ISIS Atrocity Tipping Point

[tar]

String Junky,

 

I was looking for the title of the film I was thinking about and I came across "Birth of a Nation" as well, but I don't think that is the one I saw. The story line did not seem right.

 

The one I was thinking about involved KKK type morality police, but centered around a guy that hired a live in housekeeper...I don't recall the details well enough to mention them because I might be remembering peices from several movies, but I will continue to look.

 

Regards, TAR

[overtone]

The KKK has been mostly abandoned in the U.S.

The political faction is still significant - just changed the name. And quit burning people alive, planting bombs in their churches, etc. ISIS won't be terrorizing people like that forever either.

 

 

 

 

Comparing ISIS to KKK is off IMHO. All of these hate groups in USA are either nationalist, racist or some mix of both. Religion plays a secondary or even tertiary role in their ideologies (and they don't claim otherwise)

In their heyday, not that long ago (easily within living memory of the middle aged) the KKK was organized around fundamentalist Protestant Christianity as the justification of its terrorism, and persecuted Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks. They didn't pick a burning Cross as their symbol on a whim.

 

Meanwhile, the nationalism of ISIS tends to be underestimated - as with the roots of the KKK, they want to secede and form their own, likeminded nation, is all.

 

The parallels - in ideology (patriarchal family values, purity of women, fundamentalist Abrahamic religion, the struggle against evil as represented by secular humanism et al) and tactics (lynching, flamboyant torture in front of an approving audience, bombings and terroristic threats), and community roots (despised and feared but somehow thought of as necessary, protected against outsiders) - are very close.

Edited February 10, 2015 by overtone

[swansont]

And quit burning people alive, planting bombs in their churches, etc.

 

Um, not so much.

 

National Church Arson Task Force report, from the Clinton presidency

http://www.justice.gov/crt/church_arson/arson98.php

"The NCATF has opened investigations into 670 arsons, bombings or attempted bombings that have occurred at houses of worship between January 1, 1995 and September 8, 1998"

 

240 cases in 2002

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Arson

 

A large reduction from a few decades earlier, but "quit" overstates the situation.

[Hans de Vries]

ISIS is not a nationalist organization. They are supremacists but their ideology is not based on perceived superiority of some race or ethnicity but on supremacy of religion - or, as they say, Allah's right to govern the world with Sharia law. They take pride in how multiethnic they are - in their ranks there are fighters from all Arab countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, various European countries, Africa etc. Even a few Uyghurs from China. The supreme commander of their military is a Chechen from Georgia. If they were just typical Arab nationalists, would thousands of young men from places as removed as France and China answer their call to arms? Would so many people migrate to their land with whole families, as they do now?

[CharonY]

ISIS is not a nationalist organization. They are supremacists but their ideology is not based on perceived superiority of some race or ethnicity

 

This is a very European perspective. In Europe, nationality is deeply tied with ethnicity (which, incidentally, makes it for immigrants much harder to integrate into society). However, in other areas, including Americas and the Middle East it is not the case. In the Americas because the nations there are formed by immigrants, in the Middle East because the area has a range of native ethnic groups. Empires and later on countries were not formed among ethnic lines and legitimization was often be drawn from religion or certain alliances (the latter being also the case in European monarchies). Incidentally, the failure to understand societal and historic differences by colonial powers have led to or exacerbated conflicts in a number of areas.

 

Swansont point still stands, there are similarities with both groups being ideology driven (religious vs racial purity, for example).

Edited February 10, 2015 by CharonY

[overtone]

 

 

ISIS is not a nationalist organization.

The point was that they are very similar, in their nationalism however you want to describe it as well as their tactics, justifications, etc, to the KKK in the US.

 

Americans have a way to understand ISIS, and approach dealing with them. They are not Martians. We have our own Taliban, our own Saudi princelings, our own Revolutionary Guard wannabes, and our own Daesh.

[Hans de Vries]

What do you think of US strategy in the Middle East in general? Good? Bad? And what is it alla bout? TO me it seems to be based on creating "controlled wars" coupled with creatung maximum number of divisions.

[Bill Angel]

It's also being argued that Mexican drug cartels rank as organizations equal in barbarity to ISIL(ISIS), and the focus on ISIS is the result of Islamophobia. But I haven't seen any fact checking either supporting or refuting this analyst's assertions.

See http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/isil-vs-mexican-drugcartelsunitedstatesislamophobia.html

[tar]

Overtone, and Bill Angel,

 

There would be, I think a concensus amoung people that freedom and food are better than oppression and starvation. But bigotry is not such an agreeable subject. In this discussion, I wish I could recall, or find the title of the silent film that was made in the same time as "Birth of a Nation", and had hooded morality police in it, but their targets were not blackmen, but out of wedlock and nationality love affairs, infidelity, murder, corruption, lying and stealings and other transgressions against the morays of society. They punished transgressors, and in the case of the movie sometimes got the wrong guy, and had a certain bigotish streak, which was certainly oppressive and terrible to have hooded men enter your home to punish you when you did not deserve punishment, but they also punished the ones who did deserve it.

 

In our discussion here, the question is whether or not Daesh has crossed the line, and deserves punishment, and defeat, at the hands of the world. The morality that we have cobbled together in the United Nations and World Court has a European flavor. A bigotry of its own that suggests that what France thinks is right, is right, and anybody that thinks otherwise needs to be straightened out.

 

Sure we have vestiges of the British Empire and the Crusaders, and the Ottomans fighting it out in the Middle East, but I do not think your tact, Overtone, is unbigoted. You have suggested we can understand how to fight Daesh better, by recognizing its parellels in our own country. I would like to take it one step further and ask that we recognize Daesh in our own hearts as well, because we each have divided the world into those with our morays and those without them, and we each wish to have our way of life be victorious over the way all those other "bad" ignorant, crazy folk do it.

 

The bottom line, and the way forward, is not to disavow your own morals, but to back the folks who hold the same, and fight the ones who would submit upon you morals that you do not desire to go by. But you have impuned half the population of the U.S. and by suggesting, if you were suggesting it, that the "Moral Majority" of the U.S. is in parallel with Daesh in their bigotry, you show me, that you do not "get" what it is that Daesh is doing, that is the evil part, that needs to be defeated.

 

Regards, TAR

[tar]

In this country, the U.S. I am free to want to turn over the magazine with Bruce Jenner's picture on it, without fear that the morality police will come and give me 20 lashes for the transgression.

That does not put me in league with Daesh however, even if Daesh would also wish to turn over the magazine. I am Daesh's enemy and have no desire what-so-ever to live under Sharia law. I will be dead, long before that ever comes to pass in the U.S.

[overtone]

I would like to take it one step further and ask that we recognize Daesh in our own hearts as well, because we each have divided the world into those with our morays and those without them, and we each wish to have our way of life be victorious over the way all those other "bad" ignorant, crazy folk do it.

The bottom line, and the way forward, is not to disavow your own morals, but to back the folks who hold the same, and fight the ones who would submit upon you morals that you do not desire to go by. But you have impuned half the population of the U.S. and by suggesting, if you were suggesting it, that the "Moral Majority" of the U.S. is in parallel with Daesh in their bigotry, you show me, that you do not "get" what it is that Daesh is doing, that is the evil part, that needs to be defeated.

You have confused yourself, switching between the mores of the heart and the actions of the hand.

In this thread I am referring to the actions of the hand and their public justifications - my parallel drawn between the KKK and Daesh are of overt behaviors and public justifications. I am specifically talking about what Daesh is doing, and how they are themselves justifying it in public.

My observation is that Daesh's actions are often presented to Americans as if alien and incomprehensible barbarities we cannot deal with in any normal or political way, that we cannot understand except as reversions to pre-civillized barbarity. In fact we have had our own such movements, right here in America within our current civilization, recently, and so have the cultures of every Western region. The KKK committed atrocities every bit as horrible as those of Daesh, within the living memories of middle aged people. We live among fellow Americans who not that long ago gathered into mobs and burned people alive for violations of their morality, for example.

And that is relevant information, for the enemies of Daesh such as you present yourself to be. How did you come to find yourself in a country in which you are free to take a magazine with Bruce Jenner's picture in it and decide for yourself whether to turn it over or not, when less than a generation ago in that same country in the wrong part of some States having that magazine in your hand would have got you arrested, beaten, and jailed with rapists encouraged to abuse you at will - if not outright killed by some mob acting with impunity?

And when considering that question, consider this:

 

They punished transgressors, and in the case of the movie sometimes got the wrong guy, and had a certain bigotish streak, which was certainly oppressive and terrible to have hooded men enter your home to punish you when you did not deserve punishment, but they also punished the ones who did deserve it.

Who, in your view, "deserved" to have hooded men entering their home and "punishing" them - without trial, without recourse?

And do you approve of the fact that such "deserved" punishment is increasingly considered abhorrent and terroristic by normal American society, and is increasingly rare in the the US, and is itself punished under the law?

Edited February 11, 2015 by overtone

[tar]

Overtone,

 

So do you figure my society is tolerant and unbigoted, or do you figure it is intolerant and bigoted?

 

 

My example of film made 100 years ago, 5 generations ago was to point out that the morality police upheld rules and morays that we still believe are good rules and morays to uphold, and that in addition they upheld rules and morays that we now find should not be upheld.

 

I certainly remember the back of the bus days myself. I was always brought up to not be predudice and to protect the rights of everybody. I had several lessons on women's rights from my Aunt, a very intelligent woman who assisted with women's rights movements in the 60s and I remember not understanding what the big deal was that he was used as a pronoun that could cover a man and a woman. I was around when Ms. began to be used instead of Miss and Mrs.

 

But my point was that morality is choosen by the people that consider themselves moral, and a society announces it morals by making laws that everyone should live by. You and I have locked horns before, you taking a liberal set of values and me taking a more conservative set to the party. That does not make either of us the morality police. And it does not make me guilty of beating up gays, or dragging blackmen behind a pickup truck, or make me incapable of finding those acts as abhorent as you find them.

 

The question on the table is do we have enough folk on the planet that think Daesh deserves to be defeated to make quick work of it? Has Daesh's burning of the Jordanian Pilot a month before attempting to trade him for a would be murderer, tipped the scales?

 

If you wish to impune Republicans as immoral, ignorant, bigots that is a different subject, and does not carry sufficient parallel examples in current U.S. society to align Republicans with Daesh.

 

Regards, TAR

And Puritans burned witches. We stopped doing that.

[Ten oz]

So do you figure my society is tolerant and unbigoted, or do you figure it is intolerant and bigoted?

This is entirely a matter of perspective and history will ultimately judge us differently than we judge ourselves. The same people who advocated "all men are created equal" owned slaves yet considered themselves more tolerant than the monarchy they sought to replace.

 

My example of film made 100 years ago, 5 generations ago was to point out that the morality police upheld rules and morays that we still believe are good rules and morays to uphold, and that in addition they upheld rules and morays that we now find should not be upheld.I certainly remember the back of the bus days myself. I was always brought up to not be predudice and to protect the rights of everybody. I had several lessons on women's rights from my Aunt, a very intelligent woman who assisted with women's rights movements in the 60s and I remember not understanding what the big deal was that he was used as a pronoun that could cover a man and a woman. I was around when Ms. began to be used instead of Miss and Mrs.

We have experienced progress or at least effort by many towards progess. However can you imagine anyone needing "lessons" that males, specifically white males, deserve equal treatment? The very fact that many still must teach respect for women and minorities speaks volumes about where we still are at in society.

 

Has Daesh's burning of the Jordanian Pilot a month before attempting to trade him for a would be murderer, tipped the scales?If you wish to impune Republicans as immoral, ignorant, bigots that is a different subject, and does not carry sufficient parallel examples in current U.S. society to align Republicans with Daesh.

There is no question that burning anyone alive is outrageous. Any society that identifies as moral must be repulsed by such offenses behavior. Unfortunately the same could be said for narco terrorist beheading people and filling mass graves, African warlords kidnapping/rapping villages of girls, and any number of extreme human atrocities that happen globally. Why must Islamic radicals get so much attention? They have not killed more people. Viewing this entirely sober and with all human life mattering equally in mind why is Islamic terror at the top of the global consciousnesses must act on list?

[overtone]

The question on the table is do we have enough folk on the planet that think Daesh deserves to be defeated to make quick work of it?

Substitute the KKK for Daesh, and consider the implications of making "quick work" of it in US society.

 

If the Federal government of the US had decided to make "quick work" of the KKK and its supporters in, say, 1961, in Anniston, Alabama, when they attempted to burn alive a busload of people, would you have regarded that as reasonable employment of Federal power?

 

Has Daesh's burning of the Jordanian Pilot a month before attempting to trade him for a would be murderer, tipped the scales?

What were they before they were "tipped", and what do think they could "tip" to?

 

 

 

 

If you wish to impune Republicans as immoral, ignorant, bigots that is a different subject, and does not carry sufficient parallel examples in current U.S. society to align Republicans with Daesh.

I "aligned" the KKK with Daesh. Why are you talking about Republicans?

 

 

 

 

And Puritans burned witches.- -

They didn't, if it matters. They hanged witches, and waterboarded them, and iirc pressed a couple, but the burning alive stuff came along later among a different batch of Christian fundamentalists - it was kind of a KKK specialty in the US, and it wasn't for witches.

 

I'm beginning to think this KKK comparison has legs.

Edited February 12, 2015 by overtone

[Hans de Vries]

For heaven''s sake, stop comparing ISIS to KKK. They are two totally different organizations, they arose in different cultural areas and they have nothing in common except that they are both considered extremist. KKK is a white supremacist and nationalist organization, with religion fulfilling a tertiary role. Additionally, their goal is very narrowly defined - creating a "pure", "white" society within the borders of the United States of America. They don't want to kill all blacks, conquer the entire world or even take over the US government if such a takeover is not needed for the creation of their "pure" society. ISIS differs from KKK heavily in that matter. It's sole purpose of existence is conquest - perpetual and unending. They literally want to take over the world.

 

The nature of their relationship with religion is also different. The kind of religion practiced by KKK is so fringe and so insane that it is not even considered a form of Christianity. ISIS has very strong theological support - all their declarations are full of quotations from the Quran, hadiths and works about sharia law. The greatest Islamic theologians in history all adhered to an interpretation of Islam that is very close to that of ISIS, if not exactly the same.

[tar]

Overtone,

 

 

 

" I "aligned" the KKK with Daesh. Why are you talking about Republicans? "

 

Because you are clumping KKK with Protestants and when you said the KKK was still a viable faction, they had just changed their name, I thought you were impuning the Tea Party.

 

I happen to be an atheist, and a registered Republican, but I was raised Presbyterian and campainged for McGovern in New Hampshire. I have the Protestant work ethic and have the Pingry honor code deep routed in my character.

 

New Hampshire has a state motto...or at least used to "live free or die".

 

You are liking the parallel between Protestans and the KKK and KKK and Daesh.

 

I say you are full of huey. You are not looking at it meaningfully you are experiencing some confirmation bias. The things Daesh is doing are things long outlawed in this country. Outlawed by legislators that initially were WASPS and male WASPS at that. If the moral majority of the country is to be impuned because they have contructed the glass ceiling for women, and disenfranchised blacks and latinos, and all are morally bankrupt and misguided religious zealots that are just like Daesh, then its a wonder that the same exact folk have founded a country where a person's god is his/her own to worship, and folk live under each other's protection to seek happiness.

 

If Moslems from Kosovo are murdered in a U.S. city, the power structure in America, as WASPy as it is, or as dominated by male Irish Catholic policeman, will protect them, because that is the code we go by.

 

You can not impune bankers as interest charging money grubbing Jews, at the same time you apply for a student loan, or a mortgage.

 

Sure you characterize someone who hits a squirrel with a shovel until its dead as an abuser of animals.

Or you can characterize the same guy as a heroic protector of his two and five year old daughters, against a manegy and possibly rabid aggressive rodent.

 

I am saying that Daesh is a manegy possibly rabid threat to humanity, and America's desire to defeat Daesh is not out of bigotry.

 

Ten Oz,

 

You might have a point, why Daesh and not the other hate groups around. But I think its because such a large percentage of the oil in the world comes from the ME, it is important that it be controlled by somebody on the same side as the world. And the other groups are more easily put down by local authorities. Like I might add, Waco Texas.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 12, 2015 by tar

[overtone]

For heaven''s sake, stop comparing ISIS to KKK. They are two totally different organizations, they arose in different cultural areas and they have nothing in common except that they are both considered extremist.

I think they are very closely similar in almost every significant respect.

 

I'm a bit curious where you are getting your notion of the KKK from. You seem unfamiliar with an important aspect of American life. Are you by any chance a very recent immigrant to the US, or living on some other continent? I assure you that their version of Christianity was full of Biblical quotes and injunctions and not at all fringe in its community then or now, nor were the borders of the United States unduly respected by their Confederate worldview (that flag they wave is not the US flag), nor were their goals narrowly confined to removing black people - Jews and Catholics were also on the ban list, and "family values" including female chastity and purity ranked high on their list of obsessions.

 

But above all this, we have the OP - in which a religiously justified and organized morality supremicist terror organization is hypothesized to have reached a "tipping point" by burning someone alive, and citizens of the US are considering setting aside politics and restraint and unleashing military violence wholesale for such heinousness,

 

on the grounds that no other response is adequate, that such incomprehensible barbarity cannot be handled politically. I'm just wondering whether the US handling of the KKK makes a better model.

 

 

 

 

You are liking the parallel between Protestans and the KKK and KKK and Daesh.

The KKK was Protestant. Rabidly so. It was often organized around a local church. Its heirs - which includes many in the Teaparty faction, of course - remain Protestant. This is just historical fact - it was a deeply Protestant Christian organization, symbolized by its burning Cross. That's not a parallel, it's an identity.

 

The similarities to Daesh in its tactics and justifications and moral basis are of course immediate and obvious.

 

 

 

 

The things Daesh is doing are things long outlawed in this country. Outlawed by legislators that initially were WASPS and male WASPS at that.

They were outlawed when the KKK was doing them, in the 1960s and later, also. They are outlawed in the countries Daesh is doing them in. So?

 

I'm just wondering whether the manner in which the US handled the KKK might provide insight, for US citizens, into how Daesh might best be handled - the parallels and similarities in the organizations being so obvious, although their surrounding circumstances are significantly different.

Edited February 12, 2015 by overtone

[Hans de Vries]

I am Dutch living in the Netherlands. I am not in contact with US Christianity.

 

I forgot about casualties. Since last year ISIS has been responsible for more than 1000 civilian deaths - including stonings, beheadings and bombings of civilians. IF we also count the period between 2003 and 2014, this figure easily grows to 20-25,000.

 

For Ku Klux Klan, the figures are as follows

1st Clan (1865-1867) - 1500 killed

2nd Clan (1915-1944) - 416 killed

3rd clan (1954-1958) - 15 killed

4th clan (1979-1981) - 5 killed

5th clan (1981-present) - 1 killed

 

The disparity is easily seen. Over the last year ISIS killed at least 2x more people than KKK has over the last 100 years.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Hans de Vries

[tar]

I heard that Kayla Jean Mueller was forced to marry a Daesh leader before she was killed by Jordanian bombs. This is not behavior acceptable to anyone. It is rape.

Overtone,

 

I used to work in the copier industry and overtoned meant there was too much toner on the page, and it was likely scattered and smudged, making a bad copy.

 

An overtone can also be characterized as a beautiful harmonic.

 

When morality police are at work, or racial purity KKK members are lashing uppity blacks, or Nazis are gassing Jews, I am on your side, and know what the right way to be, is.

 

You can not impune Catholics, and Protestans and Jews and Arians and Muslims as immoral bigots, and at the same time, live by their combined codes of proper behavior.

 

Regards, TAR

[overtone]

The disparity is easily seen. Over the last year ISIS killed at least 2x more people than KKK has over the last 100 years.

The Klan operated within and under a government, a superior military force. That restricted their behavior.

 

Even so, if we ascribe most lynchings to the Klan in the US (which is as fair as ascribing all those stonings etc to ISIS) we get around 4500 during their good times. Even by your count the Klan matched Daesh kill for kill in their respective hot years (1865 - 1867 Klan, 2013 - 2015 Daesh).

 

And of course there are non-fatal Klan terrorisms, including setting Freedom Riders on fire a couple of times in 1961 without quite managing to kill any of them in that fashion.

 

 

 

 

I heard that Kayla Jean Mueller was forced to marry a Daesh leader before she was killed by Jordanian bombs. This is not behavior acceptable to anyone. It is rape.

There are, according to eyewitness testimony, withheld photos and sound recordings of what happened to some of the women and their children imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. The photos released, of the men being raped etc, were described as less sensational.

 

Just saying.

Edited February 12, 2015 by overtone

[Hans de Vries]

Want to throw my last word regarding America - KKK lost because by the time of it's creation United States already had an established tradition of human and civil rights, dating back to pre-revolution times (the Bill of Rights and so on). KKK's cause wasn't helped either by their relatively closed nature. The recruiting pool of KKK consistent entirely of one strictly defined group of people - white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Combine these two factors and you'll see that KKK was destined to fail.

 

The Middle East has almost no tradition of human rights protection. In all ME countries secularization was forced from above, either by colonial governments, or through military coups (markets in Mecca were still trading slaves in early 1960s). Most people there would at least tolerate Daesh - they have their own social services, they pretty much leave people alone as long as they adhere to prescribed rules of behavior and don't criticize Daesh.

[overtone]

KKK's cause wasn't helped either by their relatively closed nature. The recruiting pool of KKK consistent entirely of one strictly defined group of people - white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Combine these two factors and you'll see that KKK was destined to fail.

They were a major political force in the US until the 1970s - more than one hundred years of significant political influence, including various times of local dominance in regions throughout the old Confederacy.

 

Should Daesh be allowed to fade like that, incorporate itself into the incoming political structures?

 

 

 

 

(markets in Mecca were still trading slaves in early 1960s).

There was commercial slavery, forced labor of black men and women captured by the local police and rented to local mines and plantations (the overseers carried whips, the labor was often chained, the dead were buried in unmarked graves), until the mid 1960s in the US. Edited February 12, 2015 by overtone

[Hans de Vries]

Aren't you mixing apples with oranges? Daesh is not some group of disillusioned people that will dissolve once their grievances are addressed. Daesh are ideologists and ideologists of a particularily pesky type - religious warriors. They view themselves as the only true representatives of Allah on Earth, and therefore, the only legitimate political power in the world belongs to them. The rest are just usurpers.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Hans de Vries

[swansont]

Want to throw my last word regarding America - KKK lost because by the time of it's creation United States already had an established tradition of human and civil rights, dating back to pre-revolution times (the Bill of Rights and so on). KKK's cause wasn't helped either by their relatively closed nature. The recruiting pool of KKK consistent entirely of one strictly defined group of people - white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Combine these two factors and you'll see that KKK was destined to fail.

 

Um, what? The "established tradition" of human and civil right the US had at its inception included slavery and excluded suffrage for women, among other things. These changed because people fought hard for the changes, often at risk of life and limb, not because the result was inevitable.

[Hans de Vries]

Tradition did matter a lot. That's why some Arab countries did not abolish slavery until 1950s-60s and they only did that because of western pressure.

 

The belief that individual human being - not God, king, state or society - is the most important entity and the ultimate creator and bearer of rights is typically western invention. Nowhere in human history were human rights as important as in post-Enlightenment Western World.

 

At first this ideology was immature but it's seeds did germinate fully.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Hans de Vries