Ahistory...Thunderfoot, Freedom of Speech and Skin in the Game

Do you really have skin in the game Thunderf00t?
I made this video to make it clear that there are Muslim people organizing, exercising their free speech - against Sharia, against terrorism, for pluralism...and to have such a blinkered mainstream media saturated view as Thunderf00t and his uncritical acolytes fail to understand or acknowledge the level of complexity of the world we live in is disturbing as hell. I have in the past been a fan but TFoot and friends have very much dropped a big part of the plot.

There are people out there risking life and limb everyday for whom "freedom from religion" "freedom of speech" "freedom of religion" are not mere concepts to be defended from the safety of a computer screen.... And now they are well and fucked because they are cut off from organizing tools they use day in and day out to do their work.

It is pure white privilege to really be so insulated from the consequences of one's imperial assertions... to remain so determinedly ignorant about what is happening on the ground in these places...

white privilege is privileged.

Want more info? Watch a few hours of Tim Wise.

Why "white privilege" - because only whites in my estimation can afford to be as loud and beligerent without consequence. But that's my take.

IF you don't understand what white privilege means - or you don't think it's relevant to the topic - then please - google that shit.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Muslims for pluralism
• Muslims against Sharia
• freedom of speech
• Pakistan blocks
• White privilege
• Draw Mohammed Day
• Muslims against terrorism

[Anekantavad]

This is the true insanity of the Pat Condell/Thunderf00t set. The real victims in all this are the Muslims ceaselessly working to head off a "Clash of Civilizations" and maintain peace between the two. By vilifying Islam per se, these people are left out on a clothesline when they try to tell their own people that the west really isn't so bad.

[CityzenJane]

@Anekantavad Thanks for the great comments...and yes that's very much what I was trying to get at...those people on the front lines...those with skin in the game...and yes some of them are "white."

I agree it's stretch - but this whole thing reminded me so much of the insistence some white folks have on their right to use the N word...certainly abstractly that right does exist...excercise it if your aim is to poison the space between as much as fucking possible.

[CityzenJane]

It also makes me ill that so many grown ass men are making such a poor show of behaving as if they actually care about anything but the Ka'ching from views and the stroking of their egos by fawning fellating fan boys.

Completely unimpressed.

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad That's a really weak argument coming from the guy defending a sociological concept based on arbitrary, externally assigned group identification. Each number in the Cantor Set conceivably belongs to an infinite number of other sets, does that make the Cantor Set meaningless? Grouping is an organizational tool, and very often the criteria used to define a group implies membership of some other groups and exclusion to yet others. Rocket science this ain't.

[Anekantavad]

@AutodidacticPhd This is precisely why I say that trying to nail down someone`s position is almost guaranteed to cause conflict, or at least misunderstanding. I think it is a bit lunatic to arbitrarily ascribe someone to a group composed of people s/he has never met. What other "groups" do I belong to? Implicit in your argument is the possibility that I belong to as many groups as there are people. If I belong to 7bil groups, and so does everyone else, "groups" are meaningless, no?

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad Of course you belong to a group, you belong to several groups whether you feel like it or not. The set of all humans, for example. You are defending a controversial idea quite ardently, so you belong to the set of all people who do so. Yeah, I'm sure it's "nuanced" Mr Nofixedposition, but at the end of the day, we aren't talking about how colourless ideas sleep... topics in race relations are descriptive, and their meanings have only a little true wiggle room.

[Anekantavad]

@AutodidacticPhd I belong to a group? Nobody asked me if I wanted to join, and any "group" that exists is IMO only in your head. Not only that, but something as nuanced as "white guilt" is not really something one can generalize about. It means different things to different people, and I rather suspect that you and I would discover that we are probably not talking about the same thing.

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad First off, the "you" in that description is intended to operate at the group level... a group to which you belong as it is basically the set of all people who embrace that rather obnoxious idea. My judgment is reserved for an idea... and by taking that judgment upon yourself so readily, you only serve to demonstrate exactly the egocentric quality I was originally just assigning to the school of thought. The sources of conflict are an entirely different ball of wax.

[Anekantavad]

@AutodidacticPhd That is a very strange thing to say, since you know nothing about me, apart from a few posts on Youtube. I wonder why people seem so quick to judge people they don't even know. In a way, I think that this tendency is ultimately responsible for every conflict there has ever been.

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad Maybe this will clear things up. The idea of white privilege is the modern equivalent of the tragic hero of ancient Greek epics. So completely self obsessed that everything, even their apologies have to be about them. You are so sure that being white is the only way to effect the world that even when you pretend to overcome racism it's still all about you. Truly pathetic.

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad And I'm saying that is racist and the reverse of the actual situation. The leg up is an historic artifact, and the longer people try to pretend there is more to it than that, the longer the problem is going to persist... yes, I'm saying YOU are just as responsible for perpetuating the situation as any more conventional racist. And I have plenty of friends of all shades that would be happy to tell you that to your face... just like they told me.

[Anekantavad]

@AutodidacticPhd I am saying that race automatically informs income level, since white people (generally) already start with a leg up. People are not born equal, and that IMO is the Achilles' Heel of libertarianism. Leveling the playing field is likely to be as successful as any other attempt at social engineering.

Finally, I don't believe that race and creed are really the same. But racism and bigotry have precious little to do with science or fact.

[AutodidacticPhd]

@Anekantavad Then you already have a problem. If you divide actual population data by income level, the distinctions among race within each new subdivision shrink. ie, the racial distribution of people who move to a different income level from their parents match the overall racial distribution within that subcategory.

As for race and creed being the same animal... I don't buy that either. Beliefs and phenotypes are two completely different subjects.