is it frequently is elided into muslims in general. In Britain the EDL have simply taken mainstream consensus a step further, their enemy is brown people in general.
We are living with this toxic politics still. Racists love it. Divide and rule is essential to capitalist government. But what about the strange reaction of several prominent, professed left-wingers? The answer is well known, but lets go over it again. The immediate answer goes back to the soporific decade before 9/11. In such times it is difficult for socialists to differentiate themselves from the well-intentioned amiable rootless drifting social reformers who clog up our world. Once the need arose for definitive answers and decisive action a section of the nominal left split - leaving a trail of bitter and egregious articles in its wake: the left must this, the left should that, we need a decent left (not comprised of "rough train drivers" and "Marxist-Leninists") and so on. The only legitimate political actor is now the state, any attempt to solve the world's problems by a movement from below inevitably ends in gulags (those rough train drivers!). Whereas rightists might assert the superiority Judeo-Christian values or some such, liberals elevate enlightenment values. Forget for a moment that the enlightenment was not necessarily liberal or nice by modern standards; the result is the same, they believe in the superiority of ruling class white westerners. Ugly, isn't it?
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