I found this column in the Washington Post by David Ignatius interesting and dismaying:
Violent white-supremacist groups have formed a connected global movement that rose before Donald Trump’s presidency and threatens to continue long after he leaves office.
These white-supremacist groups have used the Internet to recruit and train followers, much as Islamist extremists did a decade ago, argues a major new study by Jigsaw, a research arm of Google. The study, described here for the first time, is being published Tuesday by Jigsaw’s digital journal, the Current.
The study shatters the image that many analysts have of white supremacist attackers as “lone wolf†extremists. Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Jigsaw, argues that “this myth obscures the vast underlying infrastructure of white supremacist online communities around the world.â€
These groups “move fluidly between mainstream and fringe platforms,†Cohen warns. They recruit followers on Facebook or YouTube, among other venues, and then direct them to protected “alt-tech†sites where they can privately share propaganda and boast about operations.
I oppose both neo-Naziism and white supremacy unequivocally. I’m also not post-modern and I believe that words actually have meanings. I wish that Mr. Ignatius and The Current were a little more forthcoming about their definitions. Keep in mind that if you define something broadly enough and contrast it with an extremely narrow definition of something else you can prove practically anything. Just as an example, I don’t think that believing that nations have a right to defend their borders and limit entry is “anti-migrant” but I can see how some would think that. I also don’t think that reason, moderation, and non-violence are white supremacy but there are some who think so. I also don’t think that it’s anti-Muslim to point out that radical Islamist violence is a graver problem than violent white supremacists, as the Current piece documents (and you’d never know from Mr. Ignatius’s piece).
Here’s his peroration:
The Jigsaw study reminds us that the Internet is a rage accelerator. Good leaders can discourage extremism rather than feed it; they can encourage norms of good behavior. But tolerance needs to become a mass movement, more powerful than hatred.
Let’s no mince words. The underlying problems are Facebook and Twitter. I do not believe they should or can be regulated. I think their business model should be rendered unworkable.
“The study shatters the image that many analysts have of white supremacist attackers as “lone wolf†extremists.”
Of course, these “analysts” remain unnamed. The fact that radicalization and social support networks for extremists both occur online is hardly new.
To add to your examples of abuse of the English language is how “lone wolf” is defined.
If only it were just a matter of abusing the language! Post-modernists don’t believe in language as a medium of communication but as a tool for wielding power. Words are redefined at will to that end.
“I also don’t think that it’s anti-Muslim to point out that radical Islamist violence is a graver problem than violent white supremacists, as the Current piece documents (and you’d never know from Mr. Ignatius’s piece)”
The document many more incidents of white violence than Muslim violence. There are more deaths attributed to Muslims. So you are joining the group that thinks only deaths matter?
Steve
I guess if your living depends upon selling stale opinion columns you have to spice them up. He stopped short of calling for a federal task force to root out white ethnic groups although that would I’m sure be popular with the Washington party circuits.
He’s an ass, pretending to support racial harmony while himself driving in the wedge.
Evangelical Christians are now white supremacists?
No, but since the time of Hammurabi reasonable people have recognized a difference in kind between homicide and other forms of violence. For one thing homicide is well-defined. You can’t say that about violence, particularly in a time when people are declaiming that silence is violence.
Without all of the people having been killed in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9/11, don’t you think they might have been shrugged off? The only war I can think of off hand that didn’t start with death is the War of Jenkins Ear.
I think that racism in all forms is wrong. There is no benign neo-Naziism. That suggests clear strategies for addressing the problem. I’m not as prepared to say that there is no benign form of Islam. I’m also not prepared (as Grey points out above) to say that racism and violence are inherent in being white.
Simply treat the internet media as telephone companies. Specifically, they must accept any customer willing to pay their regulated fees, and they cannot censure any communications.
The way to kill their business model is to prohibit them from collecting and sharing or selling any customer information, including names, addresses, email accounts, internet usage… any of it.
Exactly.
I think it’s just way off base to compare white supremist groups in the US today with Nazis.
Compared to the organizational skills and breathtaking, (literally) ruthlessness of the German Nazis these groups are all talk.
Now I’m aware that it only takes one Timothy McVeigh and these groups therefore bear watching you’ll gain no comity by singling them out, doxing them, calling them Nazis, even though some of them call themselves Nazis they fall far, far short of that.
Online groups like these have been around since the internet’s inception,
and if you call for their censorship you’d better censor the Reverend Jeremiah Wright as well, he’s no different, a fountain spewing hate, collecting money, poisoning minds.
“No, but since the time of Hammurabi reasonable people have recognized a difference in kind between homicide and other forms of violence. ”
Sure, but in this case the number of deaths isn’t that far apart and there were many more violent incidents by the suprmacist groups. Also since Hammurabi people have recognized that if you get both of your legs broken or your head busted so you can work that is also pretty bad. Also, you were going on about the riots this summer when few people were actually killed. By your own standards then those riots would not be that big of a deal.
Steve
The reason I focused on deaths is two-fold:
1. They are different in kind from “acts of violence” but easy to compare empirically.
2. You can’t make an empirical evaluation from numbers of “acts of violence” . Throwing a rock through a window is an “act of violence” but so is fracturing somebody’s skull. Even “acts of violence” against persons cannot be compared empirically unless you’re willing to place a valuation on each type of act, say, a punch in the nose counts as X while breaking somebody’s leg counts as 2X while blowing off somebody’s leg with an IED counts as 3X. I demur from making such comparisons.
I oppose acts of violence other than in self-defense narrowly construed. By “narrowly construed” I mean if someone physically attacks you rather than if someone says something nasty about you, your loved ones, etc. or the like. Silence is not violence. Violence is violence.