The reliably awful human being Milo Yiannopoulos — Breitbart “journalist,” GamerGate panderer — has responded to the massacre in Orlando by demanding an end to Islam.
NO
MORE
ISLAM— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 12, 2016
This isn't terrorism. It isn't Islamism. It isn't extremism.
This is Islam.
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 12, 2016
How many more innocent people have to die before we realise the only answer is to deport them all?
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 12, 2016
Ever the opportunist, Milo used the massacre to plug the presidential candidate that he calls “daddy.”
It was Latino night at that gay club. Yet another reason Hispanics should vote Trump.
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 12, 2016
His fans responded predictably:
https://twitter.com/JakeHWalker/status/742049386121822208
islam is the biggest threat to humanity
— 🍆 🍆 🍆 (@Varalsizh) June 12, 2016
https://twitter.com/robrufus/status/742049232278949888
Time to vote for Big Daddy
— Get Out & VOTE 🇺🇸 (@HoustonWelder) June 12, 2016
https://twitter.com/Kkburton14/status/742049222275551232
https://twitter.com/thatsickfilth/status/742016177531031553
For what it’s worth, the killer’s father told NBC that the shootng was likely motivated by his son’s hatred of gays. “This had nothing to do with religion,” he told them.
I support a Milo Yiannopoulos ban.
@Paradoxical Intention – Well said. Me neither!!!
I can understand hearing something horrible and not knowing how to respond, but thinking, “Oh, yay, something horrible, an excuse for promoting my hatred of particular people” – just fuck off with that shit, Milo. It isn’t helping anything.
@Mywall, @Nassara M. – Other people have said this better on other threads, but people who are specifically against Islam (or Judaism, to use an earlier historical example) tend to be racist or xenophobic. It’s not religion they’re criticizing so much as the culture and/or “race”. That doesn’t mean that religions are immune to criticism, of course. Plus, it’s mostly the ordinary Muslims, Jews, etc., that receive the brunt of the hatred, not the religious figures or leaders. (I hope I’m saying this in a way that makes sense and not being whitesplainy – someone correct me if I am. Thanks!)
So there are 2 things that I want to bring up on the subject of Islam and homophobia.
First, in Islam, unlike Judaism and Christianity, the sacred text is absolute. There are Christians that believe that the bible is literally true and can have no error, but that is not actually scriptually supported. In Islam, the holy books not only have parts stating that the book is literally true, but that the books laws will be eternally true. This means that Islam is innately a conservative religion, including regarding LGBQ (although interestingly not trans) issues.
Second; the shooter was already an unstable and violent person before joining a pseudo-religious organization that matched his preconceived hatreds and gave him a reason and reward for turning that into action. We also need to separate ISIS from actual Islam, because they break many MANY writings in the holy books of Islam. The shooter was an ISIS member, not a Muslim.
I’m more afraid of christian fundamentalists than muslim fundamentalists. The christian ones have been far more succesful here. And they didn’t have to blow up anybody. Hey, Milo! How about a call for more secularism instead? Not that it would completely solve the problem of shootings, but it would do a lot of good in general.
man i love it when regressives try to be all enlightened and outraged that something bad happened to [minority group A] because it allows them to bash [minority group B]
hey milo anything to say about your fellow countrymen causing havoc in France right now over fucking, fucking soccer as if the French authorities hadn’t enough to worry about
half of them are racist shitpieces, you’d think they’d be on their best behaviour so the gendarmes could concentrate on eyeballing all the nasty brown people
Look, we can’t curtail guns in any way because it is enshrined in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution, its practically sacred…so instead lets persecute people based on their religion…theres nothing in the Bill of Rights about that, right? right?
That first amendment just says something about how blocking harassers on twitter and facebook is worse than evil, I think, and its the only one what would be more important than #2.
/s
@EJ, thank you. For this:
The whole “left vs right” spectrum is bullshit, and pretty much everyone has always known it. It’s not about two equally-viable-but-opposing-sides-on-a-continuum. It’s just a measure of how deeply rooted the concepts of universal compassion, kindness, and thoughtfulness have penetrated into a society or person.
Maybe that’s why I’ve been using the term “alt-right” so much more lately, and for mainstream righty ideas. The term “right-wing” has always felt unsatisfactory. I think that’s why.
#Religion;
(This was tough to write; I don’t want to come across as superior or chiding. It just really irritates me when a complex problem is dissolved down to “It’s the religion!” My apologies.)
Muslims have homophobia problems. Christians have homophobia problems. Hindus have homophobia problems. Atheists have homophobia problems.
It ain’t the religion that’s the problem; the religion is just the permission slip they got from the doctor. There are many people, of all faiths, who accept and welcome and care for LGBT people, too.
Suppress the reason that they have for hating LGBT people now, they’ll just find another one. You’ll also steamroll a whole lot of good people who love LGBT people, love peace, and hate violence of all kinds in doing so, and you’ll earn a lot of hate and polarize a lot of moderates, too. Sure, some religions are more austere, strict, or harmful than others. That doesn’t change the math.
View the conflict as a war against religion and you’ll get one.
I think its not always the religion that causes homophobia since there are athiests too who hate the lgbt community, its sometimes an excuse to defend people who have such views. And there are also people from all religions who accept people in the lgbt community.
But anyway speaking as a Christian myself, I do believe we Christians (or anything that falls under Christianity like Catholics, etc) are more terrifying since we have more power here in America. Non Christians will just ‘boo’ us but we can pretty much get away with anything. We just turn around and claim “wahh! we are being persecuted and having our rights and beliefs taken away!” if anyone calls us out and everyone else will be on our side defending us.
For those who want to say “please dont apologize for christians then as a atheist I would have to apoligize for other atheists please don’t make me do that.” Im not generalizing and I’m not ashamed or hate being Christian but it really makes my stomach churn every time I see a Christian do something bad and people will defend them. We Christians need to step up and call them out, there are so many evil hypocrites in our community, we won’t stand for this s***.
@Seshia : total and utter bullshit. Actually very few of the texts are absolute ; the christians texts are absolute in the same sense, and nothing support the idea that this difference have lead islam to be less tolerant.
So, stop rehashing the old racists arguments. It’s not the day.
epitome of incomprehensibility
Yes, the specific targeting of Islam and not any of the other homophobic religions here is why I’m not on board with Milo. Well, that and his past record.
Regarding your other point about lower status members of these organisations getting the heat from criticism: so what? They choose to believe the hateful mythology just as much as the people at the top.
As I said, the religions have been promoting hate for centuries and doing it openly. If someone chooses to be a member knowing this, I regard them as suspicious at minimum.
Did anybody wonder what the more traditional “MHRAs” have been doing today?
Well, former AVfM second banana Dean Esmay tweeted that the gays should thank Christians for starting the gay rights movement. No, really. He said that.
Paul Elam and Suz McCarley have been engaged in a battle of tweets against Dean. Men’s rights, everyone. Such activism. Much wow.
@personalpest
The majority of them probably wouldn’t piss on a gay person if they were on fire.
One other thing I haven’t seen mentioned is the unholy glee of some of them gloating over who the “libtards” are going to defend since (according to them) liberals support all homosexuals and all Muslims as protected classes who can do no wrong. You just know if the shooter were a Christianfundie they would be all, “He must have been mentally ill!” or “Not all Christians are like that!” or “It was punishment from God because gays are an abomination!”
It’s really disgusting that the people who are anti-gay themselves are using the victims as a weapon against all Muslims.
Fuck this piece of shit. God, I am so sick of his bullshit…..
“No more Islam”
“Deport them all”
It must be comforting to believe in simple solutions to complex problems. If you think there’s a probem with radicalisation now, imagine how much worse it will be after you make the country’s third largest religion illegal and deport millions of Americans. If you think America is hated around the world, imagine how much that unpopularity will deepen when the news is full of refugees fleeing America. The State Department will have its hands full: non-Muslim Americans living and working abroad will become targets, and not just at the hands of Muslim radicals. Maybe you should just bring them all home and close the borders?
And after you’ve rounded up countless families, sometimes at gunpoint, and herded them onto planes, boats and trains, what do you do with non-Muslims who convert? What would happen to a latter day Muhammad Ali or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?
There’s a Polish far-right group that already said that (complete with a Bible verse from Leviticus), until they did a 180 when they found out the shooter was a Muslim.
To be honest, Milo’s such a self-absorbed bastard, I don’t think he cares that much about gay rights on a whole. He wants rights for himself. The fact that other gays want rights, too, is collateral.
Yeah he’s like JB, she’s alright with every woman loosing her rights but she wants all the rights to herself because she wants to be top dog.
@Moggie
I’ve actually asked people this exact question before; the most intelligent response I’ve gotten is that we should give tax incentives to pig farmers and deport the converts. That’s the most intelligent response I’ve gotten from them, mind you.
This brings up another question; what do we do to Islamic religious texts, literature, art, historical texts and academic disciplines regarding Islam, the middle east, etc.? So much for these people and their precious “Freedom of Speech” which evil leftists are supposedly against.
@mywall – Thanks for responding and, yes, I can appreciate some of that. My parents are in the Presbyterian church and there’s a debate going on over whether to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages (and related stuff)… and guess what side they’re on, despite their bisexual if-not-particularly-sexual daughter? So yeah, I have a personal stake in these matters and I don’t like homophobia in religion (or in general).
But you seemed to ignore my point about racism. I don’t know if you meant to or not. Anyway, no personal dislike intended; I was just pointing out the racism usually involved in Islamophobia. If you look at the tweets quoted in David’s next post you’ll see more examples.
@fruitloopsie: you are spot on. We Christians do need to do a better job calling out our own faux-‘literalist’ brethren. A huge issue I’ve noticed with the Christian Left is that we’re so dedicated to our belief in universal acceptance that we fail to act as a true counter to the conservatives. Those conservatives, however, seem to have no trouble trumpeting their opinions and agenda. It’s a damning thing to say about human beings, but it seems that the most hateful viewpoints are also the most attractive and inspire greater fervor. I suspect it’s because smug and superior are two really great feelings to have, and the right offers those in spades. We don’t.
@Scildfreja: I’m glad that you’ve found accepting, tolerant theists. We do exist, but we tend to be quiet and not pushy about our beliefs, so we’re really easy to ignore. Most of us sincerely believe that opening ourselves to everyone and treating people with love and compassion will be enough to overcome the hate spewing from our misguided breathren. I’m starting to loose faith in that. Hate just seems to play so much stronger than love.
@Ohlmann
It’s really hard for me not to be reactive to you, considering that you opened by calling what I said bullshit. “Conservative” is going to be separate from “Violent” or “Regressive” or “Intolorant.” I am simply trying to state that whatever changes happen in regards to this would generally happen slower.
My understanding is that many Islamic countries practice what is essentially a position of “don’t ask, don’t tell” which while not good, is also much better than many christian nations have, often due to the instability of christian interpretation, and far more ease discarding inconvenient portions of their doctrine.
Lastly, is my assertion that ISIS is separate from Islam due to ignoring many MANY of the parts of not only the Hadith, but also the Quran also “Utter bullshit?” I’m so glad to see that saying that the shooter was not religiously motivated, but instead already a violent bigot is a “racists argument.” I’ll make sure to stop saying that too.
P.S. I assumed this would be the work of christian extremists when I first heard the news. When I heard that it was ISIS my first reaction was actually “Oh great, run of the mill muslims are going to be terrorized for this.”
@Seshia
You started by claiming that Islam is an inherently conservative religion because it effectively does not allow for interpretation. That is bullshit. It ignores historical precedent (there was a time when the literalist ulama effectively took over, in the 1200’s, but even after that time various Islamic states were hotbeds of tolerance compared to Christian areas), it ignores Islamic styles of jurisprudence (ijtihad, independent moral and judicial reasoning, has always been a part of the religion), it ignores Muslims (who’ve had effectively the same share of liberals and conservatives as other religions, all of whom have personally interpreted and picked-and-chosen over the centuries), and it ignores the structure of the Qur’an itself (it’s in famously flowery, poetic, and oft-difficult to interpret Arabic, of a form that’s not a common vernacular). And even setting all that aside, the fact that parts of the Qur’an both implicitly (“is polygamy okay?”) and explicitly (“alcohol and gambling are forbidden”) abrogate other parts should show that no one but a fundamentalist is foolish enough to believe it’s even possible for it to be an “absolute, literal text.”
In service of a point that at best is saying “don’t worry about the Muslims; their religion makes them kind of slow, but they’ll get it someday.” It’s kind of a problematic and not well-justified view.
@Ray of Rays
See, I can accept what you say. I’m sorry, and you are right that I was taking a condescending tone, which was wrong. By simply pointing out what I said was bullshit, I can say “Ok, that’s a harsh way to put it, but I can accept it was bullshit.”
The other person opened by calling EVERYTHING I said bullshit, unqualified, and without much explanation. Thank you for taking the time to break it down.
I am sorry for being patronizing and bigoted.
@mywall oh yeah of course, the fact that I think Jesus was probably a real preacher and that most of the teachings attributed to him were revolutionary for the time and really do form a template for a peaceful society must mean I think gayness is Evil. Naturally science could never be used to justify homophobia. Wait, it has? And racism too? Gosh, it’s almost like humans love having an authority they can appeal to when justifying their personal moral values.
See, the problem is you can’t generalize Islam any more than you can generalize Christianity/Catholocism.
So what you were talking about, Seshia, is basically the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam, i.e., the extent to which the holy texts are available to be reinterpreted. Sunnis say the text is infinite and can always be reinterpreted by any devout Muslim, whereas Shiia Islam has rejected ijtihad as an ongoing thing (some say only the true Imam can, but he’s the Hidden Imam now and a quasi-mythical figure).
In a way, it’s a lot like the split between Protestant Christianity and Catholic Christianity. As a rule, you expect Catholics to be more regressive and less open to new interpretations of the text, whereas Protestant Christian beliefs seem like they’re often more amenable to evolving.
But this analogy should tip you off, since in real life the American Protestant churches can be vastly more regressive or violent, while the American association of Catholic nuns is basically constantly pissing off the Vatican for being radical progressives, or how like 90% of American Catholics say “fuck that we’re using birth control”.
TL:dr, even though we can describe the general tone and shape of a particular branch of a religions philosophy, how that plays out in people’s actual lives often has zero relationship to them.
Personally, I always liked Karen armstrong’s interpretation of fundamentalism as being basically independent of what particular religion you bother associating with and instead just being the same sort of regressive, reactionary mentality that people who have been disenfranchised in the modern world tend to dig hard into. Because once you start studying it, you realize that even Buddhisim has these same assholes.