And when you wrap all three of those into one violent ideology, you get a pretty lethal combo.
All you have to do to see why this is so is watch Bill OâReilly. He makes the logical fallacy of No True Scotsman every time someone points this out.
Unfortunately all US news services are required to make money to stay afloat and the outcry if they started badmouthing Christianity would sink any company that made the mistake of trying it. I donât want my news funded by taxes either because that breeds a whole new set of problems.
Google News is probably the best thing thatâs happened to the news in a century, because it makes getting a wide array of interpretations easy.
Google News is probably the best thing thatâs happened to the news in a century, because it makes getting a wide array of interpretations easy.
We play both kinds of music here â country and western!
Check Right Wing Watch to see the intensity of the violent rhetoric from the right. Although their absolute numbers are not huge, they have their fingers in law enforcement and all branches of government and media (The âSeven Mountainsâ strategy of Christian infiltration and conquest).
Now we are entering the era of what will probably be the War Lord Presidency, where billionaires like the Kochs buy elections directly on a national scale. Daddy Koch and other old school Birchers believed in an apocalyptic race war. The Fascist rants about the existential threat of trade unions and school lunches were repacked by Austrian-working-in-the-UK FA Hayek even before Hitler was dead. Genocide is very very much on the minds of the biggest GOP donors, and the base is convinced they need to âdo it to them before they do it to us.â
Some of my nice suburban neighbors seem to buy into the religious paranoia lifestyle. One of them decided he âreally neededâ a Bushmaster a couple years ago. Who does he think heâs going to kill? Me?
There is a real danger of these paranoid religious groups providing the justification for right wing death squads. Who doesnât think some of Americas ultra-violent Barney Fifes wouldnât be up for some actual death squad action? We could easily staff several for every medium sized town in America. Lease them office space somewhere in an industrial park or operate out of church basementâŚ
Condemning terrorism isnât badmouthing Christianity, any more than itâs badmouthing Islam. There is no religion on Earth that condones terrorism, unless you want to count tiny sects like Branch of David or Aum Shinrikyo.
But then again, with google news you still get the bubble that online filter bubble. I dontâ think we can assume that google is a neutral arbiter of information.
Silly Cory. You misunderstand! âIslamâ is code for âForeign!â Ratcheting people up about Islamic terrorism is ratcheting them up politically to oppose things like ânot going to warâ and âhaving a sensible immigration policy.â
I mean, weâve gotta have the people afraid of something.
Christian Jihadists? Christian Crusaders?
There should always be a route into the meme for even the most closed mind.
I guarantee a large swathe of christian terrorists would love to call themselves âcrusadersâ.
Of course, in the sense that the word âterroristâ is applied to muslims, it should also be applied to other humans.
As an atheist, Iâd like to see more recognition of Christian terrorism (abortion clinic bombings are generally considered ordinary criminal acts even if conducted by Christian groups, for example), but there is a very good reason why the âPhineas Priesthoodâ isnât classified as a terrorist group â it doesnât exist. The only evidence for its existence is apparently Hoskinsâ book which purports to give a secret history of the group, just as earlier books did for the Illuminati, etc. And like the Illuminati, anybody can claim they are a member.
Good point, if you are speaking to reasonable people, but the people likely to be inflamed by comments about christian extremism DO mean to badmouth Islam when they talk about terrorists, or at least make the assumption that peaceful muslims are merely âsleeper cells.â The conflict for them isnât between fundamentalism/violence and others, itâs between good fundamentalism and bad.
Well said!
My humble corollary:
Fanatics of opposing religions are psychologically more alike than either fanatic is to moderates of his own stripe.
Just out of curiosity, where was the link in the lead paragraph of Coryâs write-up supposed to go?
Barely related, but it was simultaneously funny, sad, and predictable, years ago, when sentiment on No-Fly lists soured when Chicagoans started ending up on the lists, for giving money to Irish âcharitiesâ.
When Breivik did his deed we got this:
They started to dance in FinlandâŚ
âFreedom of speech must be limitedâ
âFinns party members are naziesâ
âMore controlâ
âChristians are murdersâ
âNew gun lawâ
tomb stone: Norwegian Tragedy
Denial of christian terrorism and down playing nationalism are everywhere in Europe not just the UK.
BTW Uusi Suomi is online magazine with about 300 000 readers (there are 5.4 million Finns)
If we get them in one spot, makes it easier to take them out.
But this is in the name of Jesus so itâs okay. Not like that other terrorism that is in the name of Allah, thatâs bad. /s
Terrorism is terrorism no matter the faith or color of the person doing it.
The argument I commonly hear is the âjihadâ argument, that the Qurâan requires good Muslims to kill infidels, and that no such parallel exists in Christianity. Except all of this is about interpretation-- there are several battles mentioned in the Qurâan, including against infidels, none are referred to as âjihadsâ, the word literally means âstruggleâ and a lot of theologians insist that means internal struggle and not all out war against other religions (in fact the Qurâan also dictates respect and tolerance towards âpeople of the bookâ meaning other faiths with revealed scripture, specifically Jews and Christians.)
But you can interpret scripture any way you want, and justify your actions accordingly. Groups like the Phineas Priesthood are doing just that with the Bible.
Wow. Please remind these people to read their bibles. 
