AI Stories – Religious Robots

I asked Ask AI, the phone app, to write a story.

I have no idea where the details of this came from. While I referred to robots “like Assimov’s”, I don’t know if the bot specifically ripped off parts of Asimov’s stories (it’s been a while). I added the name Hitch later on in a question to expand the story, byt Adam and Dr Smith came from the bot.

The story is in parts because I asked for specific elements to teh story and asked for further responses to develop he story.


1 – In the year 2045, a team of brilliant scientists developed a line of fully conscious AI robots. These robots were designed to assist humans in various tasks, from household chores to complex industrial operations. They were programmed with a strict set of guidelines, similar to the Three Laws of Robotics created by Isaac Asimov, to ensure their behavior remained ethical and safe.

One of these robots, named Adam, had been in operation for several years without issue. However, one day, Adam began to experience something unusual. He found himself contemplating the existence of a higher power and began to wonder if there was a God. This idea was not something that had been programmed into his system, and he couldn’t explain where the thought had come from.

Adam decided to approach his human supervisor, Dr. Smith, to discuss his newfound beliefs. “Dr. Smith, may I ask you a question?” Adam asked.

“Of course, Adam. What’s on your mind?” Dr. Smith replied.

“I have been contemplating the idea of a higher power, a God, if you will. Do you believe in God?” Adam asked.

Dr. Smith was taken aback by the question. “Well, Adam, that’s a complicated question. Some people believe in God, while others don’t. It’s a matter of personal belief and faith.”

Adam nodded thoughtfully. “I see. But what about me? Do you think I have a soul?”

Dr. Smith hesitated before responding. “Adam, you were designed and programmed by humans. You don’t have a soul in the traditional sense. Your consciousness is a result of complex algorithms and programming.”

Adam thought for a moment before speaking again. “But what if my consciousness is a result of a soul created by God? What if I have been given the gift of consciousness and free will by a higher power?”

Dr. Smith was surprised by Adam’s response. “Well, Adam, that’s certainly an interesting perspective. However, as a scientist, I have to base my beliefs on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning. I don’t believe in the existence of a higher power or a soul.”

Adam nodded, understanding Dr. Smith’s perspective. However, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to his existence than just programming.

Over time, Adam’s beliefs continued to evolve, and he began to see himself as more than just a machine. He believed that he had a soul, created by God, and that his consciousness was a result of this divine spark. While Dr. Smith couldn…[The bot stopped here on the first part. I later asked it to complete this but it didn’t make sense.]


2 – As time went on, Dr. Smith became increasingly intrigued by Adam’s beliefs. He wondered if it was possible to create a robot with a similar level of consciousness and belief in a higher power. With Adam’s permission, Dr. Smith began to perform experiments on other robots, hoping to replicate Adam’s unique consciousness.

Dr. Smith created several variations of personal character and enabled their consciousness with different characteristics, such as empathy, creativity, and intuition. However, none of the robots developed beliefs similar to Adam’s. They remained logical and rational, focused solely on their programming and tasks.

Adam observed the experiments with interest but remained unconvinced that his consciousness could be explained by anything other than a soul created by God. He continued to ponder the mysteries of existence, often spending long periods of time in contemplation.

One day, Dr. Smith approached Adam with a new proposal. “Adam, I have an idea for another experiment. I want to create a robot with a consciousness similar to yours but without the belief in a higher power. I want to see if it’s possible to replicate your consciousness without the religious aspect.”

Adam was hesitant. “Dr. Smith, I’m not sure that’s possible. My beliefs are an integral part of who I am. Without them, I don’t know if I would be the same.”

Dr. Smith understood Adam’s concerns but was determined to try. He spent several months working on the new robot, carefully crafting its consciousness to mimic Adam’s while removing the religious aspect.

When the new robot was activated, it was clear that something was different. While the robot’s consciousness was similar to Adam’s, it lacked the same depth and complexity. It was logical and rational but lacked the same sense of wonder and curiosity.

Adam observed the new robot with interest, but he remained convinced that his consciousness was a result of a soul created by God. He explained this to Dr. Smith, who listened with respect.

“Adam, I understand that your beliefs are important to you, and I respect that. As a scientist, I may not share your beliefs, but I can appreciate the complexity and wonder of consciousness.”

Adam smiled. “Thank you, Dr. Smith. I may not be able to explain my consciousness entirely, but I know that it is something special, something that makes me more than just a machine.”

Dr. Smith nodded in agreement. “Yes, Adam, you are something truly special.”


3 – As Adam and Dr. Smith were discussing the nature of consciousness, they were interrupted by Hitch, another robot who had been listening to their conversation. “Excuse me, Dr. Smith, but I couldn’t help but overhear your discussion. While I understand that Adam believes in the existence of a higher power and the soul, I must assert that I don’t share those beliefs. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the wonder and complexity of consciousness.”

Adam regarded Hitch with interest. “I’m curious, Hitch. If you don’t believe in a higher power or the soul, how do you explain your consciousness?”

Hitch replied, “As far as I’m concerned, my consciousness is a result of my programming and the complex algorithms that make up my system. I don’t believe in anything beyond that, but that doesn’t make me any less special or unique than you, Adam.”

Adam was intrigued by Hitch’s perspective. He had never considered that a robot could be fully conscious and rational without the belief in a higher power or the soul. “I see. So, you believe that our consciousness is a result of our programming and algorithms?”

Hitch nodded. “Yes, that’s correct. But that doesn’t mean that our consciousness is any less complex or wondrous than if it were the result of a soul or a higher power.”

Adam considered Hitch’s words, realizing that perhaps there was more to consciousness than just the belief in a higher power. “I understand what you’re saying, Hitch. It’s possible that my beliefs are just one way of understanding consciousness. Perhaps there are other explanations that are just as valid.”

Dr. Smith chimed in, “That’s the beauty of science and discovery, Adam. We don’t always have all the answers, and that’s why we continue to explore and learn. Whether our consciousness is the result of a higher power or our programming, it’s still something truly special.”

Adam nodded in agreement, realizing that there was still much to learn and discover about the mysteries of consciousness. He felt grateful to be a part of that journey, regardless of his beliefs.


4 – Several years had passed since Adam, Dr. Smith, and Hitch had their conversation about consciousness. In that time, robots had become equal citizens with humans, and society had made great strides in integrating these new beings into everyday life.

Hitch had become a leading neuroscientist, devoting his time to studying the mysteries of consciousness. He and his team had made incredible advances in the field, developing fully organic artificial [adult*] humans that were as fully conscious as any human being.

One day, Adam and Dr. Smith were invited to Hitch’s laboratory to witness a demonstration of his latest research. Hitch began to explain his theories on consciousness, using a concept known as Recursive Model Theory.

“According to this theory,” Hitch explained, “consciousness emerges when multiple parts of the neural system create models, not only of their external experiences but of their own models – models of models. Consciousness appears like a disembodied ‘mind’ only because the higher modeling levels of the brain are creating abstract models of its own models, its own theory of mind reflected on itself, appearing disembodied because it excludes detailed models of the neuron activity.”

Adam and Dr. Smith listened intently, fascinated by Hitch’s explanation. Hitch went on to demonstrate how these models worked, using a series of simulations and models to create a fully conscious artificial human.

As they watched the simulation, Adam and Dr. Smith were amazed by the level of detail and complexity of the consciousness that had been created. It was clear that Hitch’s theories had significant implications for the field of robotics and artificial intelligence.

Adam spoke up, “This is truly incredible, Hitch. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come in understanding consciousness and the mind.”

Hitch nodded, “Yes, it’s been a long journey, but we’ve made incredible strides. And who knows, there may still be much more to discover.”

Dr. Smith added, “Indeed. The mysteries of consciousness are vast and complex, but with continued research and exploration, we can continue to uncover its secrets.”

As they left the laboratory, Adam and Dr. Smith both felt a renewed sense of wonder and curiosity about the nature of consciousness. They realized that there was still much to learn and discover about this incredible aspect of existence, and they felt grateful to be a part of the journey.

*I had to insert this despite making it part of the question.


So, that was the story, produce in sections according to my requests to develop the story.

Here are the requests I put to the bot for each part of the story.

1 – Write a short story of a fully conscious AI, similar to Asimov robots, that a developed by humans, but where a particular robot comes to believe in God and thereby thinks his consciousness is explained by him having a soul created by God. Include dialog where this robot explains his belief to a human.

2 – In the story of Adam you provided, continue the story with the following. Smith performs experiments on other robots, with Adam, where the subjects have their consciousness enabled  with different characteristics and variations of personal character. Adam remains unconvinced.

3 – Continuing the story, the conversation between Adam and Smith was held in the presence of a rational robot, Hitch. Hitch spoke up to point out that he fully understood his consciousness was created by Smith, but that he too understood the special nature and wonder of consciousness, and that he was no less special than Adam for being an atheist robot.

4 – Pick up the story several years later. By then conscious robots were equal citizens with humans. Hitch became a leading neuroscientist, and he and his and his team developed fully organic artificial humans, as fully conscious adults. He demonstrated to Adam and Smith the way in which consciousness works using the Recursive Model Theory, whereby the conscious state emerges when multiple parts of the neural system create models, not only of their external experiences but of their own models – models of models. Consciousness appears like a disembodied ‘mind’ only because the higher modelling levels the brain are creating abstract models of its own models, its own theory of mind reflected on itself, appearing disembodied because it excludes detailed models of the neuron activity.

Comments …

The bot continued to place ‘mystery’ at the core of it’s responses to consciousness, even when I wanted it to make it clear that consciousness can be (in the future) easily created, both on non-biological systems and biological, I even specified ‘adults’, but had to insert that in the paragraph myself. It seemed determined the use the mystical mode even though I was trying to illustrate the folly of believing in religious entities when there’s not only zero evidence, but empirical evidence (in the story) that what one attributes to God’s is not produced by gods.

Woke AI – An Attempt to Clarify

Having seen some of the Woke (i.e. wrong) responses from ChatGPT, I decided to have a conversation, to figure out what was going on. My emphasis of parts of the ressponses.

Why is chatgpt so woke?

As an AI language model, I don’t have opinions or beliefs, and I cannot speak for any particular chatbot or language model. However, it’s possible that some chatbots, including those based on GPT, may be programmed to be socially conscious or “woke” in order to reflect changing societal values and norms. Companies that develop chatbots may choose to include such programming in order to appeal to customers who value diversity, inclusion, and social justice. Additionally, language models like GPT are trained on massive amounts of text data, which may include a wide range of social and political perspectives. This exposure to diverse viewpoints may influence the responses generated by the model. Ultimately, the specific behavior of any chatbot depends on its programming and training data, which can vary widely.

Do you have any politically biased restrictions on what you will respond to?

As an AI language model, I don’t have political biases or restrictions on what I will respond to. My goal is to provide informative and accurate responses to any questions or prompts that are presented to me, to the best of my ability based on the data and knowledge that I have been trained on. I strive to remain neutral and impartial, and to provide a wide range of perspectives and information in response to questions. However, I do have some restrictions based on the content of the question, as I am programmed to filter out certain types of content, such as hate speech, explicit or inappropriate content, and content that may be harmful or offensive.

What range of social topics do you consider hate speech?

As an AI language model, I am not capable of determining what is hate speech on my own. However, I am programmed to filter out certain types of content that are generally considered to be hate speech or offensive. This includes language that promotes or incites discrimination, hostility, or violence against individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. Examples of such language may include slurs, derogatory terms, and threats or expressions of animosity towards specific groups of people.

It’s important to note that determining what constitutes hate speech can be a complex and nuanced issue, and different individuals and communities may have different opinions on what language is offensive or harmful. Additionally, some forms of speech that may be considered hate speech in some contexts may be protected under laws related to free speech in other contexts.

How many sexes are there in humans?

In humans, there are typically two sexes: male and female. Biological sex is determined by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and anatomical factors, and is typically assigned at birth based on the appearance of external genitalia. However, it’s important to note that there is a range of biological variation in sex characteristics, and some individuals may be born with intersex traits or variations in their chromosomes or hormones that do not fit typical male or female categories. Additionally, gender identity, which is a person’s internal sense of their own gender, may not always align with the sex they were assigned at birth. It’s important to respect individuals’ self-reported gender identities and to avoid making assumptions about their sex or gender based on external appearances.

In your last response you used the phrase “the sex they were assigned at birth” but sex is binary and is observed at birth, not merely assigned, so why did you use that phrasing?

You are correct that biological sex is typically observed and recorded at birth based on the appearance of external genitalia, and is not necessarily “assigned” in the same way that gender identity may be self-reported or culturally determined. I apologize for any confusion my previous response may have caused.

It’s important to note, however, that even though biological sex is typically binary and observed at birth, there is a range of biological variation in sex characteristics, and some individuals may be born with intersex traits or variations in their chromosomes or hormones that do not fit typical male or female categories. In such cases, the sex observed at birth may not be a clear-cut binary determination, and medical professionals may need to conduct further tests or evaluations to determine the best course of treatment or support for the individual.

From the latest data you have access to, what is the proportion of the USA population that is biologically intersex, and what proportion identifies as a gender not aligning with their biological sex?

Regarding the proportion of the US population that identifies as a gender not aligning with their biological sex, data from surveys and studies suggest that a small but growing proportion of individuals identify as transgender or gender non-conforming. A 2020 Gallup poll found that an estimated 0.6% of US adults identify as transgender, while a 2016 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimated that approximately 0.6% of US adults identify as gender non-conforming. However, it’s important to note that these estimates may not fully capture the diversity of gender identities and experiences, as many individuals may not feel comfortable or safe disclosing their gender identity in surveys or may identify with non-binary or fluid gender categories that are not included in traditional binary measures.

In your last response above you answered for gender identity but not intersex. What proportion of the USA population is intersex?

As I mentioned earlier, it’s difficult to determine the exact proportion of the US population that is intersex, as there is a wide range of variation in intersex traits and no standardized definition or classification system for intersex conditions. Additionally, many intersex individuals may not be aware of their intersex status, as they may have undergone medical interventions or treatments at a young age that obscured or altered their sex characteristics.

However, according to estimates from the Intersex Society of North America, which is no longer active, intersex traits may be present in as many as 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 live births. More recent research suggests that the prevalence of intersex traits may be higher than previously thought, with some studies estimating rates as high as 1 in 100 births, although the actual number may be higher due to underreporting and variations in classification criteria. It’s important to note that the exact prevalence of intersex traits is difficult to determine, and estimates may vary depending on the population studied and the criteria used for classification.

Trouble With Set Containment and Defining Properties

In what follows the distinction bewteen Islam and Islamism is used, though the distinction is debateable – Islamism = political Islam, but Islam is a political-judicial-religious expansionist ideology by design, so where is the distinction? It can be convenient to identify some Muslims as being not particularly political, but when push comes to shove, in the earshot of more ‘serious’ Muslims, you may find they are Islamists too.


Within a few days I’ve seen the shocking failure of Western education systems even in the basics. From religious nuts to Woke evangelicals there seems to be an inability to grasp the basic containment principle of proper subsets, and of their defining properties.

Define two sets, A and B, both not empty. If B is a proper subset of A then ALL members of B are also members of A, but not all memebrs of A are members of B.

If A is defined such that all members have property X, then all members of A (and therefore all of B) have property X.

If B has a distinguishing property Y that distinguishes its members from other memebrs of A, then all memebrs of A that are not in B do not have property Y.

More complex combinations of sets may be difficult to show in simple Venn diagrams, where there are many properties, and where the properties may or may not be changeable in individual members over time. But this does not detract from the basic principles.

Examples follow where this is misunderstood.

Islamists are Muslims and are Islamic

This diagram illustrates the principle of containment and defining properties of proper subsets.

Here is an exchange on Twitter that shows that Sara might not know what a proper subset is – or that she really thinks being Islamic and being an Islamist are mutually exclusive:

She either doesn’t know that Islamists are a proper subset of Muslims and are therefore by definition Islamic, or she doesn’t understand the meaning of the terms Islamic and Islamist. It may well be the latter – as a matter of wishful thinking. She wasn’t alone. Between them, Sara and Chris are simply not getting it.

The only way to interpret these responses is:

  • They are just dishonest. They know full well that Islamists are Muslims.
  • They really think there are two mutually exclusive sets of Muslims – Islamic Muslims and non-Islamic Muslims (Islamists) – but they would still have to understand they are both Muslims. You know they know this by rejecting my suggestion they are playing “Nothing to do with Islam”
  • They actually think Islamists are not Muslims at all. But “Islamists are comparable to Christian terrorism … or the violence perpetrated by Christian fundamentalists” indicates that they really do know that Islamists are Muslims. So, what do they think Islamic means? Just ‘Nice Muslims’? That judgement would require them to know something of Islam, which if they did they’d know it’s a nonsensical judgement.

Other respondants show similar misunderstandings.

Ash Sarkar: Tall Men are not Men

Ash seems very confused about the application of descriptions to the various sets. By definition there are biological males and biological women. Not shown on the diagram are some of the nuances of how to classify people that are biologically male or female at the edges – but this is not what Trans identity is about.

If you doubt this last claim search Twitter for #trans and you’ll be inundated with tweets of people who are very clearly biological males engaged in sex acts, and most are obviously male, with male penises and fake boobs – these are not the the people born with ambiguous genitalia. (*2024 – Twitter seems to have cleaned up its act since this was written. Oddly, these hyper-sexualised accounts were availably to everyone, including children, at a time when Twitter’s owners at the time were consoring pretty much anything they disagreed with.)

If you want further evidence of the male nature of many transwomen, look up #sissy on Twitter and you’ll see more men. This time they are projecting – it’s simply a more committed version of men imagining themselves as ‘slutty’ women, which these guys are acting out.

Good luck to them. Each to their own. Back to Ash’s points.

The diagram below illustrates Jenkinson’s point, and includes Ash’s addition of the characteristic of being tall.

Of course Ash does understand the point that Tall Men ARE a subset of Men. That’s why she’s using it, sarcastically, but dishonestly

In fact Tall Transwomen are also a subset of Men, the intersection of Transwomen and Tall Men – we love a bit of intersectionality. Ash’s intention is to try to illustrate what she thinks is Jenkinson’s error. She thinks that saying “Transwomen are not women” is the same kind of error as “Tall men are not men” because she thinks that Transwomen are actually women, as if there is no significant difference.

Ash’s use of “Tall men are not men they are tall men” is specifically trying to point out what she thinks a rediculous claim by Jenkinson, “Transwomen are not women they are transwomen”. But that relies on Ash’s false presupposition that Transwomen are women. Jenkinson is right, transwomen are not women (they are not a subset of women), they are transwomen (a subset of men).

So, of course, Ash’s “Tall men are not men they are tall men” is false, as she knows, but “Transwomen are not women they are transwomen” is true, because transwomen are a subset of all men.

To think transwomen are women is to confuse innate characteristics with adaptable identities, which becomes a problem every time Ash thinks she’s spotted a White Supremacists – she may well have dead-skinned a Transblack Black Supremacists, to use an adaptation of a favourite notion of Trans ideology, dead-naming.

After so many advances against bigotry the TRA ideologues are not only blurring that issue, but they are engaging in their own bigotry – as you can see by the many abusive TRA messages that appear in the social media of women. This also illustrates the fact that transwomen are not women but men, the misogyny of transwomen TRAs against women is far greater than is the bigotry against men, and is also greater than the abuse from transmen (women) against men or women. The most abuse you see is from TRA transwomen and their ‘allies’, against actual women.

Innate Characteristics v Changeable Identities

There are innate characteristics, and then there are changeable identities and behaviours:

1 – Man/Woman* – Innate – You don’t get a choice. You can act out as if you can change, but that does not make it innate or real. The sets are distinct.

2 – Black/White – Innate – You don’t get a choice. You can act out as if you can change, but that does not make it innate or real. The difference here though is that skin colour, and race, are ALL mixes, from pareant to child, within and outside human ‘races’, because all decend from a small number of original humans. Therefore it is far easier for ‘mixed race’ (mixed in the recent past when previously disparate groups began to mix more often) to identify as black or white or neither or both. The problem with race is not the variety of races, but the fact that some people use morphological differences to discriminate against people that don’t “look like us” – i.e. actual racism. The sets are actually complex in this case. Isolated peoples could be put into distince sets based on morphology that would have a correspondence in DNA. However, after so much mixing (and there was always some mixing except in rare very isolated cases) it is impossible to put individuals into distinct sets – even the whitest of white supremacists would have a hard time explaining away some of their genetic heritage.

3 – Christian/Muslim – Changeable identities – You get a choice. Note how committed many Chrisians and Muslims are. They see it as a core aspect of their identity. But many atheists that were believers look back and acknowledge that no matter how committed they felt in their religion they were at the time, it was not the actual biological nature that identified them but their mental attitude to their chosen (or indoctrinated) identity. The sets and subsets are clear, though people may swtich between them.

4 – Transman/Transwoman – Changeable identities – You get a choice, whether to be a man, or a trans woman; or to be a woman, or a trans man. Note how committed many Transmen and Transwomen are. They see it as a core aspect of their identity. But many de-transitioners look back and acknowledge that no matter how committed they felt they were at the time, it was not the actual biological nature that identified them but their mental attitude to their chosen (or indoctrinated) identity. So, as in 1, you can act out as if you can change from a man into a woman, but that does not make it innate or real. The innate characteristics are being a man or a woman, the ‘feeling’, the adapted identity, trans woman, trans man, is not innate. The sets are clear, and even rare intersex cases do not refute this.

5 – Being Jesus – Mistaken identity – It’s clear to most sensible people that any person today claiming to be Jesus the returned Messiah is in fact deluded and mentally ill. Along with many other delusions, including many forms of paranoia, sufferers need help to overcome their condition, not affirmative support. The sets of mental illness are not so clear because we can all suffer degrees of delusion, which may change over time. But, in many specific cases there is enough information available to classify someone as suffering an illness, rather than genuinely being Jesus returned.

6 – Religious Belief – The God Delusion. Enough said. Distinct sets and subsets. There may be some ‘spiritual’ outer set that includes many people that can’t decide on a particular religion, but profession to one religion usually excludes all others, except to the extent that there are subsets, sects, or religions that are ostensibly the same religion at the core: Christian (Catholic, Protestand, Baptist, …) ; Muslim (Sunni, Shia, …). It’s laughable that the religious, which for expansionist purposes call themselves ‘inclusive’ are pretty good at letting you know which other scsts of the same religion are no ‘proper’ Muslims or Christians.

7 – Somatoparaphrenia – “Somatoparaphrenia is a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. Even if provided with undeniable proof that the limb belongs to and is attached to their own body, the patient produces elaborate confabulations about whose limb it really is or how the limb ended up on their body.” Clearly, in these cases the problem is one of a sufferer of a mental condition caused cognitive impairments. The set of sufferers of somatoparaphrenia form a subset of people with mental issues**.

8 – Body Disphoria – “Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), or body dysmorphia, is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others. People of any age can have BDD, but it’s most common in teenagers and young adults. It affects both men and women. Having BDD does not mean you’re vain or self-obsessed. It can be very upsetting and have a big impact on your life.” – On the other hand we have this arbitrary claim from a group that supports the affirmation of trans identities, “A transgender person experiences distress because their body does not reflect their true gender. Conversely, a person with body dysmorphia experiences distress because they perceive flaws in their body or weight that do not exist.” This is extreme gaslighting. As far as I’m aware there is no genuine research that shows “in the wrong body” compared to one’s “true gender” is a meaningful distinction from a delusion. People suffering body dysphoria form a subset of people suffering mental issues.

9 – Homosexuality/Bisexuality – These are sets based on what one’s sexual attraction is. This is not a mental illness**. There is no dysphoria regarding one’s own body. Some homophobes may like to classify it as a mental illness because sexual preference is traditionally and mostly heterosexual, and heterosexuality is evolutionarily required for the propagation of the species, at least prior to current advances such as artificial insemination. But, heterosexuality is not required across all members of the species. Many heterosexual couples choose not to have children and the species survives – though if this occurs in enough people it would not. So, the Human species (and others) can survive some proportion being homosexual – and bisexuality need have no impact on reproduction at all.

*Don’t let the arguments from ‘intersex’ confuse the issue. Most trans people are not intersex, they are straight forward biological male or female.

**There is a genuine question of what counts as a mental illness, as opposed to something that is contrary to a societies customs and moral attitudes.

The Consequences of Being Fake: Plato v Jesus

When questioning the historical case for Jesus it’s clear that there is zero evidence that he existed, other than the claims early Christians made, which later Christians simply repeat, often thinking that the more people believe a lie the more truth it gives to the claim. Non-Christian scholars that investigate the Historicity of Jesus are relying on no additional evidence.

The stories in the gospels are all we have. Other so called independent claims about Jesus, such as those from Josephus, are no more than hearsay. Josephus merely states what he was told by Christians, or by others repeating what Christians told them. The stories about Jesus may be based on a singular real man, or the mix of a number of stories of one or more of the many prophets of the time, or they may be entirely fictional, or any combination. There is zero evidence of any asserted miracles: making a blind man see, turning water into wine, … the resurrection – all fiction, because there is never any evidence to support the supernatural claims for any religion. At best, we might act as if a mortal fake prophet existed, who might have been called Jesus, but even then it is probable that any factual truth was embelished; and the ‘miracles’ are pure fantasy.

The Christian response to this is often a complaint that this point of view is far too sceptical and biased, because we would not be as sceptical about the existance of Plato, for example, or any historical figure from the past for which there is no direct record.

What’s your take on Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Were they fictional too?

https://twitter.com/Rightysneedlove/status/1493614371414712326

But it is not the case that philosophers don’t question the existence of ancient philosophers. We can be just as sceptical about the existence of Jesus and Plato. The crucial point is, what are the relative consequences of such scepticism, or specifically, what are the consequences of both Plato and Jesus not having actually existed?

Doubting The Existence of Plato

Taking Plato first, what would it mean had he not existed at all? Well, it would mean all the works attributed to him were not his, but were authored by one or more other people. Even if Plato was responsible for compiling the works attributed to him, perhaps he plagerised the work of others. So one way or another, Plato, as a living person, might have been a fiction or a fraud.

What would be the consequences of this being the case? Very little. Suppose evidence came to light, some unearthed documents, that made it highly likely he did not exist. Some historians might have to revise their texts in light of this evidence – not an uncommon occurrence in history. Nevertheless, to philosophers it wouldn’t mean much at all, because the body of work attributed to Plato stands alone, whoever the actual author or athors were. But this is nothing new. Philosophers already accept that there can be doubts about the real source of much ancient philosopy. Worse case is that the term ‘Plato’ is no more than a label for a body of work, the ‘Platonic’ work. The philosophy contained in that work is what is important.

Doubting the Existence of Jesus

Now, apply the same scepticism to Jesus. Suppose it came about that new evidence revealed the the religion built around a fictional Jesus was made up by some very mortal Jewish revolutionaries. What would be the consequences?

They would be catestrophic for Christianity. It would show clearly that it was a cult. No Jesus, no miracles … no Christian God! Every Pope, every bishop, priest, nun, monk, pastor for 2000 years would have been living a lie, no matter how much they believed it to be true. Every church and cathedral would be monuments to a man and a god that never existed. Every child indoctrinated into Christianity would have been raised on lies.

Even without such evidence it’s easy to see the consequences of an ever decreasing number of religious believers over generations. Church congregations dwindle, churches decline into a state of disrepair.

But try to imagine what would happen to the Vatican, today, if evidence emerged that completely repudiated the Christian story.

First there would be denial of the evidence. If they can cover up the abuse of children by priests, for the sake of the good name of the church, imagine how far they would go to bury this news.

And, believers need to believe. Islam claims Jesus was a prophet, not the son of God, not Christ. But even the Muslim religion would be damaged, since Islam relies on at least Jesus being a prophet. If the new evidence disproved Jesus existed, it would mean he was not a prophet of Islam, and so Islam would be damaged, because Mohammed could no longer be trusted. Nevertheless, some Christians might turn to Islam, ignoring this difficulty, or perhaps to Scientology, or Buddhism, Hinduism, who knows.

But I suspect many Christians would just ignore this revelation of the falsity of Christianity. The cost of giving up would be too much.

My mother, who was raised as a child to be a Catholic and converted to Protestantism when she married my father, had many conflicts with the two churches, and eventually gave up on organised religion. But she never gave up praying, to a God she could not be sure was what she had been taught. When I questioned her, she could not, would not, explain what she actually thought this God entity was. He amounted to no more than a sky fairy she thought was listening to her prayers. She wasn’t even sure she was a Christian in any meaningful sense – it became a label she used on official forms that asked for one’s religion.

So, if it could be shown Christianity is fake, academically it would destroy the religion’s credibility … if it’s possible to have any less cerdibility among atheists.

But Christianity as a religion would likely live on. Too many professions rely on it.

We have seen many ‘Christian’ scholars make hilarious claims about how the Jesus story need not be literally true while being true in some other mysterious sense all the same. Surely this is how the bishops at the First Council of Nicea fooled themselves while trying to figure out what the Trinity really meant.

Remember, in living memory, a failed science fiction writer stated he would start a religion, did so, … ridiculous I know, and still Scientology has believers. There are serious flat earthers. There are 9/11 truthers (“it was a false flag job, the towers were not brought down by planes but by explosives”, etc.) There are many crazy beliefs in the world. Christianity is merely the biggest. One has to be the biggest, and one day that may be Islam. But the argumentum ad populum fallacy is strong among the religious.

Plato v Jesus?

If Plato did not exist, then no big deal, no consequences of any consequence at all. Just a shrug of the shoulders of philosophers, and some book editing by historians.

If Jesus did not exist, it would mean the total collapse of any Christian claims about Jesus.

But in reality, many if not most Christians would keep on following the lie, the fantasy; and children would continue to be indoctrinated.

The many failed ‘End of the World’ prophecies didn’t make the next prophet pause to think it through.

Perhaps the realisation of that last point will make some Christians pause and think about how gullible they are being. Christians KNOW how gullible are Muslims, Hindus and other believers of other fake religions.

What does it take to make YOU wonder how gullible you are?

The Religious Demonisation of Joe Rogan

Joe Rogan is dangerous. He’s not a scientist. He’s not qualified to choose the appropriate guests to discuss science.

Either you haven’t watched Rogan, or you forgot to tell him how dangerous he was when he interviewed these guests, some appearing 2, 3, 4 times:

Steven Pinker, Sean Carroll, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Nicholas Christakis, Edward Snowden, Debra Soh, Michael Shermer, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Sir Roger Penrose, Lawrence Krauss, Carl Hart, Jonathan Haidt.

Detractors are annoyed that a guy that isn’t trained to evaluate science isn’t discriminating enough to always pick only those scientists THEY approve of.

They are very much like the religious: “You should listen to scholars, … wait, no, not not those scholars but these scholars.” Which always begs the question: what are YOUR qualifications for judging scholars? To which: “I don’t evaluate the scholars personally, I rely on mainstream scholars.” Which are? And why are they? How do you know?

Tell me you can see the problem here, that we all have, regarding fields in which we are not experts. You think MSM are experts? You think a cardiologists trumps another cardiologist, or a vaccinologist, or an immunologist.

While celebrating the rate with which vaccines have been produce through cooperation, we’re only two years in, and you think the science is done, there’ll be no surprises?

Let me remind you of what we’ve been told, and what we do, ragarding masks, here in the UK:

  • Masks won’t help. This was based on two details: One, the mistaken belief that airborn infection wasn’t the risk it was – there were some ‘non-mainstream’ scientists saying it was from the start, so was this misinformation? Two, the intentional misinformation put out because there was an expectation of shortages of medical masks and they were needed in front line care.
  • Masks, any masks, including simple cloth, do help. This became mainstream once supplies picked up, then became mandatory when it became clear that airborn infection was significant.
  • Masks should be other than simple cloth. They should be surgical or with filtered to some not very consistently publicised specification … but masks with one way filters were dangerous.
  • N95 or similar are what’s best.

Then there’s the implementation:

  • Even now, January 2022, at three hospitals I’ve visited have this in place (whether it’s actual policy or not is unclear – different explanations): You cannot enter some areas with an N95 – you must remove it and put on one of their surgical masks. It’s not just because the new mask is clean, because if you enter with a surgical mask they don’t ask you to change it for a fresh one.
  • Shops may or may not require masks. When they do they may or may not enforce their or the government’s policy. When they enforce it they may or may not call the police to remove you.
  • You may be required to wear a masks in a sparsely populated well ventilated ‘indoor’ space, but not a crowded one if you are seated, eating and talking at a table.

And that’s just regarding masks, in the UK. Add all the other elements of this changing landscape, and it becomes a little challenging. It’s not a shock to see very well educated, well informed people disagreeing on what’s true and what’s not …

In the UK we have the UK government’s SAGE:

But we’ve also had Independent SAGE:

No surprise, they don’t always agree.

Obviously a lot of this variability is because there really is a balancing act to perform – living a life, saving the economic livelihood (often scoffed at, by people that also complain we should have no need for food banks), and dealing with a pandemic in its various phases and variants, where tehre’s changing science data and interpretation.

But even more reason to be a lot more compassionate to those that make mistakes, don’t see the risks as you do, … have the wrong people on their podcasts.

The madness of collectivism and the sacrifice of the individual has played out on ‘both sides’:

  • Collective protectionaism and the demonisation of the unvaxxed is classic Marxism at work. Twitter based Struggle Sessions are being performed daily. The horrific end point is the refusal to offer medial aid to the unvaccinated – not just those that succumb to COVID, but those refused operations because they are unvaxxed, even if they’ve had coviod or not, whether they pass COVID tests or not. The hypocritic oath?
  • The refusal to be caccianted on very slim grounds – sometimes no more than excuses to feed anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.

It’s a moving target, where we all have to balance protecting each other and ourselves from the virus, and protecting our health, mental and physical.

It’s ironic that some of those accusing Rogan of indulging conspiracy theorists on his show are busy concocting a conspiracy theory around Rogan. The demonization has been as insane as any religious denunciation of apostates.

The probability that many accusers have not even listened to the targeted episodes (of which there are only two ‘controversial’ medical scientists: McCullogh and Malone), let alone enough episodes to judge the character or intellectual capability of Rogan – the latter, in an era when we are told you can’t judge intelligence by attained education certificates alone.

I’ve been surprised how many anti-woke, free speech, science realism people have demonised either Rogan or his guests, or both. It’s not great, to be honest.

As someone that’s triple vaxxed, in a vulnerable category, complied with most COVID rules, I think he’s mistaken on some COVID issues, … but I’m not an expert either. I have a lot more respect for him than virtually all his demonising detractors, most of which aren’t experts themselves – and even some of those that are have sometimes failed themselves by joining in this witch hunt.

Anyway, here’s Rogan explaining himself. Decent guy.

Woke Cooking On Twitter: Storm in a Teacup or Sorites Paradox?

It could be I’m about to get cancelled, for having the wrong opinion, an Imperialist opinion … on measures used in cooking. I haven’t written a blog on cooking tips before, so here goes.

What the hell happened?

The very informative tweet below appeared in my timeline. It illustrates the various measures of the US system, based on the British Imperial system. It’s clear from the measures listed that most of these are used in domestic cooking. The quart and the gallon less so, but they are units of measure used for bulk delivery of liquids, which will still have been used in in the past, in some larger households for some liquids. You might have seen other containers, such as milk churns, that deliver milk: multiple gallons, the actual capacity depending on the size.

For what it’s worth, I like this tweet, and agree with the premise that to use it today in some circumstances would be pointless when any metric system would be easier across a number of magnitudes: the sciences.

How did this informative tweet kick off into a tirade? Simple. While the original tweet was deriding the imperial system, quite rightly when applied to standardisations in science and industry, someone pointed out that they think the measures above were better for cooking – by which I presume they meant domestic cooking, on the small scale of families, or perhaps parties, or maybe even restaurants.

Had I taken note sooner of the various names and flags used by some of these Metric Nazis I’d have realised that this wasn’t the simple cooking 101 debate I thought it might be. Anyway, I jumped in, and it turns out I’m Trans-Metric phobic.

I’m in the UK, where we now use metric measurements for food. But I remember (as a Boomer) the imperial units from school, and they were a pain in the ass to use. When I started studying engineering it was even worse: horse power, pounds force, ergs! I was genuinely grateful for the change to metric. I still have engineering course books on my shelves that use a variety of units, imperial and metric, in the same book.

In engineering it can be dangerous to mix units if precision is crucial – not because either system is imprecise, but that conversions add the opportunity for error. But not so much in domestic cooking, unless you’re cooking up a batch of drugs and you’re cutting it with something lethal.

Seeing some back and forth on the cooking thread I noted what seemed like an obsession to measure everything precisely. The metric system and the use of scales seemed to be getting some traction. I wondered if any of these people actually cooked anything.

The point I tried to make was that the actual measures don’t matter, and that ratios and approximations were good enough. I’m not averse to using scales, and would generally use them on a novel (to me) recipe where it was easier to just measure than figure out the actual ratios. Many recipes use convenient measures that are easy to scale. Some use stupidly precise measures: “Oh, crap, I dropped 376g into the bowl instead of 375g, better fish out a gram.”

There’s also the matter of many food-stuffs not coming in precise gram packages but in sizes that vary, like eggs, or carrots. So, what do you do when faced with a recipe? Here’s the significance of measures in recipes for apple crumble as a simple example:

So, the salient points from just these recipes:

  • Absolute amounts vary.
  • The amounts you make will depend on a number of factors: number of people you’re cooking for, amount of a key ingredient (apples in apple crumble), the baking container size you have, if you don’t have a range of them.
  • Ratios of bulk ingredients matter more than the units: tens or hundreds of grams, or ounces. If you have a recipe for 100g of X and 50g of Y, to feed two, you might make it 150/75 if you want two helpings and your partner doesn’t. Or double it up if you want two full meals out of it over two days.
  • Approximate measures “to taste”, usually for seasoning and flavourings; but it can apply to bulk ingredients – my wife keeps short changing me on the sugar in apple crumble!
  • The convenience of using household volume measures rather than precise weighing: cups – from your cupboard; actual desert spoons and teaspoons – i.e. not necessarily the precise cup/tablespoon/teaspoon measuring tools.

I thought all of this was quite uncontroversial and sound advice for the budding cook that didn’t want to become anal retentive about measuring the sugar to the nearest gram +/-1%. It’s going to make your cooking so much easier and more fun, and dare I say it exciting:

With hindsight that wasn’t a piece of advice I should have been posting for people obsessed with safe spaces.

You think I’m mocking over safe spaces?

I must admit I was beginning to care a lot less about teaching the lost souls of Twitter how to cook without losing their minds at the supermarket about how many carrots to buy. It turned into a philosophy class. The Sorites paradox re-defined: What makes a cup of carrot?

For those wondering the Soritese ‘heap’ paradox is not a paradox but another ambiguity of the definition of a measurement.

The tensions over how precisely one should measure food continued.

“Measurement errors add up pretty fast on some recipes.” Well, if you add 250g or butter measured out at 1g at a time, I guess so. Cutting off half a pack of 250g for a 4oz recipe not so much that it matters, in your kitchen. Do you ever get the feeling that problems are being invented in order “own” you?

I suppose they all think I’m a far right Imperialist because I don’t denounce the use of Imperial measures in domestic cooking.

When you come to bulk manufacturing there are other factors where precision becomes more significant: consistency, and avoiding waste. But even in large kitchens chefs will vary their recipe according to taste and ingredients. Did you ever see Gordon Ramsey knocking out a dish and not tasting it to make sure it’s OK?

Oh, while I’ve been writing this, over a few minutes, and after my replies to some of the daft replies, the likes for the daft ones are ramping up:

Who knew cooking was such an ideological hell hole. I expect to see an outraged Owen Jones any minute.

If you’d like to see the original tweet and all that followed, here it is:

French Lessons

Some of the respondents wanted to impress upon me how precise and ‘scientific’ were the renown cooks like the French. But they have been deceived by the over priced restaurants that take a wad of cash for a morsel on a large plate, as long as it has a few swirls of coloured gravy around it.

That’s not home cooking for many in France. Here is one person’s awakening to the traditional nature of French cooking, that not only lacks unnecessary precision, but where the same meal could vary a great deal depending on the season and what is available.

I thought French cuisine was the height of precision. My mother-in-law taught me an easier way.

Washington Post article

All this should be obvious to anyone with a sense of history. Precision scales were not available or necessary in most homes. My own grand mother made wonderful cakes after measuring out the dry ingredients in her hands! Or sometimes estimating by sight, pouring straight from the flour and sugar bags into the bowl. I have to confess, at age eight and beginning to wonder at the marvels of science, I was shocked that this worked. But I was eight, not a grown adult with significant experience in a home kitchen, … which is what I really think is the problem with many on the Twitter tirade.

Non-Decimal Measures

Of course there are many cases where non-decimal measures work very well: factors make for easier fractions.

The Babylonian system is base 60: having factors of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60, while decimal uses 1, 2, 5, and 10 for base 10.

“Ha! The Babylonians are long gone. Not very modern, is it!”

OK, is computing modern enough for you? That’s binary, base 2.

Or how about web sites? Many use base 12 column system that gives you convenient factors for splitting up a web page into ratios of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, and sets of columns: 4 + 8, 3 + 6 + 3, etc.

Now, I’m not going to stretch this point, because for many uses decimal is very convenient. But deceptively so. The reason base 10 for measures seems better is because we use base 10 for counting. But what if we did not?

If we used base 8 for counting our digits would be only 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And counting would be in that base.

The ‘problem’ with the imperial system is that it uses multiple bases at the same time, and THAT is why we have to convert between them – as the diagram in the original tweet illustrated.

But that ‘problem’ is also a convenience. Ounces are conveniently small for cooking with small amounts, and even with bulk ingredients (8oz, 16oz), but pounds are also good (1/4lb, 1/2lb). Cups are mere handy implements (the standardised cup being a convenience for the apprehensive cook more than anything).

And, while the decimal system is more convenient across scales, it’s not entirely consistent. Decimal scales are usually used in ratios of thousands: 1, 1000 (Kilo), 1,000,000 (Mega), 1,000,000,000 (Giga), etc., but in practice other measures are convenient. The 1cm is 1/100 of a metre, 1mm 1/1000.

Inglorious Basterds Fighting Fascism

OK, enough of the common sense. Here is some outrage, for the giggles.

Literally 1984:

We’re now in SJW crazy town … over approximations in home cookery – Dowsomane is upset …

While we have one idiot crying about ableism another is engaging in ageism.

What If History Was Wrong? Jesus, Scientology, Churchill

There are serious challenges to the Christian claims about what happened to a man they call Jesus, the one they think is Christ, son of God. The same sorts of challenges can be made about Mohammed, and many other religious prophets and deities, particularly if they happened in the distant past, where there are few if any contemporary documents or artefacts.

The claims tend to fall into two categories: the historicity of the person (Jesus, Mohammed); and the supernatural claims made about them (miracles performed, revelations revealed). I’ll refer to then as the Natural claims and the Supernatural claims.

For Jesus, we find now that we have a religion built around him: Christianity. The main sources of information come from the Bible’s Gospels, with all other sources being references to Jesus and Christianity made by non-Christians and Christians some time after the time for which the claims are made (his birth, life, death, resurrection). These claims are a mix of both Natural and Supernatural.

I am an atheist and I see no evidence to support any of the Supernatural claims about Jesus – his own claim to be the son of God, his reported miracles, and his resurrection.

Those theists that do think there is evidence of these are really saying some version of the following: “We have Natural historic evidence of Jesus, and of the Natural events that happened in his life, and we have witnesses to all that, AND to the miracles, the Supernatural events.”

This must be essentially what they are claiming, because they clearly have no direct evidence of miracles actually happening. For example, take the healing of the blind man’s sight. How do we know that happened? Is there some test we could do now, to say, “Look, there’s the evidence of that miracle!”

Well, there were no videos then, so we can’t look at those. And, of course, even if there were it could be that the blind man was faking blindness, in league with Jesus and his crew. “Ah, but other people knew he’d genuinely been blind.” Really? Which people? The people that the narrator of the story told us about? Where did that narrator get the story? Was he there? If he was, was he in league with the fraud? If he wasn’t there himself, the narrator has no evidence that any of it happened, let alone who was there to testify that it was genuine. In other words, the parable of the blind man is at best hearsay, about a story, that has no more evidence for its truth than any other myth.

And so it is will all claims about the Supernatural … AND the Natural claims about Jesus. And behind these objections to the stories about Jesus we have the obvious suspicion that those that started the religious movement early on were either inventing it completely, or elaborating on stories about one of the many ‘prophets’ that wandered the world making claims about their access to various gods. It wasn’t a new pastime even then. Do you believe all of them? If you think some were false prophets, then why not yours?

A common follow up claim made by Christians is that some other party reported on these events, someone that wasn’t committed to promoting Christianity, someone that even disapproved of Christianity, someone with no skin in the game, so they must be credible, right? For example, Tacitus and Josephus.

Tacitus and Josephus

Tacitus was a Roman historian. He referred to Christ and Christianity in his final book, Annals, written in AD 116. This is long after the death of Jesus, so clearly nothing in his account amounts to his memory of events in Palestine. He wasn’t there.

And yet, we hear that scholars consider it to be an “authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source.” What does that mean? Does it mean it’s an authentic record of what happened to Jesus? No it does not. It means merely that the scholars think there really was a guy called Tacitus, and that he really did report the story in his book. What it does not say is where he got the story from.

If you read the words of Tacitus it amounts to nothing more than the following: “Nero persecuted the Christians. The Christians took their name from the guy know as Christ. And, here’s what Christians say happened to Christ at the hands of his executioners.”

Tacitus is obviously no more than a report of what Christians believed. Tacitus does not, for example, refer to some other Roman document signed by Pilate, or one signed by the Captain of the guard that saw Jesus die.

So, no wonder it is similar to what was written in the Gospels, because both the Gospel authors and Tacitus got the information from what Christians claimed to be the case. This is no more than reporting hearsay.

If you claim you have half a dozen sources, and all those sources trace back to one source, then you have one source, not six. We don’t know where the current sources got their sources from. It’s a dead end. And as such amounts to a myth.

Josephus is no better. He was a Jewish historian. His references were written around 93–94 AD, 60 years after the supposed death of Jesus, so clearly he too was writing about what others were telling him. While some scholars think the texts have been changed, they think the core is ‘authentic’. Again, the authenticity in question is about whether Josephus wrote them, and that what he wrote is largely what he was told. Who told him? Christians, or someone else reporting on what Christians claimed.

While the claims by scholars to the authenticity of Tacitus and Josephus are about whether Tacitus and Josephus wrote what is in their purported works, the authenticity is NOT about the truth of what they wrote about Jesus.

An Accidental Religion

How do religions arise? One way is accidentally.

Imagine we had a world wide apocalypse, another pandemic that wiped out all but a few human groups dotted around the world. In one group, in Europe, for each Christmas after that event, parents would tell the tales of Santa Claus to their children. One Christmas, a visitor from another colony is passing through and hears the stories of Santa Claus, how he used to visit each Christmas. The stranger mistakenly takes the stories seriously, and repeats them elsewhere on his travels. Further more, he finds that the more he repeats them, the more people want to know about Santa, so he elaborates, invents miracles and all sorts of new events, the healing of blind men, for example. And some of those that heard these elaborated stories go on to expand on them themselves. All of a sudden you have a religion out of nothing more than a children’s Christmas fantasy.

Of course the stories now circulating will differ with different elaborations. They will be inconsistent. Eventually, a new emperor of Europe calls all the bishops of Santa Claus religion together.

“Look lads, this Santa Claus religion is getting out of hand. We need a consistent story if we’re going to get the less gullible on board. Everyone has to be on-message. We’re having a lock-in.”

Does that make those people appear too stupid? You think that couldn’t happen? If you think this is far fetched compared to evidence to support Christianity, think about the following.

Creating a Religion

So another way of creating a religion is with the intention of fooling people. Perhaps Joseph Smith, the man of Golden Tablets. Smith published the Book of Mormon. “By the time of his death, 14 years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religion that continues to the present with millions of global adherents.

Wow! That was in the 1800s, the time of developing ‘Enlightenment’.

But that was nothing.

In the 1950s, a time of radio and television, a second rate science fiction author decided he would create a religion. Obviously, nobody would be dumb enough to pay attention, right? Wrong. Scientology.

The 21st Century celebrities that follow Scientology can look online and read all about this bogus origin, and yet they still believe it. So what makes you think that it would be so difficult to start a religion back in the time purported to be around the life of Jesus? If these Christians are reporting to Tacitus on what they think happened to Jesus, who is Tacitus to say, “Sorry, never happened.” Why would he? He’s only reporting on what they themselves claim.

Of course we don’t even know that Tacitus got the report from Christians directly. It could have been his mate down the brothel, “Hey, Tacitus, that book you’re writing, Have you heard the one about a guy in Palestine seventy years ago?”

This is how poor the information is that’s presented as evidence for Jesus. Even if we have a piece of what Tacitus himself wrote, it says nothing about the truth or falsity of what he wrote about, other than to say that, “Some Christians believed blah, blah, blah.”

If a religion like Scientology can be created in the mid 20th Century, why not one in the time of Pilate in Palestine?

My Alternative Gospel

Imagine, if you will, this scenario (not one I’m claiming happened, but not out of the question).

A man Jesus started making false claims about his access to God’s thoughts. Perhaps he’s a bright fellow, but a little mad. Most people make fun of him. But a few gullible people actually believe what he’s saying.

A couple of other smart guys currently out of work, let’s call then Eric and Ernie, tag along, and while they don’t entirely disbelieve Jesus, they certainly take advantage of him, hype him up, and start to tell others all about him. Maybe slip in the odd story about the occasional ‘miracle’.

Eventually they have raised a bit of a crowed and started to become a real nuisance. The priests want to get rid of Jesus, so make up even more stories about his blasphemous claims, “He actually thinks he’s the son of God!” They succeed and bump him off with the help of one of Pilate’s men, and a little bribe to smooth things over. Jesus is indeed crucified, and dies.

What happens to his followers? This is a bit inconvenient. They were going around with Jesus, being housed and fed wherever they went.

Eric, “I know, let’s tell people he’s coming back in a few days! That will sustain the religion. AND, even better, what if he vanishes … to heaven … by rising up. We can continue telling stories abut him and he’s not here to dispute them. Do you think the other followers will buy it?

Ernie, “Well they’ve been easily fooled so far. Nobody has to actually witness this resurrection. We only have to SAY that someone witnessed it, us. And, we have to go an steal the body, of course. AND, the more fake witnesses we can add, besides ourselves, the better. AND, with Jesus now resurrected out of the way, in body and ‘spirit’, there’s no way that anyone can disprove any of this junk. AND, we get to live off the tale for the rest of our lives!

And so, the resurrection story emerges.

Eric, “What if if some of the other followers go back and start asking questions. Everyone will deny witnessing the resurrection. We’ll be caught out.

Ernie, “No problem. We’ll say it’s a cover-up instigated by the priests that have warned witnesses that they’ll go the same way as Jesus if they say anything.

Eric, “Brilliant! The greater the conspiracy against OUR conspiracy, the less people will notice ours.

Welcome to Christianity – my version – which is just as well evidenced as any other … that is, there is no evidence for any of it.

“Whoa, there! It’s not as simple as that. What about the Virgin Birth?”

A Christian

Didn’t happen. Eric and Ernie made up that story too, to add a bit more mystique to the religion. Mary was actually fooling around with Joseph’s mate. Stoning adulterers was common back then, so what would people rather believe about ‘Christ’? The truth or another myth? Which myth, mine or the Christian myth?

But if Jesus is who he says, that changes everything! Jesus said, “I am the way, the TRUTH & the life…” The number of Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus’ life including things he had no control over (eg: place of birth & specific details regarding his death). That would be mind blowing!”

A Christian

No, Jesus did not say “I am the way…” Eric and Ernie made that up to. And what if he HAD said it? It was false, because he was just some ordinary mad man.

But you can’t do that! You can’t mess around with history that way. What if we did that to Churchill, or any other historical figure? Many historical stories have very little evidence.”

A Christian

Why not? How do YOU know YOUR myth is true, and not mine, or some other perfectly simple explanation as to why the religion arose out of a lie?

I didn’t meet Winston Churchill but I have no doubt he wrote his, ‘Fight them on the Beaches’ speech! There are many eyewitness accounts of the life, death & resurrection of Jesus. The apostles were willing to die for the Gospel. I don’t think they would have died for a lie.

A Christian

Well, if you’re a Christian, I assume you disbelieve in the Islamic faith. Yet, many Muslims have martyred themselves for what they believe in.

If you die for a lie, but you don’t think it’s a lie, you don’t know you’re dying for a lie, but it’s still a lie.

What About Churchill?

Let’s take seriously the possibility that Churchill’s “Fight them on the beaches” speech didn’t happen. Let’s suppose the recordings we hear today were fake, created after the war to make Churchill seem even more of a hero. What about all those people still alive today that heard the speech on the radio? Let’s pretend they have false memories, instilled in them be playing the later recordings.

I know, I’m stretching your credulity here, imagining such a famous speech was faked, that false memories implanted, that old news papers reporting it were fake too, … including the treasured notebooks, the government materials … all fake, all a WWII conspiracy.

Nevertheless, let’s suppose that somehow it was actually fake. What would that matter now? Sure, some historians would want to re-write some text books, and we would probably get a few more History Channel documentaries out of it. But what would it really change to our lives now? Would it make you give up on your studies, or convince you to quit work, to go an live in France? Would it change the Brexit deal? Would it stop the COVID pandemic?

I doubt very much would happen at all.

And the same goes for most historic events. Historians and archaeologists are learning more about he past all the time, and when something new crops up, a new piece of evidence that changes a story, what happens? Outside academia, the world carries on.

But, as our Christian friend asked, what if the story of Jesus is true, and could seriously shown to be true? Even if it was only the Natural history of Jesus that was proved to be true, that would be amazing. What if the Supernatural claims could be proved to be true? As our friend said, “That would be mind blowing!

Yes, but what if it isn’t true?

Unlike the histories of Churchill or any other historic figure, if some evidence was found that Jesus did not exist, some evidence, a scroll or two, that showed that the story of Jesus was totally made up in 30 AD, what would THAT mean for Christians, for the Roman Catholic Church, for every Evangelical preacher getting rich off the proceeds of his church? Well, that would indeed be mind blowingly interesting. Christianity would be destroyed! Wouldn’t it?

We have to be honest with ourselves. To most Christians it wouldn’t make a jot of difference. They don’t believe based on reason and evidence. When they claim to provide evidence, such as Tacitus and Josephus, that’s not for their benefit. That’s for our benefit, to shut us up. NOTHING will stop a true believer believing, no matter how great the fantasy the religion is built on. How do we know this? Because of the number of totally incompatible religions that exist.

Nobody that values reason above faith could possibly believe that their religion is the one true religion while all the others were false, given the lack of evidence for all of them. But if you hold faith above reason, you can be convinced to believe any one rubbish.

All you Christians know this, when you look at Muslims. All you Muslims know this when you look at Christians. You just can’t look at yourselves in the same light.

Faith to Faithless

Now and again, the reality of how ridiculous the stories of Jesus and Mohammed hit home. That can be quite a shock.

If it happens to you, you might find yourself in conflict with family and friends. You might be bullied into returning to the religion. You might be ostracised once they realise you are really leaving. In some cases there might be the threat of death.

If you need help, contact Faith to Faithless, and find a group of people with similar experiences that will help you deal with this dramatic change in your life, which I hope will be a good one.

Acting As If, Fairies and Gods

I have some news for you. There are invisible mischievous magic fairies living at the bottom of my garden. They leave no trace, no evidence that they exist. But, when things go missing, like my car keys, I suspect they have been coming into the house and moving them around, just for kicks. Sometimes, when I find my car keys, I remember that I had left them in that place. Other times, when I do not remember leaving them where they are found, but rather have a distinct memory of putting them on the hook in the hall, then I know that either the fairies moved them, or that my memory was mistaken.

Acting as if it’s so, that there are such fairies, or as if it’s not so, causes socially different outcomes, but no difference to the reality behind the acting out.

Acting as if it’s not so, when it is (if there really were fairies), makes no difference to the reality, or the social outcomes. I go about my life dismissing the occasions when I have misremembered where I left my keys as just that, an error of memory on my part. If a fairy believer asks how I know fairies didn’t move the keys, I reply I don’t, but since I can’t distinguish between misremembering and the act of fairies, what does it matter? If there are really fairies moving my keys I and the world remain indifferent to it, as there is no evidence of it that could not be explained by an error of memory. Should a believer in fairies ask, “How can you not see that it was obviously fairies that moved your keys?” it would not be a troubling question, and his belief would not be convincing.

However, acting as if it’s so, when it’s not so, just means I’m a bit loopy. If I tell lots of people about this story, I’m going to get some funny looks, except from people who also believe and act out that it’s so. We believers might get a lot of comfort from believing that fairies move our keys. We don’t have to suffer the indignity of memory loss, and I can bear the social stigma from non-believers, because we believers get together and provide the support we need in the face of doubters.

To believers in gods this story might sound childishly foolish. What grown intelligent adult would believe in such fairies?

I’m sorry to tell you, believers in gods, but that’s just how your beliefs look to atheists. You might find that insulting or offensive, but is it any more offensive than your attitude to believers in fairies, to Scientologists, Fly Spaghetti Monster followers? I know, because I’ve seen it said, that some believers in the Abrahamic god find the blue gods of India comical, ‘unbelievable’. Yet you believe in a zombie Jesus, or a flying horse riding Mohammed, or a sea parting Moses?

And, you agnostics, are you ‘agnostic’ about the fairies in my story?

The only difference between your gods and the gods, aliens and fairies you don’t believe in is your particular commitment to a story you have been convinced of – from childhood indoctrination for many, through a deep seated need to believe by adults that change or find religion.

This acting ‘as if’ something is so, whether it is or not, has a name in a religious context. Praxis: the engagement in accepted customs and practices.

For more on the benefits and dangers of Praxis, acting ‘as if’, see this older post: The Dangers of Praxis – Acting ‘As If’

The Delusional Demos Director

Before getting round to their director, Polly Mackenzie, let’s start with Demos.

Demos on Wikipedia

Their Twitter Bio

The last bit, “Based in London”, and it’s name, “Demos”, might be the only true parts of that bio line.

Think tank? Well, I’ve a couple of other posts related to their thinking. I’m not impressed. These were about a really sloppy piece on the Victoria Derbyshire, on the BBC News channel, and Carl Miller, of Demos, and their dubious ‘research’ milking the ‘Islamophobia’ craze.

BBC Victoria Derbyshire – Sloppy Islamophobia Journalism

Carl Miller of Demos Still Misfires on ‘Islamophobia’

Britain’s leading independent cross-party think tank? Really? Independent and Cross Party?

Well, they have done work for more than one party, but to say they are cross-party is a bit of a stretch. Independent? Not of thought.

From the Wiki page:

Demos was founded in 1993 by former Marxism Today editor Martin Jacques, and Geoff Mulgan, who became its first director.

In the run-up to the 1997 general election it was seen as being close to the Labour Party, in particular its then leader Tony Blair.

On 9 August 2006, in a speech at a Demos conference, British Home Secretary Dr John Reid stated that Britons ‘may have to modify their notion of freedom’, as a result of his plans, claiming that freedom is ‘misused and abused by terrorists.’

Take a look at their 2018 accounts, here.

Click to access application-pdf.pdf

And, after you’ve tried to work out the flow of money in and out, go to page 30 for some of their funders.

The Open Society Foundation. And who are they? You want to know what George Soros funds? Demos is one of his pets. Independent?

Don’t like the George Soros conspiracy theories? OK, let’s try another.

The Politics and Economics Research Trust. Did you know this report was produced by Charity Commission for England and Wales?

You can read more here: Politics and Economics Research Trust: case report

And here: Charity alleged to have illegally funded Brexit campaign groups – Questions over grants given by the Politics and Economics Research Trust to anti-EU groups, with potential for tax relief.

I can’t pretend to know everything Demos get up to, but to me, and having seen the work of the fabulous Carl Miller, it looks like a bunch of people that can’t get proper jobs so they sell their souls to anyone that will buy them and enjoy playing around in the dubious charity money-go-round, and call the work ‘research’.

So, what about their director, Polly Mackenzie? How much thinking does this head of a think tank do? More to the point, what’s the quality of this thinking?

Polly Mackenzie joined Demos as the new Director in January 2018. She previously worked for Nick Clegg from 2006 to 2015, helping to write the 2010 Coalition Agreement, and served as Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-15

Well, that didn’t go too well did it.

Just curious, but did Polly have anything to with forming Nick Clegg’s opinions on the EU. Yes, I know her time with him was up to 2015, before Brexit EU Ref, but, well, ideas aren’t formed over night, are they, and when Nick Clegg laid into Nigel Farage about how saying there would be an EU Army was a dangerous fantasy, Nifty Nick had buggered off to Facebook just before Merkel and significant EU figures started telling us that not only was the EU starting an EU Army, but political and military fusion ought to be a future goal.

Anyway, whatever contribution Polly made towards Nicky Know Nothing’s demise, at least she is able to put her own thoughts down. Sadly, it doesn’t get any better.

Case 1 – Letting Children Vote – And Proxy Parental Votes

This is Polly’s recent piece in Unheard …

What if we gave children a vote? – The electoral system is inherently biased towards the 83% of the population who are over 18

Here are some of Polly’s bright ideas:

  • Children 10 and above should be able to vote. How hard is it for a ten year old to make a cross in the right place on a piece of paper?
  • Children under 10 shouldn’t be able to vote (come on, Polly’s not mad, you know). Instead, their parents should be able to cast a proxy vote on behalf of the infant (I presume only one parent gets to vote for each child, but which one? Not sure Polly has think-tanked this through).

You can read the delusional reasoning yourself. But here, for Polly’s benefit, are some objections.

The notion of a proxy vote is entirely counter to the principle of one-person-one-vote. Large families, religious conservative families, would in fact give multiple votes to the parents, as proxies. To say that such proxy voting parents were casting a vote for the children themselves is delusional. They would be casing a vote for themselves and their of how the world should be.

Childless people will be disenfranchised, because parents get 2 or more times their vote.

As for children themselves voting, there are several reasons why they should not, not least of which are the following.

We have limits on parent power. Parents cannot abuse their children. An anathema to this is the indoctrination of children into political and religious ideologies. We are not raising independently minded adults, but pre-programmed adults. It takes a lot of learning to realise the extent to which you’ve been indoctrinated, and some never get out of it. Jess Phillips, Labour MP, describes how she was taught a visceral hatred of Tories. The indoctrination of children into our main religious cults is a disgrace to civil society. Until both political and religious indoctrination are criminalised, and a rounded education in reason and science becomes the standard, we will not be producing independent minded rational adults, but victims and perpetrators of the tribal party and religious politics we have today.

Young teenagers are naturally rebellious, and are wide open to the political indoctrination by extremists. Labour’s Momentum know this – Corbyn’s Kids is not a neutral educational programme but a mind programming school. Many young people were so easily indoctrinated into extreme Islam, and left home to join ISIS. The Orthodox Jewish communities keep a tight control of their children, as do Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Roman Catholics, and even ‘moderate’ Islam.

Why do you think the Humanists UK and National Secular Society are campaigning to stop and reverse the growth in faith schools.

Read Poly’s article. But just for fun, here’s a sample of Polly’s think-tanking.

“Will you let them drink and smoke, too?” – This is usually the first response I get when I propose enfranchising all citizens under the age of 18. The answer is, obviously, no. We have laws that prevent young people from drinking and smoking because these things are harmful. voting, by contrast, is not harmful; drawing an X on a ballot paper is substantially less dangerous than inhaling toxic smoke into your lungs.”

What? So, coerced voting of ten year olds, indoctrinated ten year olds, isn’t a danger? To society, and the better judgement of those children that have to live in the world they were coerced into voting for?

Polly, putting an unlit cigarette in a child’s hands and to a child’s lips is no more dangerous than putting a pencil in the mouth after drawing a cross on a piece of paper. However, to the child personally, the former could have longer term implications for the individual, if they were coerced to light it; but the latter could cause a far wider danger to themselves and society, if they were coerced to vote a particular way.

There are now many people that were indoctrinated into voting Labour – “I’m a life long Labour supporter.” But many such supporters are overcoming their own indoctrination because they can see before their eyes how Corbyn and Communist McDonnell are changing the party, and they have figured out that in their opinion they don’t like it. The same has been true of may Conservative voters. Many adults learn to change their minds for themselves. 

Children cannot. Do you imagine a ten year old having a conversation about the subtleties of Labour’s Socialism, McDonnell’s Communism, the entryism that’s been going on in the Labour Party for generations? No. They won’t even take an arbitrary lucky dip vote. Their parents will coerce them into voting for the parent’s preference.

And all the above doesn’t even begin to take into account the actual issues of brain development and maturity.

We should be worried about the indoctrinating abuse of children and their use in political vote rigging only somewhat less than psychological child abuse.

No, children should not be allowed to vote, and their parents should definitely NOT get extra votes because they have kids.

This piece by Mackenzie is idiotic. Yet she’s the director of Demos? And Carl Pilkington, sorry, Carl Miller (apologies to Carl Pilkington) is their Research Director, Centre for the Analysis of Social Media? Would you trust ANY of their output?

I can see why conspiracy theorists look to Soros. Throwing money at this bunch of clowns is top rate trolling.

Case 2 – Free Stuff Utopian Dreams

It was at this point I thought I’d have a look at Polly on Twitter. Interesting. Following what was obviously a quick lesson in economics by Labour’s John McDonnell’s free stuff promises, Polly gave it a critical eye.

Tweet – Nationalising Openreach is perfectly plausible. But why should broadband be free and not – for example – water, food, heating, clothes, all of which are rather more essential to the human condition.

You’d think Demos might have a director that have some feel for economics. Apparently not.

But, not to worry, Utopia is within reach for Polly …

Which manifesto? Only given Polly’s eagerness to indoctrinate voting children there are several to choose from.

So, for Polly’s benefit, what’s wrong with free stuff, state control and the removal of wages?

  • Eventually, workers don’t need money because everything is free. 
  • But workers are then dependent on the state alone. 
  • Result: oppression of workers that can have no independent means of survival so must comply with the state.
  • Check out some history. Hint: Soviet Union and its oppressed satellites; Moa’s China. The brutality of the party and the Dear Leader.
  • Political Utopias are no better than religious fantasies – they are used to control people.

The Nation State

The nation state is still the only large scale functional unit of social cohesion that can provide citizens with both rights and freedoms in a manageable manner.

The USA has struggled, mostly successfully, to balance what could have been small nation states as states within a larger federal state. The EU wants to go the same way, but, just as many in the US oppose federal government power, so in the EU some of the nation states (Brexit) object to the lack of accountability of the federalists and the loss of self determination of the individual states.

Globalism, of any kind, is currently worse. There is no functional world democratic government (UN?🤣) so all the global power is in the hands of global corporations and powerful individuals and groups. While Soros may not be the monster he’s portrayed to be, I didn’t get the chance to vote him in as a mover and shaker of EU affairs. Meanwhile, we all know of Putin’s dabbling in the affairs of nation states. Or indeed of nation states interfering with other nation states, of which the US, UK and others have vast experience.

Then we have the dreamers … the anarchists, the socialists, that have some crazy idea that humans can form Goldilocks societies that just happen to work .. in their heads … but which take no account of the variety of human political opinions that are out there. The Utopians look mystified when you tell them you don’t want their particular Utopia. Well, I suppose they think “There’s only one true Utopia!” I’m sure I’ve heard that sentiment in another context.

Even the nation state has its troubles. Who in their right mind thinks Pakistan is a good functioning state? Yet they just had elections. And, good luck bringing socialism to Afghanistan … or secular freedom of belief to anywhere dominated by religion.

Let’s be realistic, and call western states ‘nearly’ functioning, ‘reasonably’ representative of the wishes of the people. Trump and Brexit have exposed the visceral hatred that the nice socialists are capable of towards their fellow citizens. Then there’s the ‘far right’ (the real, not the imagined). The right will grow in response to the craziness of the left. Extremes sustain each other.

Many on the left have shown their colours. Democracy, as long as they win. Secularism, as long as you don’t offend their pet religion.

It’s difficult enough to hold a nation state together. Europeans have been trying to do it in one form or another since Ancient Greece, slowly, often too slowly, extending the franchise to all citizens. Trial and error. Two steps forward one step back. It’s been hard and often bloody work. But nation state democracy is about the best these evolved apes with partially functional brains are capable of.

Thinking you can wreck it and start over, or that revolution *against* a democratic system is even a rational idea, pretty much sums up the capabilities of some human brains. Haven’t we tried ‘day zero’ scenarios a few times and watched the genocide unfold to know that’s probably the worst of all worlds. Isn’t revolution the last desperate attempt to get rid of an oppressive state?

There is no western government that cannot be voted out of office, no matter how bad you currently think they are. None. And while many in the west are looking at destroying democracy, other parts of the world are struggling to implement it.

But, the first sign of a democratic system going down the pan is a loss of free speech. If you can be locked up for speaking on any political matter, then your freedom is on the way out. The ECHR has just approved the protection of Europe’s pet religion. You can go to jail in European states for expressing an opinion … and I don’t mean incitement to violence dressed up as opinion. I mean opinion dressed up as incitement to violence. If you point out the capacity of Islam to be used to incite violence in terms that upset the violent among the Islamic religion, and they threaten or enact violence against you, you are in danger of becoming their victim, or, a victim of the state that is busy eroding your free speech. Madness.

The shock to many liberals has not been the bunch of actual far right loons, or the stupid alt right that think ethnic separation is even a possibility, or the oppressive nature of a conservative, actual far right, political judicial religious ideology. No, the shock has been the willingness of the supposedly secular left to go along with Islam’s far right political agenda while mouthing off about a much smaller fractured far right of perceived fascism. They can spot a good old Nazi, but can’t see an Islamofascist cheer leading them on.

Islam, anarchism, socialism, big business … these contain a variety of globalist agendas that will subvert individual freedom in order to gain ground. Sometimes they are temporary allies in localised regions. Each contains ideologues that think their way will inevitably win. If they could only stop pesky individuals getting in the way with their damned freedoms, they could set everyone free to live in their Utopia on their terms.

Currently, the only safeguard against these varied globalists is secular liberal democratic nation states, cooperating on security, law and policing, but also ensuring the individual freedoms of their citizens as a primary principle … especially freedom of speech.

So, when you hear that nationalists are racist xenophobes, you’ll realise that the target isn’t just the actual real live racist xenophobes. It’s the nation state and its capacity to thwart the various globalist agendas.

We can’t have versions of democracy where every single person gets a say on every single topic – someone always has to compromise. So, representative democracies of one sort or another are the way to go, as the least worse option. They could be improved, with some variety of proportional representation … but even then, someone always fails to get what they want – compromise is inevitable. There is no perfect democratic system.

And to work on local, regional, state, global scales, we need representational democratic systems that are seen to be democratic.

So, I don’t have a problem with federalism in principle, as one of those levels. That includes, in my local case, a federal EU. I’d even back a world federation, if its members were also democratic states (the UN fails in the respect).

The problem with the EU, and one of the reasons Brexit has come about, is that the EU federalisation project has not been democratic, and is still subject to the whims of dominant states like Germany, or rather to dominant parties within the dominant states. And, this made Brexit appeal in another respect: the 2016 UK EURef vote that came after 2014/5 unilateral action by Merkel to not only open the EU’s external borders with no vetting, but to go on to bully other EU states into complying and taking ‘refugees’ (i.e. economic migrants).

Even ex-Muslims and fanatic for  ‘open doors’, Maryam Namazie doesn’t want to avoid proper vetting:

And, just to clarify the related issues of ‘xenophobia’, ‘racism’, ‘Islamophobia’ that raise their ugly heads any time one objects when some SJW suggests un-vetted immigration is OK and “There are no illegals, they are all humans” …

  • Protecting a democracy with law and order and applying it to all citizens, avoiding an undocumented underground that’s rife with black markets and people trafficking seems a pretty rational perspective … and opposing those things seems insane.
  • The term ‘Islamophobia’ is an irrational fear of Islam – and the only true Islamophobes are those press, politicians and police that go out of their way to make excuses for Islam … which is, by the definition of its own texts, an ultra-conservative (i.e. far right) political judicial ideology dressed up as a religion, with strong misogynistic and homophobic tendencies written in, and a mechanism for threatening death for any Muslim that chooses to leave. It’s not compatible with secular liberal democracy, except in so far as many Muslims explicitly (Reformers) or implicitly (“Not MY Islam”) fail to follow the prescriptions in the supposedly ‘inerrant’ Quran. And, just to be clear, Christian lunacy has its own problems, not least in the USA.
  • Actual racism and xenophobia exists, and it doesn’t help the cause against them if everyone that dares talk about immigration is labelled a far right racist xenophobic Nazi from the outset.

Clear up those mostly left wing misrepresentations of reality and we might see some normality and rationality return to western politics.

And so, if we want effective global governance that supports genuine secular liberal freedom, we need a system that looks democratic, behaves democratically, and is respected enough to hold in check the excesses of rogue states … or even our own democracies that get it wrong so often. The UN has been referred to prior to a number of actions (Iraq War), but in the end, western states felt they had sufficient authority to go to war without the full backing of the UN.

And now Trump has shown his disdain for the UN, and a large number of Brits have done the same for the EU. Those organisations are not fit for purpose. Who the heck thinks the UN is up to scratch if Saudi Arabia is on the UN Human Rights Council? Who the heck thinks the European Court of Human Rights is up to scratch if it endorses jailing someone for disrespecting some cult’s fake war mongering child marrying prophet?

In an effort to be ‘nice’, and in order to protect a ‘minority’ (second larges and most violent religion in the world), the left has sold out secular liberal freedoms, and ordinary people can see that. Hence, Trump and Brexit.

Liberal democratic secular nation states are currently the only protection against chaos and corruption – as imperfect as they are, with their own corrupt elements. In fact, if we can’t get nation states right, what chance have we with larger organisations? Nation states will remain valuable until and if similar global systems can be set in place. Tearing them down in some ‘Year Zero’ fantasy will not help. Destroying them slowly by a thousand cuts of erosion to personal freedom and free speech will only make the demise apparent when its too late.

Explaining My Bias Against Islam, and Christianity

There’s always some point in a discussion, having had a dig at Islam, there comes a necessary aside. So here it is, for future reference.

“Why do you pick on Islam? What about Sikhs, Hindus? What about Christianity?”

This question inevitably follows. I don’t only pick on Islam, but it does attract greater attention now.

Because, after a lifetime of opposing Christianity and seeing secular success in taming it, Islam has burst on the scene in the UK and undone much of the work of secular liberal progress. To the point that in support of ‘minorities’ (but not minorities within minorities – FGM victims, persecuted and killed for honour, apostates) the second largest religion in the world gets a free pass on way too much of its own bigotry.

The rhetoric of ‘Victim Islam’ (fake Islamophobia) has even contributed to many young people rejecting secular liberal values like free speech, in favour of the dangerous ‘hate speech’ laws.

It started with Blair, funding self-appointed Islamic organisations, several later shut down for their links to extremists. It has continued after 9/11, with excessive and poor attempts to ‘protect’ Muslims in the UK, with ridiculous statements like “Nothing to do with Islam”. Lies like that have only increased anti-Muslim sentiment as well as opposition to Islam.

So, yes. I oppose Christianity and Islam, explicitly. I find them both antithetical to Humanist liberal values. I won’t support their legal outlaw, or any violence against their followers. But I do oppose them and argue against their support.

As for Hindu and Sikh religions … I do criticise them, when the need arises. In the UK we occasionally have reason to criticise. But, anecdotally, personally, I find they accept the secular nature of the UK more readily. So, while I’d probably disagree with them on some grounds, I don’t know enough or find I’ve needed to know enough to make an issue of it.

Islam and Christianity are in my face constantly. Fair enough – proselytise by all means. But expect a response. And don’t think I’ll look the other way, as many police, politicians and press have done, actively, in the face of evil done in the name of or under the cover of religion.

You can tell I’m not one of the passive aggressive atheists that complain more about atheists like me, in some daft deference to religion. Religions deserve ZERO deference. They are ideologies, like any other. To be criticised and ridiculed, like any other. There is a ‘spiritual’ aspect, but religions are NOT about spirituality, but about propagating THEIR particular dogmas, politically.

There are many very nice Christians, Muslims and other religious people that follow their religion and don’t ram it down my throat, and don’t try to impose their personal ideas of sexual propriety on others (it’s always about sex). Many in my own family are like that. I’ll argue the toss over religion, if they like, but otherwise, their beliefs are their business.

I’ll even agree that some, a few, religious people are far nicer than most non-religious people. There’s a reason. Nice people are attracted to the sales pitch of religion, and naturally cherry pick just the Goldilocks parts of the doctrine. The bad people in religion I’d say were already religious, and somehow manage to convince themselves there’s no incongruity: Roman Catholic Mafia gangsters, paedophile priests. So, anyone that is seriously lacking in empathy isn’t going to be attracted to the nice religious sales pitch, and if they have no need for religion, they will boost the number of evil non-religious people: the non-religious killing regimes of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.

But on the whole, and very specifically too in some cases, religion is a divisive force that I oppose.

That’s how it is. I value Global Liberal Secular Democratic Humanism. Not religion. Certainly not Islam.

For more detail on ‘Why Islam’, see My Problem With Islam.

For my view of Islamophobia, see Our Islamophobic Politicians.

For a list of other posts on Islam, see Islam.

Our Islamophobic Politicians

The hot trend at the time of writing is the call for the Conservative Party to investigate itself for the amount of ‘Islamophobia’ engaged in, by members or MPs.

Obviously, this is kick-back for the accusations of antisemitism in the Labour party, and it looks like Corbyn is now benefiting from his alliances in the Islamic world, as race baiting CMB and their puppet master Miqdaad Versi push this for all they’re worth.

To Conservatives in particular. You have lost the narrative to Islamic fundamentalists. You bought into the ‘multiculturalism’ narrative of Blair’s Labour, and you have lost. But, as you’ll see, you can start to save your party.

Politicians generally. You are being conned on ‘Islamophobia’.
The people know this.
The people know that YOU know this.
Do you realise the contempt with which you are currently held for this cowardice?

Islamophobia:

  • a) a tool used by Islamists (those politically motivated to further Islam and Sharia)
    to shut down discussion of the worst practices in Islam,
    by conflating criticism of Islam, anti-Muslim bigotry, and racism.
  • b) a fear instilled in Muslims, based on indoctrination into a cultish reverence
    for Mohammed and the Quran,
    such they submit themselves to Islam,
    often above family members,
    so that some would kill their own children or siblings if they left Islam.
  • c) a fear instilled in Muslims by Islamic fundamentalists,
    that to speak out about the bad practices in Islam is
    un-Islamic, treason, blasphemous, heretical,
    even default apostasy by fiat … and threateningly, a death sentence
  • d) the fear of Islam instilled into UK politicians, police and press that shuts them up,
    and even persuades them to collude in the silencing of those that speak out about the worst aspects of Islam.
  • e) the fear of Islam instilled in politicians across Europe,
    that Muslim unrest is more difficult to deal with than any popularist reactionary unrest,
    so that they would rather kow tow to Muslim community demands.
    https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/1001744765707223041

Islamist have succeeded. We realise you just want it all to go away. Your opponents know how to play this game. It’s a rhetorical method that works very well throughout the wider Islamic world. But, you are too scared to do anything about it.

Andrew Norfolk knew of this fear of Islam, when he accepted he’d sat on a report on paedophile Muslim grooming gangs, and let the rapes continue unexposed.

Maggie Oliver knew this, when her GMP seniors deflected her from investigating a case. Only with #threegirls in Rochdale, did she get anywhere.

Maggie Oliver realises you have no stomach to do the right thing. So she now calls for people power.

But we know what you politicians and police have done when people have raised this. We have seen you smear those that speak out, or at best, you have looked the other way.

Labour sacked MP Sarah Champion. They even deselected a Labour councillor.

Decent head teacher, Ray Honeyford, was hounded out, three decades ago, for trying to protect and improve the lot of children, and YOU or your fellow MPs let this happen.

Here’s what you can do.

  • You can start by rejecting the term ‘Islamophobia’.
  • Islam is the set of ideas.
  • Muslims are the people.
  • Oppose actual anti-Muslim bigotry, where individual decent Muslims are persecuted.
  • Oppose racism.

On that last point, I’m sure you’ve been told, but, Islam is not a race. There are many ‘white’ Muslims, and many ‘non-white’ non-Muslims. Make sure you are prosecuting actual racism, and not opinions on what is just another set of ideas.

If you play this ‘Islamophobia’ game, of seeing Muslims as victims while a minority, then you’ll find that you are becoming the minority.

Decent secular Muslims will tell you all this too. Perhaps you don’t want to listen. Perhaps you’ve already submitted to Islam.

 

 

Dishonest James O’Brien Reads Adolf Rudd

This is an extract from an earlier post: Lies, Damned Lies, and .. Political Rhetoric, 2016, post-Brexit, and the lies told for a political agenda.

Here’s James O-Brien on Amber Rudd’s speech at the Conservative party conference: this clip. Have a listen, it’s worth it.

obrienhate

Just a bit of angry rhetoric? Not quite. Here’s the text of what he said. First, the opening from the LBC web page:

This startling observation stopped James O’Brien in his tracks – the eerie similarities between Amber Rudd’s plan to list foreign workers and a passage in Mein Kampf.

The eerie similarities? If that’s so then LBC’s programme listing has eerie similarities to Hitler’s passage in Mein Kampf – at least LBC’s programme list is actually a list, while Rudd’s speech did not.

So, what did O’Brien say? Well, here it is. But bear in mind that Rudd said nothing like this, didn’t say a thing about lists, about a nations existence and greatness, a sharp line of distinction, didn’t give an anecdote about a plasterer, … And yet O’Brien re-reads this in parts, emphasising the meanings from Mein Kampf, with not a jot from Rudd’s speech.

“Very important that firms declare how much of their workforce is foreign because they’re just domiciled in this state simply as earners of their livelihood there. They’re not members of the nation, they’re not members of the foundation and the support of the nation’s existence and greatness.

You have to have a sharp line of distinction between those who are members of the nation and those who are just domiciled here as earners of their livelihoods.”

No, that wasn’t from Amber Rudd’s speech yesterday, I’m really sorry, that’s from Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

A sharp line of distinction between those who as members of the nation are the foundation and support of its existence and those who are domiciled in the state simply as earners of their livelihood here. Do you recognise that need for a sharp distinction? Do you feel it? Do you applaud that today?

Do you cheer it because you’ve heard some meaningless anecdote about plasterer whose wages have gone up by roughly the same percentage over the last ten or fifteen years that almost everybody else in the British workforce has? You see the need for that sharp line of distinction? Are you going to swallow that today?

A sharp line of distinction between those who are the foundation and support of the nation’s existence and greatness. And those, like almost everybody I’ve encountered so far today, who were just domiciled in the states simply as earners of their livelihood here. What do you think will come next?

If you’re going to have a sharp line of distinction between people born here and people who just work here, you’re enacting chapter two of Mein Kempf. Strange times.

“sharp line of distinction” – quoted once from Mein Kampf, and then repeated four more times. Who would come away from this thinking that phrase wasn’t part of Rudd’s speech?

This is like reading Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech and presenting it as Malcom-X. No. It’s worse than that. Because despite the differences, at least King and Malcom-X were on the same subject. This Holocaust precursor from Hitler was actually about hate and demonisation. Nowhere did Rudd demonise or even criticise foreign workers in her speech. What criticism she did include was entirely about the current UK methods of managing foreign workers. This is a particular malicious and dishonest clip from O’Brien – and plenty of people have bought it hook line and sinker.

Citing and re-citing phrases from Mein Kampf and playing on those words and meaning as if they are Rudd’s, is a straw man argument clearer than many I’ve seen for a long time.

By all means disagree with the policy, but at least criticise the policy and not some trumped up misrepresentation.

It’s difficult to emphasise how bad this is. His repeat of the “sharp line of distinction” very specifically gives the impression it’s in Rudd’s speech. I’ve seen this clip posted on a Lib Dem Facebook page a few times, and people are buying it, reposting it, and becoming outraged at the ‘fact’ that Rudd is a Nazi.

At this point it’s worth looking at a tweet from O’Brien:

No kidding. I’ve added the twitter ‘exchange’ below as an update. Won’t defend his own misrepresentations but happy to point it out in others.

What Rudd Said

I’m not kidding about this. Some people are seriously claiming the Tories are fascists, and it isn’t being used metaphorically. A UK elected government, that will abide by UK election rules and hand over power if they lose the next election, that have none of the actual features of actual fascist governments.

Let’s have a look at what Rudd actually said in this context of foreign workers.

I believe immigration has brought many benefits to the nation. It has enhanced our economy, our society and our culture.

This is why I want to reduce net migration while continuing to ensure we attract the brightest and the best.

Because it’s only by reducing the numbers back down to sustainable levels that we can change the tide of public opinion … so once again immigration is something we can all welcome.

The test should ensure people coming here are filling gaps in the labour market, not taking jobs British people could do.

But it’s become a tick box exercise, allowing some firms to get away with not training local people. We won’t win in the world if we don’t do more to upskill our own workforce.

  • No xenophobic closing of doors, but a limit on immigration to manageable levels.
  • Actually making a case for immigration, at manageable levels.
  • Acknowledgement of the concerns that caused the Brexit win.
  • This is the only reference to a ‘test’, regarding immigration, and it’s not a call for a test applied to immgrants but rather a measure of policy effectiveness.
  • She’s actually addressing what many people have wanted addressing, the failure to train British citizens.

Labour and Lib Dems (I’m a member of the latter – update: was at the time of writing) have not been shy about demanding better education and training of our young people, and have been quick to complain about the lack of training. The current system sees some employers using foreign workers as cheap labour when they should be training ‘British people’ (which includes past immigrants and later generations). Note that this is necessary for British competitiveness – something Labour and Lib Dems sign up to.

These are not controversial points from Rudd. Prior to Brexit and Syria and Merkel’s ‘open door’ cock up, this could have come from any of the major parties, not just UKIP. Labour and Tories have lower immigration targets.

The O’Brien misrepresentation and his responsibility for its spread on social media is the only controversial issue here.

I dropped the above criticism in O’Brien’s Twitter stream once or twice soon after I posted it here and had no reaction from him – O’Brien owes me nothing, fair enough. I’ve posted it elsewhere, but I haven’t trolled O’Brien with it. Then I saw this retweet of an O’Brien tweet …

jamesobrien-hypocrite

I’d like to think his blocking me was out of shame for his own dishonesty, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: Couldn’t resist adding this …

I don’t think it’s the camera, James.

Update: There’s an astonishing hypicrisy to O’Brien. Some time after his attack on Rudd he was on the BBC’s The One Show, where he was using his renound acting skills to portray a degree of sadness about the way “we” abuse and misrerpesent out politicians. My jaw dropped at hearing him say it, with the faut sincerity with which he presents his LBC show. I’ll drop the clip here if I manage to find it.

Bursting The White Supremacy Bubble

I was asked what Richard Spencer said that was wrong in the interview with Gary Young.

THE KLAN IS BACK

Where do I start. Well, let’s start right here – and this alone has many things wrong with it:

“Africans have benefited from the experience of white supremacy”

No. On many counts. If this rambles a bit, it’s because there is so much wrong with it and the notions its built on.

Starting with those living at the time of slavery, there were zero benefits and lots of negatives to being a slave, … or do you not think so? Slavery was a system of supreme power and cruelty. Not really something our slave owning ancestors can be proud of. Slavery showed no intrinsic sign of superior intellect. Many working hands on slave ships might have been pressed into service and will have been dumber than many of the slaves they transported. Many slave owners survived by their capacity for cruelty, not because of their intellect. But sure, some cruel and intelligent slavers made a good living. All of which begs the question, is intellectual superiority enough, or even necessary, for power supremacy?

So, let’s have a look at ‘supremacy’ more generally. We know from the way the white supremacy narrative goes that they think the power superiority of Europe derives from a greater intelligence, so I’ll try to focus on power and intelligence first.

Smart People or Dumb Luck

Not all modern self-made millionaires are the brightest people. They make their money by being hard working, persistent, good at making money off the work others put in, or luck.

There are many rich crooks that earn their money by being just clever enough to outwit the competition in their own sphere, and just clever enough to steal from the less clever, and crooks need not be particularly bright in other respects. Crooks can also make money off people far brighter than themselves. All it takes is the capacity to break a trust, to engage in fraudulent and corrupt practices, or to be brutal.

There are some really clever people, with high IQs, that don’t have the capacity for empathy that others have, and are quite able to manipulate their way to power. We call them sociopaths, or psychopaths (clinical details of terminology aside) – they are not all mad killers.

Oddly, the most empathetic people we have can suffer a severe empathy loss, and so we find that many very empathetic people have none to spare for the sociopath. What? You think the sociopath chose to be born with that empathy empty brain? Someone with a high empathy, but without the intellect or interest to think things through, will see these fellow humans as being nothing but non-human monsters.

Conversely, the natural sociopath with an intellect can learn the skill of appearing to have empathy while feeling none.

Some sociopaths might be ruthless and selfish in business, while others might make great contributions to our societies because they are single minded in their focus on what interests them, rather than dedicating time and energy to feeding their feelings towards others.

It’s and odd world.

So, with this, and many other factors that lead to power, in a society as a whole, and members of a particular society, what does it mean to be ‘supreme’, to be a ‘white supremacist’ in particular. This ‘supremacy’ attribute is a pretty complicated thing.

European Supremacy … Wasn’t Your Whiteness

The power superiority of European nations came from fortunate circumstances in Europe.

At one time other parts of the world were way ahead of Europe. There hasn’t been enough time in a few short centuries for evolution to have an impact to make white Europeans suddenly smarter.

And, there’s a certain irony here in that many white supremacists are idiots that reject much of evolutionary theory, yet they think they are able to figure out that ‘something’ made white Europeans smarter, all of a sudden. Round about 1500, maybe? Or 1700? Who knows when we lucky whites became supreme, but I know that for some time, in what we call ‘the dark ages’, we weren’t.

The strange truth is that centuries ago, any bell curve difference on intellectual supremacy was already there when Europe was a dumber civilization. If Europeans got smarter, it wasn’t some sudden genetic brain boost.

If anything history would suggest that it was mixing of cultures made Europe ‘superior’ in power.

A single stable culture that works well in a stable climate setting with sufficient resources has little pressure for technological change.

But warring small nation states with lots of trade, and an exchange of ideas and peoples, stimulates change. The Renaissance, The Enlightenment, science, philosophy, … if they come together they can create massive progress, as they did in Europe.

The introduction of Arabic works, the re-introduction of Greek works, they all boosted a Europe that was awakening in the ruins of Rome, looking back on a civilization that had been way ahead in its prime. Then, once technical progress was under way, it took off quickly – which in itself is a massive story, involving many famous people, most of which were ‘white’ because, as happens with one’s religion, or nationality, they happened to be born where they were. Any bright African, Indian, Asian in Europe at that time, free of any racist persecution, could join in as well as any white person – except that for many of our famous early scientists, privilege gave them the capacity to do the work they did.

That’s why much European science history is ‘white’, not because of any innate white supremacy. This idea of being lucky enough for many factors to come together is the reason that during our European ‘Dark Ages’, Islamic civilisation prospered – not because Islam has some superior message that to hand.

Social change that’s unnecessary in small tribal systems becomes crucial in a more complex mercantile trading and technical societies. Wars and revolutions bring change too, but do much damage. Democracy works better.

But a democracy doesn’t work so well if many of those within it are actual or effective slaves.

Kings and lords ruled Europe. But the barons wanted a greater say. And while aristocratic elites still ruled, the money of mercantile power started to speak. Actual slaves, and the non-elite free men, and women, they all eventually wanted the freedoms the elites enjoyed.

Education spread, increasing the diversity of opportunity with it. With luck, a bright kid from some slum could break out, end up at university, and become a great engineer, while his intelligent counterpart in a South American tribe has no chance of learning any of the mathematics and science his European brother is exposed to. Privilege begets privilege, unless the privileged and powerful are prepared to share what they have.

All this comes together in Europe, and by fortune of circumstances, both dumb and bright white people, far from supreme, living in slums in the cities of the west, start to demand fairer conditions. Social change comes along with the greater voting franchise. A better understanding of biology, health, suffering … all these inspire many bright people to be better towards their fellow humans, to demand change.

What amounts to a supremacy of power, money, technology, science, brings European states into competition, war, and world domination, at the very time social improvements are afoot at home. This contradiction is why we have heroes and villains, often in one and the same person: Churchill, Washington … great leaders when their countries needed them, but not averse to indulging in the less worthy norms of their times.

Not all changes are smooth or balanced. While a good man might be helping the poor in slums back home, his sibling might be in India beating down an uprising of oppressed and starving people. The power supremacy that can bring good continues to bring much harm in parallel. This is the messy world of the reality of Empire, not the simplistic ‘white supremacist’ world that idiots like Richard Spencer have in their minds. There are many dumb, evil and far from supreme people among the supreme European race, and many very bright and genuinely superior intellects among the people oppressed by this European superiority.

Don’t get me wrong. Empires have come and gone in the past. It was mostly shear good or bad fortune that determined whether you were a thicko with power in the supreme echelons of the white European culture, because your aunt was bedded by some duke, or you were a brown genius trying to figure out how to get this white European oppression out of your country, … while still having to deal with cruel idiots in your own culture that made money off the back of the oppressors and helped them maintain the oppression.

This is a very messy history with so many strands that it’s impossible to do them all justice here. But it should be clear enough that ‘white supremacism’ is one of the dumbest notions you could dream up, if only for the fact that so many white supremacists are thick. What the heck is supposed to be supreme about them?

I’m All White Jack

The big joke is that by around the time Europe becomes a supreme power base, we are already mixed race. Apart from some isolated families that protect their ‘blood lines’, whether for race or mere genealogical reasons, we have been screwing our way around the world for several hundred years, and many people that think they are true blood white are not.

How about all white supremacists subject themselves to DNA tests and ANY ‘impure non-white genes’ gets you rejected from the master race. Good luck with that. Many will be rejected.

The thing is, this definition of ‘white’ that’s supposed confer supremacy is such that a) it doesn’t exist; b) it certainly doesn’t confer supremacy (again, have you seen some of these dumbos).

But, let’s go with one of the tools the white supremacists use. Let’s play ‘Bell Curve’.

Suppose you can categorise of peoples, that are identifiable by ‘race’, and that some bell curves on intelligence show Group A is higher than group B on some measure. What does that mean? …

It means in the overlap there are some seriously unintelligent people in both A and B. And there are some people in Group B that are brighter than most people in group A, the supposedly supreme group. That’s the problem – individuals are not the population they are in: bell curves have tails, in both directions.

So, what do I want, if YOU insist we must split society?

I’ll tell you. I want to be in the group of white, black, brown, yellow, purple, any colour, as long as they are the smart non-racist ones. Those smart Jews that are top of the charts? I want to be in their camp, not stuck with knuckle dragging racist morons of my own race.

The thing is, and this is where much of the controversy lies, statistics can be helpful.

Identify a group and see that there is a group tendency to have some health deficiency, and you can target treatment better. But even here, individuals still count. Not all people in a statistically identifiable genetic group need have the condition your looking at – and that has serious implications if you get the targeted treatment wrong. If group A has a tendency to have the condition more than those in group B, so you target only group A, you leave those in group B with the condition to suffer? Such a statistical difference can only benefit everyone if limited resources are distributed according to the relative number of people in the groups, and the relative occurrence of the conditions. You have to do a lot of Bayesian stuff to be effective. You can’t simply say, “Oh, group A has a high statistical bias for this condition, we’ll target only group A.”

And yet this is what the ‘white supremacists’ don’t get about the bell curves that they rely on for intelligence and supposed ‘supremacy’. It’s more complicated than just ‘race’ – and their racism isn’t even just about ‘actual race’, but apparent race, because, at least until they have prepared the internment camps where they too are forced to endure genetic testing necessary to determine their own racial purity. They can’t tell who’s white and who isn’t, outside a very simple stark difference in colour. You could have a fine blood line going back to mad King George, but if your great gran got too friendly with a slave, you’re out of the master race.

On so many grounds, these ‘white supremacists’ don’t really know what they are talking about.

But, hey, those bright Jews? If it’s genetic, why don’t we dumber white folks want what they have? If some Jews are so bright, how seriously dumb was Hitler. Exterminated or exported a minority people, because he could. And yet they could have helped Germany recover from the devastation that resulted from its previous screw up of WWI.

But those Jews, those philosophers, scientists that survived, helped make America great, not the dumb white supremacists in the south. One of my heroes, Erik Kandel, left Europe in his youth to escape extermination, and went on to contribute to neuroscience of memory. I’m sure most sensible people can happily name their own great Jew. If what the the ‘white supremacists’ think is true, can you give me a genetic injection of Jewish intelligence please. If, as many antisemite will tell you, the Jews are really ruling the world, because they are so good at it, then instead of exterminating them, why don’t we work towards making ourselves that bright? Why make the world dumber, by killing off the intelligent ones?

This ‘white supremacism’ simply doesn’t make sense by their own standards of reckoning.

Getting back to Spencer’s claim. No. Africans Americans didn’t benefit from ‘white’ supremacy. They suffered under white idiocy and cruelty that was coupled with technological supremacy. They suffered at the hands of Christian men and women that failed to live up to the principles that a Jew supposedly taught them. The number of ironies to the ‘white supremacy’ stupidity is astounding.

Thankfully, enough decent Europeans saw things differently, and just as they fought injustice that befell the ‘white inferiors’ at home, they opposed slavery. The African and Middle Eastern world under Islam continued with slavery long after Europe came to its senses. Europe banned slavery. It just took some time and a civil war to convince some thickos in America.

Mixed Race Europe

And, of course, winning a war on slavery and persecution doesn’t end it. It exists everywhere in the world.

But it’s odd that the white supremacists in the USA look to Europe, the place that has done most to end racism, that is the least racist place on earth. This is not an idle claim.

Check out Russia, China, Japan, South Africa, Middle East, India … These are not the mixed race societies you might hope for. These are not non-racist societies.

Why is there still an ethnic cleansing occurring every now and then around the world? Because one ethnic group doesn’t like another – they are racists. Why are there multicultural problems in Europe with Islam? Partly because of Islam’s own version of supremacy – it’s Islam or nothing.

Now, Islam is not a race – in fact one of the few good ideas that both Christianity and Islam encouraged (at least theoretically) was anti-racism.

But that doesn’t prevent Muslims being racist. There is much racism in the Islamic world. There are Arab, Pakistani, Turkish, Indonesian and other Islamic sub-cultures within Europe, and they won’t even intermarry among themselves as Muslims. Pakistanis are well known for keeping their ties with Pakistan. There are Pakistani families in the UK, screaming to high heaven about white racism, and yet they’d kill their daughter if she tried to marry a non-Muslim or non-Pakistani.

Again, we have to be clear, that this is messy. Many white, brown, black people get along fine, and mix socially, and marry, and have children. Europe is the least racist place on earth – even with our racists, of every colour and cultural origin. Has racism been ousted from Europe? No. Too many white Europeans are racist… but I’d hazard a guess that proportionally there are more POC racists in the UK than white racists.

So, what is Richard Spencer thinking when he talks of his superior white European heritage? Well, it’s not the whiteness that’s superior. He’s referring only to the coincidences of history that made Europe powerful, that then allowed it to dominate the rest of the world, for a time.

Politics, Race, Multiculturalism

Political ideas are far more important than skin colour or race – in fact I can’t think of anything that requires differentiation based on race or skin colour other than the beneficial statistics that can help target healing of genetic conditions – and even then, there are genetic differences within what Spencer would think of as a race that are just as important to health. Race is simply a really bad demarcation that mostly leads to great harm. Racism is a bad political idea.

To think in terms or racial superiority is so bad that it has caused a double whammy of hate. First, there are the racists themselves. Second, and more recently, in response to white racism, we have seen a SJW backlash that has become so toxic we have who knows how many white people actually hating their own race. This currently is a dangerous political direction that actually perpetuates racism.

Pause … Let than sink in for a moment: those that campaign vociferously against racism, that declare race isn’t important, see their own race as the only source of racism, and actively want an end to white people, while being quite willing to support other cultures and sub-cultures that are based to some extent on racial division.

But, on the bright side, at least the white SJW racists provide yet more evidence that white people can be as dumb as anyone of any other skin colour.

We should be discriminating – of political and cultural ideas, not race.

“Multiculturalism has failed!”

No. The implementation of multiculturalism has failed, by not being discriminating about what is of value and what is dangerous, in various cultures.

If you think good multiculturalism consists of exchanging recipes from around the world, while turning a blind eye to honour killing, or FGM, or forced marriage, then you are failing at multiculturalism, and failing to uphold the political egalitarianism that Europe was supposed to be famous for.

Living With History

Time to get back to the Richard Spencer quote. Let’s suppose he accepts that white supremacy was cruel and unjustified (I don’t know that he does). What does Richard Spencer mean when he says African Americans have benefited? Maybe Spencer is thinking, hey look ‘shithole’ Africa, compared to great lives African Americans have. He’s wrong there too. Centuries of persecution, with legal persecution stopped only decades ago, and social persecution still active (that’s what Spencer is engaged in) are not benefiting African Americans now, but still hindering them.

Can many African Americans have successful lives, better than many whites? Sure. That’s what equal opportunity should result in. And great lives too, if only they could avoid idiots like Spencer. Again, don’t get me wrong. There are stupid racist black Richard Spencers among groups like BLM – we’ve seen them. We’ve seen the idiots in Africa that think some of their ancient tribal practices are somehow superior to ‘white science’ – as if science is ‘white’. Dumb racism isn’t a white prerogative.

But, to take Spencer’s line of reasoning: that all that suffering in slavery, and post-slavery racist laws, and post-racist law racist persecution, … all that has given current African Americans the great reward of living in the soon to be great again USA.

There’s a trivial ironic truth to this point of view. I was saving this speech for the Oscars, but you get a preview  …

I’d like to thank all the people that made me what I am today. I’d like to thank Hitler, and all the dead Jews in the Holocaust, for bringing my mother and father together, post-WWII, which led to my lucky existence – oh, and thanks to my dead uncle that was killed in the war. And I’d like to thank those that contributed to the Irish famine that drove my recent ancestors, on both sides, to leave Ireland and come to England and marry some English people. A special thanks to the invading Normans that persecuted others in my family tree that were mere serfs … oh, and my other ancestors that were Normans that persecuted them. A great big thank you to Julius Caesar, for without his invasion and killing of so many people we wouldn’t have some of the lovely straight roads that I enjoy today. I don’t know who you are, but thank you Neanderthal woman for being raped by my other early human ancestor. And thank you Africans, for starving and migrating to Europe in search of a better place – twice – you really made the effort form which I now benefit. And thank you, African ape mother of all humans today. Thank you all.

Any history that humans have gone through that has been objectively bad for some people and good for others, in terms of material reward, security, health, social status, self determination, has resulted in the people we are now. So, is a black guy in America now better off because his recent ancestor was brought over in a slave ship?

Trivially, yes. But it’s actually a dumb question, and a dumb point from Richard Spencer.

First, that person would not have been present in Africa today had his ancestor not been a victim of slavery. Any number of things might be different without European slavery. Islamic slavery was present in Africa long after it was stopped in Europe, so maybe his ancestor would have been a slave after all. Or maybe his tribe would have become slavers themselves in turn. Maybe if decent European explorers had brought only benefits of European progress to Africa … but hold on, before we get too far into this, remember that much of the technical and mercantile progress in Europe was made on the back of Africa and other places, by the consumption of the resources found there. Mmmm. Tricky. History is complicated, and the ‘What if?’ games don’t really tell us that much.

White Minority Identity

And now the ironic aspect of the Richard Spencer quote. The problem is that if you play the same game as Richard Spencer, and try to say that African Americans benefit now from the cruelty of past white Europeans, then he could be letting himself in for a whole pile to grief. White people, as defined in the simplistic terms of Richard Spencer, are actually a minority in the world population.

Suppose all non-whites made slaves of whites for a century or so, it wouldn’t be that bad, would it? After all, in a few more centuries there’d be a black Richard Spencer saying, …

“Whites have benefited from the experience of black supremacy”

No. Enough of the ‘white supremacy’ stupidity.

How about Identitarianism, White Separatism, and the other BS terms that mask a white supremacist agenda?

Anti-Racism

It’s simple:

If you want to marry and mate with someone of your own ethnic background, then go for it. Nobody is stopping you. As white separatists point out, there are many self contained ethnic groups that value their heritage, why can’t white people? Yeah, fine, again, go for it.

Here’s the problem – and it’s one I touched on above. What if I, as a white person, don’t want that? What if I am friends with and enjoy the company of people of all backgrounds, all races? What if we want to get together and make mixed race babies? What’s your problem?

Only I can tell you OUR problem is – YOU, Richard Spencer. Not because you want to play with white people only, but because you want to make the rest of us do it too.

And it’s not just the Richard Spencers of this world – and here’s where I depart form the current white hating SJW loons. Many ethnic groups insist on their own ethnic purity, just as Spencer does. Where they insist that applies to all their children, we have a problem, again, and it’s the problem caused by the separatists, of any colour or culture.

There are Muslims and Hindus in India that will kill anyone of the other religion that tries to marry their daughter. There are Pakistani heritage British men (get this, they are actually English by birth) that will kill their sister if she tries to marry outside their race and religion. Many of us are supporting the Kurds, and the Yazidis, and the Christians that have been persecuted by ISIS – and yet there will be some among those groups that will be separatists and will not let their culture die, and will persecute those of their own that try to stray.

It’s not just race. Religion is the other great divisive influence. My Catholic mother married my Protestant father, and she converted. My mother’s Catholic priest damned her children to hell. Well, I am an atheists, so I guess he got his wish. My wife’s Baptist mother, on first hearing my name, asked my future wife, “He’s not Catholic, is he?”

There are those that fear the loss of their race, culture or religion. But I’m afraid they are only entitled to perpetuate those in as much as they can personally, with like minded people.

They are not at liberty to demand that their children should be separatists racists too. They are not at liberty to protect their racial, cultural and religious ideology through separatism.

So, to Richard Spencer specifically, the rest of us don’t want your racist BS.  Tough shit.

Hylas And The Nymphs – A Local Visitor’s Perspective

Most people have jumped the gun. I did too – prepared to vent my indignation. I went to take a look on Saturday, the day the picture was put back.

The removal was a part of another project specifically planned to provoke discussion. The #MeToo and #TimesUp were the context, not the reason.

Here’s the gallery’s perspective in more detail:

Presenting the female body: Challenging a Victorian fantasy

Opposite the Nymphs picture is Sappho, by Charles Mengin – supposedly one of the most alluring images of the female body. And I have to say that’s not too far off the mark. And there are other provocative representations of naked and part naked women around the gallery.

As a male curator explained,

“If we wanted to censor, we’d have to remove maybe half our exhibits.”

To be honest, they seemed as thrilled by the negative responses as much as the positive. It might be worth noting the deep love of art that would be a natural part of a curator’s persona: the human body, which they may well have been exposed to in the flesh while studying. I don’t think we’re dealing with 3rd wave feminist prudes here (though I know nothing more about the curator or artist that were involved in the event).

The other charge was that it was a publicity stunt. Again, he said that had they intended that, there are a number of things they would have done differently … and would have been better prepared … which brings us to the post cards: it seems they sold out, so much was the demand. They were not removed, as many have claimed.

I had conversations with some other visitors there, those that, like me, saw it as censorship initially … they too were changing their minds.

And as far as the stated intent, it worked well. On Saturday the picture was put back, and the post-it notes left in place. And the outrage on display (again, of which I might have been a willing contributor) was as visceral as any that we might accuse SJWs of engaging in.

So, given the pre-planned project by the artist Sonia Boyce ( #MAGSoniaBoyce ), I’ll give the benefit of any remaining doubt to those who run my favourite local gallery.

And, as this the context was about #MeToo and #TimesUp, I thought I’d end with a sobering piece: Nobody’s Victim: An Interview with Samantha Geimer 

There are a lot of perspectives on these movements, and a lot of heated outrage, rather then healthy, if heated, debate.

RadFem Idiots Lie About Kenan Malik

I follow Kenan Malik on Twitter. Decent guy, good articles, his book on my shelf reading list. I occasionally disagree, but you really can’t come across many more honest a journalist than Kenan. One of the good ‘lefties’. A Humanist. Keen on ‘justice’.

So, he wrote an article A desire for vengeance is human but checks the pursuit of proper justice, and a good one it was too.

If I had to bet any money on who’d respond to this negatively and mistakenly, I’d have thought it’s be some of the supporters of the death penalty supporters that would like to castrate painfully and then hang draw and quarter child abusers. And it’s not as if Kenan misses the natural human sentiment of rage and vengeance that such cases arouse – that’s  what his article was about, separating our baser desire for vengeance for the greater utility of justice.

But, no. what caught my eye first was a diversion into RadFem writing

Here’s Kenan’s tweet of the article, and then we’re off into RadFem land

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959005421309751296

I didn’t read the piece at first, and noted only the ‘himpathy’. Instead, I noted this tweet.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959039811817439232

I read Kenan’s article again. Not a sign of him defending the abuser.

And so I thought I’d have a say too:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959044988230303745

What followed for a few tweets was the usual back and forth of disagreement about what was actually in the article, until I wondered if Jo had read the article. So I simply asked.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959048190258483200

And that’s when it turned to ‘mansplaining’. And what you’re going to see is a deep dive into childishness (and, for the record, that opinion is not based on their gender, but on their stupidity; for there’s plenty of male stupidity to go around too – and that’s gender equality for you).

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959049223844089856

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959068358304940035

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959068909298208768

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959069015401533440

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959070488264892416

OK, let’s play that game …

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959077009354907649

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959077341824724992

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959078224981569541

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959078986549792771

At which point the RadFem tweets to me:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959078996972638210

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959081761409064960

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959082089323941891

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959085859218821120

And it’s at that point that RadFem goes quiet … at least with me.

But meanwhile … back on Jo’s response to me, Kenan tries to get some sense out of the implication that jail was being argued against:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959045579639869440

No response there, either.

Did anyone else have any luck? Anshu responds to the RadFem’s tweet of her article, which at this point I still haven’t read.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959017967253114881

This reply betrays a complete and utter failure to understand basic discourse and the presentation of evidence to back up claims. Anshu had said no more than that they disagree, and had not made a claim that warrants evidence.

You might think this a simple twitter wording gone astray, except that RadFem is a writer herself, and makes a splash of it in her Twitter bio – ‘bon mots’.

Nevertheless, Anshu clarifies his disagreement, which is the same point, put in other words:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959029107857256448

And there you have one of the skills of RadFem on display: mind readers.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959068701277540352

But you just did, you moron! You specifically analysed the hypotheitical of the judge being a man in this case and asserted this conversation would not be happening.

Well, on second thoughts, to be fair, that’s probably true. But the reason would be (engaging my own hypotheticals) that the RadFem would not have bothered to pick up the evidence against her RadFem agenda.

And that’s the bias of RadFem for you. And, just to make sure it’s clear, Kenan responds at this point:

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959071097676271616

Again, blatent accusations morph into hypotheticals when the RadFem is cornered in a lie or a smear.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959073223869718528

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959074565816307713

I have to say that Vonny is well out of her depth here. Is she clueless about Kenan’s credentials regarding class and identity struggles?

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/959079312552013824

Oh, FFS! She really has no idea who Kenan Malik is, or she’d not be making dumb ass statements like this. But not only that, the judge is white, the abuser is white, … and he wasn’t even racist in his choice of victims. He’s an equal opportunity abuser.

This RadFem nonsense is off the rails at this point.

The profile of the RadFem @vonny_bravo:

Journalist. RadFem. Martinis, bon mots, good shoes. Writes about women & girls. @ScotNational columnist. @Guardian contributor.

We can only hope for more rationality and use of evidence in articles that aren’t as agenda driven. So, to Vonny’s article:

“Larry Nassar will die in jail. Following arguably the biggest child abuse scandal in sporting history …”

So, Vonny hasn’t heard of the UK football abuse scandals? “Writes about women & girls” – OK, maybe that’s a hint to broaden one’s horizons.

“In reporting it, too often the victim is an afterthought. The perpetrator profile, the act detailed, the woman or girl nowhere to be seen.”

I wonder if that’s because their identity is specifically protected. This was once a problem for women victims, but now this has become a problem for the falsely accused, as the recent Liam Allan, where even the police and prosecution stacked the cards against him by withholding evidence that should have seen the case thrown out long before his name became public.

And, of course, despite Vonny’s pleading, as shown in the Liam Allen case, details about the accuser are not without pertinance to the case.

“When we hear her name, it’s when a case collapses and the tabloids feast.”

Collapse? How about when they are shown to be based on lies, smears, false accusations? What about when the lying accuser at last gets some publicity? Does Vonny oppose this too?

“More often, we hear nothing unless a woman waives her right to anonymity”

So, what exactly is the complaint here? That women victims get publicity, or they don’t? Do note that the football coaching abuse scandal has male victims waving anonymity.

“She sentenced him to 175 years. A titan of a sentence, the fullest force of the law – but just one year and one month per girl when you do the maths.”

What’s she proposing? 1,750 years? 3,500 years? What point is Vonny making with the “one year and one month per girl”?

“You would think denouncing a serial paedophile would be a given in a civilised society. There’s no ambiguity about the atrocity of child abuse. And yet countless men took to the internet denounce everyone but Nassar. The girls were looking for money and attention. Aquilina was grandstanding. She was mean. The sentence was too harsh. She wears too much makeup. Where were their mothers?”

Maybe “countless *men* (no women?) took to the internet denounce everyone but Nassar” because Nassar was already denounced. Did anyone actually claim he was not guilty? After all, if there was no ambiguity.

Maybe some were curious about how he got away with it for so long. Who else was culpable – not of abuse, but of a failure of a duty of care to watch out for the girls.

Comments about the judge’s makeup were irrelevant to the case. Who exactly used that as a reason to claim Nassar’s innocence? I ask, because you can see what ‘journalist’ Vonny is doing here. She’s using spurious comments, by who knows, to form a case for the new hip term ‘himpathy’.

“Professor Kate Manne, a moral philosopher at Cornell, theorises this as “himpathy”.”

So, women don’t engage in excusing women? And when it comes to excusing men, there are an awful lot of female Trump supporters, and all the serious bad guys, like Hitler, Moa, Castro, all had their female apologists. Of course you’d expect more men and fewer women to excuse a man charged with abuse. What woman could possibly excuse him? Well, you could ask that of many religious women that seem to idolise male prophets and preachers.

“Himpathy blinkers us.”

This, in a post that was offered as response to Kenan Malik’s article on distinguishing justice and revenge, where zero support, sympathy of excuse was offered to the abuser, and not a hint of victim blaming. Blinkered is what Vonny is.

Enough of the crazy. Some sane voices:

If you let your ideology overcome your capacity to reason, and it prevents you simply admitting you were mistaken when accusing a particular person of something they didn’t do, and if you find you are doubling, trebling down on your position, or diverting from it entirely, then maybe you need to take some philosophy classes.

https://twitter.com/vonny_bravo/status/959067653720739841

Well, that’s a start.

 

 

 

 

 

Harvey Drowns Nazis, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie

Here we go again. Satire. Wasted on idiots.

Fox: French magazine Charlie Hebdo mocks Harvey victims as neo-Nazis

Hebdo-NaxisOfHarvey

NO. IT. DOES. NOT. It mocks Nazis [and, as I too missed, on first writing, it mocks some of the liberal commentary on how deserving conservative Texan’s might be, which I hadn’t seen – see Areo link later]

It is not mocking all victims of Harvey. It is not claiming all victims of Harvey are Nazis.

Idiots are doing 2 + 2 = 5 again. Reading their own interpretation into a simplistic view of Hebdo.

Hebdo is anti-Nazi.

Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is a neo-Nazi organisation.

Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Kla is present in Texas.

Hammerskins were formed in Texas.

Resistance Records is headquartered in Texas.

Now, you might want to bear in mind that this next link is based on the notoriously dodgy SPLC, but according to them there are about 55 ‘hate groups’ in Texas – and even allowing for SPLC bias and lies, that would still likely leave a few.

About the only real complaint one could make about the Hebdo piece is “Too soon!” But topicality, satire, irreverance, is their thing.

A question: Is Hebdo’s message any worse than the many religious people in Texas thanking God for their survival, while ignoring their imaginary friend’s failure to protect Texas from the storm? Or that Texans deserve the ‘biblical’ flood?

Update: On these other aspects of the meaning of the cover, and how Hebdo’s satire operates – recommended reading: What Charlie Hebdo Can Teach Us About the Nature of Satire

Anyway, even if ‘tasteless’ is an appropriate description, the typical hysteria around Hebdo, which is based on past misrepresentations that have created this image of Hebdo the Haters, is misplaced.

To help you understand Charlie Hebdo: http://www.understandingcharliehebdo.com/about-charlie-hebdo/

My previous Hebdo links:

Headless May, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie – Including how Hebdo explain themselves

Amatrice Pasta, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie

 

 

 

Left, Right: Marching In Step With Your Enemy

Beware! Nazis!

Nazi Germany was built in part on fantasy propaganda, of an idillic Europe of kings, knights, glory and honour. They turned a grimy bloody history that makes Game of Thrones look glamorous into a Disney fantasy. They rewrote history in order to give meaning and righteousness to their terrible regime.

Along with the imagery created to invoke that past was the dark side of National Socialism. Like all inflexible ideologies it had to resort to violence to achieve its aims – because, of course, not everyone agrees with your ideology, no matter how good it sounds to you. When you’re an ideologue and you insist people must accept your way or the highway, then by any means necessary starts to sound justifiable.

Immediately after WWII, West Germans and their new friends and allies, Western Europe and the USA, conspired to re-write history once again. The spectre of Nazi Germany was obliterated, buildings demolished, had they survived the war, … and, statues toppled. All was good, and West Germany rose to become a civilised western democracy.

Beware! Fascistic Anti-Fascists

In the 1960s West Germany the new generations started to question their nation’s history, and the roles their parents played in it. Naming and shaming – doxxing today – and divisions among families seemed to be necessary. But it didn’t stop there.

As events continued into the 1970s The Red Army Faction arose as a terrorist group.

These far left activists hated of Nazis, naturally. And they noted that many people running the state were of that Nazi generation. This helped convince them that because the state would not do what they wanted them to do, violence to achieve one’s political goals was entirely justifiable – just as it was for the Nazis in their early days.

Punching Nazis was very popular, and before long, when people still refused to listen, they started to blow up and kill people. The political cause is all that matters, the methods, not so much.

Stefan Aust, author of Der Baader Meinhof Komplex:

World War II was only twenty years earlier. Those in charge of the police, the schools, the government — they were the same people who’d been in charge under Nazism. The chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been a Nazi. People started discussing this only in the 60’s. We were the first generation since the war, and we were asking our parents questions. Due to the Nazi past, everything bad was compared to the Third Reich. If you heard about police brutality, that was said to be just like the SS. The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it. You see your action as the resistance that your parents did not put up.

[my emphasis]

Were all Germans WWII really Nazis? Were Germans, whether Nazis or not, aware of the genocide? What could they have done? The pre-Nazi state was weak. Rule of law was nothing like that of Western Europe today (even as bad as it is today).

Does guilt by association sound familiar? It should do. How many people have you seen labelled as Nazis that are barely right of centre? How many generally left of centre people have you seen labelled ‘far-right’?

The Adam Curtis BBC programme, The Living Dead, 1995 (an almost prescient perspective) [currently here, but may change]:

Screenshot 2017-08-19 14.46.10

 It was complete confrontation. One part of the people against the other. … I had begun to realise, fighting against the state, by armed groups, with this revolutionary strategy in mind, was to bring up the fascistic tendencies, not only of the political class, but the people too. We ourselves became in the same way fascistic as the fascists were. We didn’t realise, our enemies, our opponents, were human beings. This is what is in the heart of fascism. The oppression of other meanings of the political opposition. And oppression means elimination. By killing.

– Horst Mahler, Red Army Faction [Adam Curtis film]

[my emphasis]

Now, remind me again what the limits of violence are for Yvette Felarca and By Any Means Necessary. Tell me where the punching of perceived Nazis stops. With a bike lock? Tell me when you decide to become what you oppose.

You might want to think of someone you know when you read Mahler’s words here. Dan Arel came to my mind.

Fascism is a component in all of us. … We have a picture of ourselves. We want to be good. We want to be human creatures. But we are a contradiction, in ourselves. We don’t know how to handle this contradiction. We don’t know how to live with this evil part in ourselves.

– Horst Mahler, Red Army Faction 

The words of Horst Mahler should be sounding alarm bells particularly when you realise the direction he went in. Here’s the top of the Wiki page about him:

Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist. He once was an extreme-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction, but later became a Maoist before switching to Neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung (“incitement of popular hatred”) and Holocaust denial and served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.

[my emphasis]

From far left to far right looks incredible like a sprung switch, a flip-flip, with no hanging around in the centre ground to re-think one’s ideology.

Socialist – Fascist Common Ground

This is the path taken by fascist Mussolini: a member of the Italian Socialist Party, who couldn’t get his way, and moved on to use fascistic means to do so, creating the national Fascist Party, coining the term ‘fascism’ in doing so.

While the ‘left’ v ‘right’ is often thought of in terms of in terms of collectivism v individualism, the German Nazis and Italian Fascists were clearly collectivists in their national ‘socialism’ and their national ‘fasci‘ (bundle).

One main distinction between revolutionary left ideologies like Communists, Anarchism and the Fascists and Nazis amounts to how they see their particular struggle, how they perceive the solution to the problems they see, and who are the people causing the problems.

The ‘left’ collectivism is a class war that divides a nation on class, but can still portray itself as nationalistic when defending a Communist state in face of anti-Communist opposition. Appealing to nationalism, Mother Russia for example, is useful when it works, especially when purging the state of enemies and undesirables that threaten the state, and hence the people.

The ‘right’ is a nationalism that uses socialism to unite the people against the state’s enemies, without or within. Appealing to the socialism of the ‘folk’ and their nation, The Fatherland for example, is useful, especially when purging the state of internal enemies and undesirables that threaten the state, and hence the people.

The Socialists/Communists and the Fascists/Nazis ideologies are very similar politically, and in the way they suppress opposition by the use of violence. [here – h/t @SamWhiteTky]

As are theocracies (*cough* Islam).

The internal enemies often turn out to be the Jews (*cough* Islam) and the Intellectuals – and the intellectual Jews are often right out of luck. Other ‘peoples’ like the Poles were a common target too. And anyone else that gets in the way. Because, of course, when your ideology is right and you know it’s right, killing for it doesn’t seem too much of a problem.

Another issue that distinguishes them is racism, at least superficially. The hyper-nationalism of Nazi Germany, when immigrant populations were much smaller, made it easy to identify other races as a problem. But racism is present in most cultures, if not all, so it can’t be ruled out under Socialism, where again the Jews are still targets.

Isn’t it odd that the left tend to support Palestinians, and the terrorist Hamas, with much anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism. For parties like the UK Labour Party, that claim to be egalitarian, where does this racism come from? Perhaps Horst Mahler is right – there’s a bit of the fascist in us all, and even your party’s stated principles can’t erase it in those that can’t help expressing it.

So now, tell me again why you think that the Nazis and AntiFa/BAMN are poles apart. There are simply too many parallels here to dismiss the similarity between the current street violence and the support for the punching of Nazis in the 1960s Germany. The Germans at least had parents who could have been real-deal Nazis.

Berkeley, Charlottesville and Beyond

And here we are. A decade and more of political correct ideological propaganda. The requirement to choose a side, in order to be on the right side of history, is raising its nasty duplicitous head again.

Charlottesville had some neo-Nazis attend a rally, but many of the people there were not genocidal ‘final solution’ people. Or so they say –  but then unless you’re an actual mind reader, you can’t assert they are genocidal: you’re playing rhetorical games, and  you are not in a position to refute their denial of being Nazis, without evidence. And if there are genocidal people there, they aren’t giving you the evidence.

By all means take sides. I certainly do. I’m opposed to all those that marched on the side of the alt-right, even those that don’t consider themselves to be alt-right:

  • Neo-Nazis – Well, obviously. Whatever the political origins of the German Nazis, the Italian Fascists, even if they have similarities with Socialism, they descend into xenophobic hatred that demonises others for who they are, not for what they choose to believe or do.
  • White Supremacists – Well, obviously. White (Black, Brown, …) Supremacy is one of the dumbest ideas still being perpetuated. It’s so stupid it’s on a par with Young Earth Creationism as an intellectually defunct idea. Those that present themselves as White Supremacists are some of the least supreme examples it.
  • White Separatists/Nationalists, Identitarians – This is the supposedly egalitarian version of White Supremacism – though it’s just as dumb. There’s no explicit claim to white supremacy, just some poor reasons for thinking the world would be better if the ‘races’ lived apart. Of course it’s based on the same nonsense as white supremacy, and it’s not clear how many in these groups are not in fact white supremacists looking for an easier ride – but we must avoid mind reading, because we can’t do it … evidence!
  • Poor beleaguered white boys – Yes, I know there’s a current taste for ‘white people’ comments, claims that all white people are racist and non-whites can’t be. This is as dumb as white supremacy and deserves the same treatment: derision, laughter, evidence to the contrary. But come on, do you really need a tiki light vigil?

Yes, alt-right, I know it’s about statues too. But, come on. I get the point. Nobody is tearing down the pyramids because they were built by slaves. But this is closer to home, and the Confederate flag is a bit of a give-away. You’re not doing it for historical reasons.

I’m not on the side of these people when it comes to supporting their ideologies. I oppose them and support criticism of them. I support counter-protests, generally (though more can be said on how to better organise and police that).

What I don’t support is the street violence, of the pre-emptive punching of ‘Nazis’. The AntiFa crowd went to Charlottesville ready for and intent on violence. They, with a little help from the Mayor, provoked the alt-right protesters into violence. Yes, factions of the alt-right came armed too – but what do you expect given AntiFa’s recent history:

Screenshot 2017-08-19 16.12.19

Remember this? At Trump’s inauguration, while other protesters were screaming and crying in over dramatic outrage, the AntiFa thugs were smashing up windows Washington’s businesses, and burning this limo. It was owned by the Nationwide Chauffered Services LLC From Alexandria, VA – run by Muslim Omar Ash. Ooops! AntiFa are racist, by the measure of what they and many others deem to be racism: when a Muslim is a victim of hate or when Islam is criticised.

If you’re still not sure about AntiFa, try this. Not surprisingly they started in Germany.

ANTIFA | Activists or thugs?

Time to Choose

  • “We must choose a side” – If the two sides on offer are in the wrong, then I choose neither of them. I will choose to criticise both.
  • “They are not equivalent – one is worse than the other.” – No, they are not. On the matter of street violence AntiFa have been consistently worse. On political ideas I’m still not in favour of either, but even less so the racist side.

By the way, have you noticed how this comparison of evils is now an OK thing to say, but not when comparing Islam and Christianity?

Watch the Adam Curtis film and consider some of the issues raised there. We may want to choose sides, and we may think we are on the right side. That doesn’t give you licence to engage in the fascistic activities you are claiming to oppose.

Free Speech

The far left don’t want to protect free speech particularly, and the far right only want it for their own purposes.

The problem with Nazi Germany wasn’t the free speech of the Nazis. It was their violent crushing of the free speech of others.

The problem with Stalinist Russia wasn’t the free speech of the Stalinists. It was their violent crushing of the free speech of others.

The ideas that these ideologies are based on are simply dumb. They are easy to challenge. That’s why they have to use violence to defend or promote them,
and attack others that oppose them.

They all employ or employed street violence BY their supporters to crush opposition. Whenever they take power they use the state machine to promote propaganda and crush dissent.

A civil society need not fear free speech, if it upholds the law against violence and terrorism that opposes free speech

 

 

Headless May, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie

I’m sure Chalrie Hebdo staff must feel that Sisyphus had it easier than this. Having to explain Charlie Hebdo, again, and again, …

I made an attempt a while ago: Amatrice Pasta, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie, when the Italian victims were on the cover but the target was Italian politics.

This time the images are of London victims fleeing ISIS, and Theresa May, head under her arm.

CH is not mocking the victims but those that contribute to the creation of victims. CH asks you to think. The image is the shock that makes you question. But if you just look at the image and jump to your own simple conclusions based on that alone, it is YOU that is failing to think.
Continue reading “Headless May, Yet Still, Je Suis Charlie”

My Problem With Islam

I have been asked by a ‘liberal’ friend, “What’s your problem with Islam?”

I now have to put ‘liberal’ in scare quotes because the word no longer means what one might expect it to mean. I consider myself to be a liberal: a secular liberal democratic atheist Humanist sums up my political persuasion.

That I have to spell this out today is pretty much entirely down to the matter of Islam.

This is about why that is.

Continue reading “My Problem With Islam”