In the midst of a rambling blog post arguing that a large terrorist attack on American soil before November “puts Trump in the White House for certain,” former Twitter activist Andrea Hardie makes a rather startling pronouncement: She would support nuking Mecca if she thought it would be an “effective” way to strike a blow against Islam.
No, really:
I don’t think Trump will nuke Mecca or anywhere else, for the simple reason that it won’t be effective. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives and ended the war decisively, because it brought Japan to its knees. Nuking Mecca won’t bring the Islamic world to its knees – quite the opposite. Trump isn’t going to do it for that reason. If nuking Mecca stood a chance of being effective, I’d be fully in support of the measure.
Emphasis mine.
In addition to being the birthplace of Muhammad and the most sacred city for the world’s 1.57 billion Muslims, Mecca is home to roughly two million residents, and the number of people in the city “more than triple[s] every year during the hajj (“pilgrimage”) period,” as Wikipedia notes.
In other words, Ms. Hardie, better known on the Internet under her pseudonyms Janet Bloomfield and JudgyBitch, would support the murder of as many as six million people of a particular religious persuasion if she thought it would be an effective way to rid the world of that religion.
Six million, where have I heard that number before?
Despite being permabanned from Twitter, Hardie is still listed on A Voice for Men as the site’s “Director [of] Social Media,” and she was one of the speakers at last month’s International Conference on Men’s Issues in London, organized by AVFM and Mike Buchanan of the UK’s spectacularly unsuccessful Justice for Men and Boys party.
I’m not quite sure how murdering three million Muslim men and boys — in addition to another three million women and girls — would enhance the rights of men, or boys, or anyone.
@ Nick G
“There is no real possibility that the invasion of Japan (“Operation Downfall”) would have been necessary.”
I think this is an overstatement that does not account for countervailing evidence. The fact that you recommend Alperovitz suggests that you do understand that the historiography on this subject is quite complex. Therefore I would in return recommend to you Richard B. Franks’ Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 1995)
Alperovitz’s claims lie at the center of the whole “Atomic Diplomacy” school of thought, i.e., Japan was ready to surrender but Truman just wanted to overawe the Soviets with our new atomic might, etc., etc.
I see two problems with this — first it’s an argument that’s implicitly supported by some assumptions inherent to the predominant the ideology of the times when some first advanced this argument (in mid-1960s) — the main such assumption being that the Cold War was inevitable and that must have been foreseen. The second problem that I see follows from the first, and I think this undercuts all the “revisionist” views that follow Alperovitz: Truman, those around him, like Roosevelt before him *did not predict, expect, nor desire the dissolution of the Grand Alliance after the defeat of the Axis*. They didn’t feel a need to overawe Stalin.
The expectation *even among many anticommunists* was that Stalin, though pretty much a thug, would cooperate on the international level and be, in terms of international diplomacy a “team player”, or at least kind of. By the time the Cold War actually got going, oh yeah then there were a lot of people pushing the “I told ya so…” game suggesting that Truman and Churchill suspected Stalin from the beginning. But recent research has overturned that — like some of the essays in that (excellent, in my opinion, by the way) Cambridge History of the Cold War that came out about ten years ago. There’s surprising things in there – that Stalin and some in the Truman administration were holding out for a US-Soviet mutual accommodation as late as 1947!
So if one wants to accept the whole Alperovitz-style “atomic diplomacy” school of thought, one has to explain that Truman didn’t have as much as a *motive* for that as was once claimed.
The Americans and British weren’t lookin’ for trouble with the USSR in 1945 and weren’t expecting it. They wanted one thing above all else: *to defeat the Axis*.
The nuclear attacks on Japan and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria helped do that. Without at least one of those, the Allies would have to invade Japan.
As for Japan’s *capacity* to continue the war being diminished?
Since when did the militarists who ruled Japan actually modulate their aggressive war-making based upon Japan’s capacity?
@Scolar Visari
That long post about Soviet and Russian woman cosmonauts was very enjoyable reading! Alas, the USSR did push their “we’re soooo egalitarian…” stuff while being just as sexist and patriarchal as the rest of ’em. As I said in an earlier comment, Ms. Pavlov’s House has told me first-hand of such things. I remember being a teenager in the 1980s here in the U.S. and reading with a sort of weird curiosity the Soviet propaganda magazine Soviet Life. Ms. Pavlov’s House and I have a great time now laughing over some old issues; she ’em interprets based on her personal experience – sure, she’s only one Russian woman, but I love hearing my beloved’s perspectives. Your comment about Serova inspired me to go watch some of the interview footage and I love how she handles it. (If one looks at the photos of her actually in action on the International Space Station in 0 gravity she still looks good according to conventional Russian-woman standards — perhaps has her way but she just didn’t want to take any mess off of sexist reporters. I’m not sayin’ conventional standards have to be the dogmatic norm…just my opinion.) I agree with your speculation that Hardie would likely disapprove of women like Serova being cosmonauts and engineers and happily married to their husbands and raising their kids. I also found a NASA interview with Serova — whatever the political reality behind Tereshkova going into space, Serova clearly credits her as an inspiration.
Ms. Pavlov’s House takes no mess off anyone and confronts sexism the same way, and yet she looks like a million bucks even after working an overnight shift at the hospital.
I hope we have some Russian women’s voices in the comments on this blog. I love hearing what Russian women have to say about their lives.
(Again — disclaimer against essentializing: each woman speaks for herself about her own lived experience; it’s easy, though, to take heed of the words of the particular woman that is close to one’s heart, and since Ms. Pavlov’s House has been Ms. Pavlov’s House she has shared much with me.)
At the very least, I can guarantee all Mammothteers that no Russian woman is what RooshV thinks she is.
@Jenora Feuer
In Soviet Russia, car chooses *YOU!*
Now that I got that out of the way, Red Star In Orbit spent a lot of its time discussing how well the Salyut crews got along as the station program advanced. The 1977 Georgi Grechko and Yuri Romanenko expedition (whose last names conveniently translate to Greek and Roman respectively) spent more than 96 days together without murdering one another, which is something that I believe most people would find difficult in something that was little more than the volume of a modest living room.
That is, unless there was a third cosmonaut in their group that was posthumously “disappeared”. Three happy spacemen indeed.
Grechko and Romanenko seem to have credited their particular mission success to treatment of each other as equals and sharing chores, which sounds a lot like good marriage advice that one probably would not get from Roosh et al (there must be and can only be one Alpha, I guess?). The sporadic contact between them and mission control also meant they largely ran things their own way, which was quite preferable to the micro-mangement NASA exercised on Skylab 4. I seriously wonder how China’s CNSA will apply these lessons in the upcoming Tiangong-2/Shenzhou 11 mission, as thirty day missions tend to be the hardest on people and Tiangong-2 is rather small for three people.
@Alan Robertshaw
Had the Soviet Moon landing attempts succeeded, I imagine the single cosmonaut sent onboard the first LK would’ve felt incredibly lonely walking on the Lunar surface.
@ scolar
Yeah, imagine being the only person on a whole world!
Michael Collins, who did of course hold the record for most isolated human for a while, says he found the experience almost euphoric. Especially when he was out of radio contact with Earth.
ETA: He also took a photo of the Earth and Moon. He says he loves the fact that everyone in existence was in that photo; except him.
Imagine if Collins had had a selfie stick.
My point was that there need have been no invasion. Blockade would have been quite sufficient to reduce Japan to a non-industrial economy within months. You cannot run an industrial economy without supplies of oil, tin and rubber – or indeed, without any one of these three.
Pavlov’s House, thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look out for Franks’ book, but I can’t see how he or anyone else could explain away the copious documentation Alperovitz provides.
As Alperovitz says, the Americans thought (wrongly) that they had sufficient strength to oblige Stalin to accept a subordinate role in an American-dominated postwar world, but as early as April 1945, when Truman first met a Soviet representative (Molotov), there was deep disagreement about Poland, and Truman is reported to have used “undiplomatic” language.
Sure the Americans and British gave priority to defeating the Axis. But they would have been completely remiss not to have been thinking about the balance of power in the postwar world – and they were. Your second paragraph appears to implicitly concede that the use of the atomic bombs was not necessary, since the Americans knew the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was coming. But as noted above, I consider that blockade would have sufficed to force Japanese surrender irrespective of Soviet participation – and in addition to what I’ve already said, it’s probably easier to maintain political unity and civilian compliance in the face of an imminently expected invasion than under an indefinite blockade.
Yes, we all know islam is a REALLY tolerant and progressive religion, sure.
Google “Karl Popper paradox of tolerance”
It’s a bit unnerving to know how quickly are some feminists in supporting a religion that kill women for marriying with the man she chooses.
Yes, that’s what this entire post and comment thread has been saying. Not. I do believe that our problem was more with the NUKE ‘EM ALL type of suggestion?
I don’t need to as I’m already familiar with Popper. The paradox of tolerance is not intended as actual proof, in any case; it illustrates an ongoing dilemma for thoughtful people.
It would be unnerving, yes, if feminists were actually this naive and silly. It’s certainly unnerving how some people think
(a) that objecting to Islamophobia = approving of Islam unreservedly
(b) that all Muslims adhere to precisely the same rules and beliefs
If I pull a quote from the Christian bible and claim that all Christians agree with it, I’m being ridiculous. If I take Westboro BC as the basic definition of ‘being a Christian’, I’m being ridiculous.
Seriously. I’m an angry atheist and even I know better.
@Joaquin
Who argued to the contrary?
Google isn’t a source, and it definitely ain’t an argument
I support the fuck outta Islam. I’m subscribed to the newsletter, I participate in the bake sale, and make generous donations at the drives. I even canvassed door to door for the Islam Party back in 2012! Oh wait, none of that happened. How do I regularly support Islam? Think, think… That’s right! I oppose killing millions of people. Shouldn’t have done that. Welp, learned my lesson. Nuke away then
Jackass
That’s literally most religions in the world.
This woman is pure evil.
Islamophobia is awful.
Saying all Muslims are ISIS is like saying that all Christians are Quiverfull/ Mormon/ Fundie WASPS. Simply untrue.
@mish
I’m afraid the definition of Christianity has changed somewhat since Christ’s disciples were still around. Back then, Christians believed they should carry on Christ’s work on earth, feeding the poor, healing the sick, and casting out demons. Modern fundie/Wasp/ evangelical Christianity defines a ‘Born Again Christian ™’ by what they hate, be it Muslims, trans people, gays, blacks etc to irrelevant stuff like Harry Potter, Tarot Cards, yoga, Troll dolls and the newspaper horoscope. (None of which are even mentioned in the Bible, let alone condemned) They seem to want to out do each other by hating more stuff than the others, and 95% of it is pure xenophobia. I’ll give you an example. I had a “friend” when I lived in Bognor who was a Baptist, but was absolutely paranoid about everything, and saw evil in everything from smelly candles and incense to rock music and pet cats (witches familiars) She came to my flat and saw that I had a duvet cover with Chinese calligraphic characters on it, and she was really upset that I was sleeping under it, she wanted to pray over it to cast the demons out. She also believed that there were demons attached to all second hand charity shop clothes, seeing as I was a student at the time this comprised nearly all of my clothes.