Well, maybe 'desecration' is a mild way of putting it. Shiite militias engaged in the Battle of Mosul captured an ISIS bomb-factory where they discovered several copies the Koran modified to serve as booby-traps. The infuriated soldiers turned the evidence over to Hezbollah---with whom they're affiliated---and Hezbollah reported the outrage on Lebanese television. Here is what one of the deactivated devices look like:
They are designed to explode when the Islamic Holy Book is opened. Hezbollah reported that Iraqi forces had found such devices previously in the 2015 Battle of Tikrit, but hadn't released the information for security reasons. Iraqi sappers reported recently that they had also discovered booby-trapped toys intended to kill children in liberated districts of Mosul.
The US Corporate Media engaging in nonstop Trump-bashing and supporting elements who want the Election results overturned, take note. Hilary Clinton made such activities possible for ISIS. But we are talking about people who riot in the streets, threaten Trump properties, and make death-threats against Electoral College members; so Clinton supporters probably see little wrong with ISIS' methods.
We speak a lot on this site about the danger of cults and radicalized fanatics. This kind of story exemplifies the nadir of human depravity to which such movements ultimately lead. ISIS' stated goal is to save Islamic Civilization and create a new Islamic Order; and they end by building bombs designed to kill Moslems and their children. There is obviously no strategic value in planting devices of these kinds. These are acts motivated by sheer hatred and a desire to exact revenge on innocents who reject ISIS' fanaticism.
We see the same level of hatred among fanatics in our own country; and that fanaticism is not limited to Wahhabi Jihadists. Purportedly Christian writings---mostly spread throughout the Manosphere---are salted with lurid and violent fantasies among their comments sections aimed at women, Jews, Blacks, and others. We came close to a violent incident on Sunday over the whole Pizzagate controversy.
This is why we as a society have to take such radicals seriously---whether politically or religiously veneered; hatred is the underlying and unifying dynamic between them all. Just because some have not engaged in violence, groups like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the BLM Anarchists, the Satanic Mexican Drug Cartels---all demonstrate that the capacity for violence is present among such people and liable to break out whenever and wherever there are numbers of them and access to weaponry is available.
In a free society, we always walk a tightrope between the freedom for political radicals and religious cults to exist; and the need to safeguard our liberties from such groups' intentions to overthrow them. The Corporate Media and some opportunistic politicians are calling for censorship in the wake of the Pizzagate attack. Censorship is not the way: public involvement is. Public involvement certainly can (and should) include responsible corporate venues voluntarily suppressing radicalism, as has happened recently on Twitter and Reddit. But it's not the job of the government---it's the job of the people. The Government only gets involved when things have gone too far and pizza parlors are attacked; nightclubs are shot up; and police are ambushed, etc.
It is a peculiar psychological trait among radicalized that government censorship has the opposite of its intended effect. Radicals are typically paranoid among their mental problems; and censorship almost invariably convinces them that the government, or some other group, is suppressing the 'truth'. Prior to the Civil War, Jihadist propaganda was heavily suppressed and censored in Syria---which only convinced the Wahhabi Cult that the Syrian Government was 'covering up' for anti-Islamic interests. Even now, the threat of censorship in the US has many on the Alt-Right seriously claiming that Edgar Welch's attack on the Comet Pizzeria was a false-flag to cover up the 'truth' about Pizzagate.
The more that radicals actually are free to say, the more warning that the public has against their psychopathic tendencies. Free speech works both ways; being aware of them and being free to denounce and expose them are the reason we don't have things like Aleppo or Mosul happening in our own country.
Vox Day, a Manosphere/Alt-Right blogger of the Red Pill/Game Cult has published another attack on mainstream Christianity: this time going after Evangelical Protestants. These types of assaults on Christianity and Conservatism are fairly common these days among the Red Pills. Their goal has long been to set their own religion and its concomitant neo-Fascist sociopolitical theories up as the exclusive alternative to Leftist Cultural Marxism.
The article which has aroused Vox' indignation appeared in The New York Times last week, and is more or less just another standard NYT tantrum over Trump's Election. The problem here is not that Vox criticized the NYT article; the issue is that he presented it as representative of mainstream Protestantism. Nowhere in his own critique does he mention that the article was written by Tony Campolo---one of ex-President Clinton's advisors who recently disavowed any connection with term 'Evangelical' and does so again in the NYT piece.
But Vox instead informs his readers that "Evangelicals, and many evangelical organizations are now following the example of other Christian denominations in walking the broad and easy path towards Hell, and they are doing so on the basis of their mealy-mouthed Sunday-School churchianity."
The term churchianity is usually aimed by the Red Pills against Christians not aligned with their cult. Vox doesn't explain which 'other Christian denominations' the Evangelicals are supposedly following into apostasy; that is left for the readers' imaginations. Campolo himself admits that most Evangelicals voted for Trump---of which he disapproves, of course. But he and Vox both share the belief that political positions define one's spirituality; Vox claims, for example that Evangelicals are "a group of people who have given themselves over to untruth."
Campolo argues that young Whites are leaving Evangelicalism, while the sect is growing among minorities. Instead of seeing Christian conversions among minorities as a positive thing, Vox accuses the Evangelical leadership of racial treason: "Moreover this demonstrates that at least when it comes to Churchianity, race trumps religion in the hierarchy of identity politics"---apparently not noticing that this is the very thing that his own Red Pill Cult does. "As usual, the Alt-Right perspective is the only one that makes any sense of this incoherent and degraded evangelicalism." Such is what we would expect from an author who recently praised Nazis Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin as theological experts.
Campolo and Vox Day are not in opposition; they are really two sides of an Anti-Christian coin. History has shown that both Cultural Marxists and the Far Right will use religion as a cat's paw to advance their agendas; modifying religion to suit their ideologies when it's necessary and discarding it altogether when it isn't. This is why our Founding Fathers wisely separated Church and State---because they knew from experience that politics corrupts religion and that a traditional religious morality is necessary for self-government. The Far Left and the Far Right despise self-government as much as they do traditional religion.
What Christians need to do in this volatile sociopolitical climate is to be especially on guard against demagogues coming from both political directions. We've seen earlier from the Soros Scandals that the Far Left uses pseudo-Christian front-groups to insinuate themselves with church leadership; and we see now the Far Right offering a Trojan Horse up to Christians under the guise of defending cultural traditions. We need to ground ourselves in the authentic Christian traditions to avoid being misled by either.
On the previous article, blogger and sometime commenter Insanity Bytes left an insightful comment about the radicalization of young men. This stems from yesterday's incident at the Comet Pizzeria in Washington, DC where a young fool decided to get answers about 'Pizzagate' at gunpoint. Currently, the suspect---one Edgar Welch---is attired in a striped suit in a DC jail facing 5-10 years on a rock-pile.
"I think what concerns me about radicalizing young men is that they haven't learned about the rule of law and how to channel their aggression," Insanitybytes wrote, "Worse, they've lost their trust in the entire legal process. In a civilized world, you encounter something like Pizzagate and you turn it all over to the FBI."
One of the noteworthy things about Pizzagate, is the complete absence of any endorsement from legal or law-enforcement specialists. While our legal process is certainly flawed these days, it is not completely dead, as many have been incited to believe. Some Pizzagate proponents argue that the FBI would cover up a sex scandal involving DNC power-brokers, but some who've also assumed that, found out otherwise.
The radicalization process begins when young men are taught that traditional and conventional legal and social processes have failed. The next step is to introduce a nebulous and all-powerful force behind these failures.
"The nature of this radicalizing that goes on now, however, convinces the foolish that society has broken down and it plays off men's biological pull to be heroes trying 'to save Western Civilization'. Or if you are an Islamic terrorist, to destroy it." More accurately, the Wahhabi Jihadists actually see themselves as heroes, too, trying to save Islamic Civilization. The dynamic is the same. Their Imams teach that Islamic society is on the verge of collapse via Western corruption of it. She continues: "You see this common theme in far-Left rioters, in BLM, and on the Far-Right too."
Insanitybytes is correct here: this is a common theme binding all radicals. While there are plenty of female radicals in all these movements, we rarely see them engaging in these violent actions. It needs here that males are psychologically bound by nature to fear insignificance and also to act when their community is perceived as threatened or under attack. This is why those who radicalize young men need to invent a formidable threat to channel these instincts into concrete action. The Far Left imagines that Christians and Conservatives are plotting against them; BLM believes that there are racist cells operating in positions of authority; the Alt-Right believes that the Jews and SJWs are working for the demise of the White Male; and the Jihadists believe that the West is plotting to overthrow Islam.
She also correctly points out in her comment the way to fight radicalization. "Start teaching young men about honor, about the rule of law, about community and civilization...we certainly could reduce the amount of misery by replacing these cultish tactics of isolation and conspiracy theory with the idea of promoting male honor and respect for the legal process."
Exactly. There are no shortages in our society of real dragons for men to slay, without inventing imaginary ones. Our system---in fact, all civilized systems---are based on a rule of law. What men need to start doing is reforming (or in some cases, calling for enforcement of) these laws. Change is not going to happen by looting department stores, assassinating policemen, shooting up pizza-parlors, or burning down churches. And it's especially not going to happen by doing what the Red Pills in the Manosphere advise: by walling themselves off from women, the Church, the community at large.
This was bound to happen. On Sunday, a crackpot with a shady past walked into Comet Pizzeria with an M-16, shot a few holes in the floor and was caught by DC Police. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The suspect claimed to be demanding answers to the so-called Pizzagate Scandal.
Just as predictably, the Corporate Media is calling for the 1st Amendment to be nullified (usually in such cases, it's the 2nd Amendment they attack; but currently freedom of the press is a greater threat to Media vested interests). The Corporate Media employs the fake news meme anywhere from one to a dozen times per article covering the story. But the Corporate Media have proven themselves repeatedly to be unscrupulous blackguards who'll exploit any opportunity to enrich themselves or advance an agenda.
We had an article just a few days ago giving our thoughts on the Pizzagate story. While the people alleged to be participating in some of the crimes attributed to them are certainly capable of such despicable acts, we found nothing beyond circumstantial evidence that they actually engaged in them. No one seems to know how, where, when, or by whom this story originated: but given that James Alefantis and David Brock---both notorious Democrat Establishment operatives---were in the middle of this story, it's probably a more plausible theory to assume that they instigated it themselves.
The gunman is also a fairly typical specimen of the people involved in incidents of these sorts: a male Millenial with a history of substance abuse and a graduate of American public schools. But we shouldn't expect any investigations anytime soon about how and why our young men are being radicalized at such an alarming rate.
No, instead the Corporate Media---the greatest purveyors of fake news on the globe---will be demanding curtailment on free speech. The contemporary Corporate Media has no aversion to censoring its competitors. Obama was able to repeal the Anti-Propaganda Act of 1948, and engage in NSA spying without so much as a whisper of protest from the Corporate Media.
Censorship will not prevent incidents like these any more than Gun Control would have. It is a sad testimony to the moral weakness of our culture that the issue is even debatable. But Censorship is a viable solution to a population that prefers happy-pills, safe-spaces, and hate-free zones to the risks of free thought and robust living. A crackpot believed a false story, threatened people with a weapon, and now he's in jail. That would happen in a censored culture, too; the difference being that we wouldn't read about them; or be allowed to discuss them even if we did. In fact, some countries where the media is most heavily controlled have very high rates of violent crime and numerous radical groups operating within them.
We cannot rely on the Government---and even less on Wall Street---to spoon-feed us information as if were Kellogg's cereal and remain a free people. The Government can do a few proactive things: mostly repealing Clinton, Bush, and Obama-era laws that have resulted in so much media malpractice. They could also reinstate the Anti-Propaganda Act and start enforcing laws against libel, sedition, and slander for a change. But ultimately, it's up to the people to police themselves and what they hear and see. The Corporate Media merely wants a monopoly on fake news, not the suppression of such stories.
The fact that the Corporate Media is using Pizzagate as an excuse to attack their competitors instead of investigating the story, lends even more suspicion that they are complicit in spreading the allegations for their own insidious purposes. James Alefantis told the New York Times afterwards that:
"What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences. I hope that those involved in fanning those flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today and stop promoting these falsehoods right away."
They should; but actually, Mr. Alefantis, you should consider that your friends in places like the New York Times have spent the last three decades fanning flames of reckless conspiracy theories. Sleazy Corporate Media coverage of ritual abuse hysteria; alleged celebrity child-sex rings; lurid reports of child-murders; the over-hyped Catholic priest molestation scandals; etc., have produced a population psychologically primed to imagine that paedophiles are hiding behind every rock and tree; and that any business, like yours, that caters to children ought to be suspect.
Think about those consequences, Mr. Alefantis. And ask your Liberal friends about them too.
The US Agribusiness Cartel Corporation, Kellogg's was the subject of a boycott and some other controversies here in the Prozac Nation. The Corporation decided last week to end its advertising contract with Breitbart News, to which Breitbart responded with a boycott campaign.
Breitbart also ran a story this weekend, exposing the fact that Kellogg Foundation---the Corporation's charitable arm---gave $930,000 to Black Lives Matter. It's somewhat peculiar that Breitbart never bothered to expose this detail while Kellogg's was an advertiser, but we will speak of this later.
Besides the BLM anarchists, the Kellogg Foundation's website lists some other interesting current grant recipients:
The Poverty and Race Research Action Council: $600,000.
The Haas Institute, UC Berkeley: $1,125,000. This taxpayer-funded college institute currently features anti-Trump articles on its webpage. UCB Professor John Powell, Haas' Director, tweeted yesterday, "Powerful movements have always understood that strategy has to include plans to capture the instruments of government." Powell makes about $440,000 as a law professor at UCB. He once was an advisor to the Communist government of Mozambique.
The NAACP: $1,867,000.
La Raza: $2,400,000.
The National Urban League: $1,733,334.
Race Forward: $2,400,000. Front-group for the Center for Racial Justice Innovation. Headed by Rinku Sen, a 'community activist' who pressured the Corporate Media to stop mentioning immigrants' legal statuses in news reports. Michell Speight, the Director of Programs, is a pro-abortion activist.
PICO: $2,133,334. One of George Soros' front-organizations.
The ACLU: $1,000,000.
Plus several other smaller grants to similar 'worthy causes'. The Kellogg Company spent $1,380,000 in political lobbying in 2016. The Company CEO is an Australian national named John Bryant. Bryant publically joked after the Breitbart controversy that cereal mascot 'Tony the Tiger' was pansexual and consider gender reassignment surgery for him. Some may remember that Bryant also used Tony the Tiger in the Wear Your Stripes with PRIDE campaign. Kellogg's was a huge supporter of homosexual marriage.
While the pervert Bryant may be politically-correct here; Amnesty International has complained that Kellogg's leading supplier of palm oil uses forced and child labor; and has exposed workers to Paraquat (a very toxic herbicide). Kellogg's stated that since the labor is carried out by subcontractors, they are not responsible.
John Bryant makes $9,000,000 a year as Kellogg's CEO to oversee all of these dubious activities. A typical specimen of the degenerate American 'Elite'; Bryant sprays children with Paraquat on one hand and pushes homosexuality on them with the other.
What is really troubling about this controversy seems not so much that Kellogg's withdrew advertising from Breitbart; but that Breitbart accepted advertising from Kellogg's, knowing what they are and what they are doing. Breitbart only reported the Black Lives Matter donations: and even then, only after Kellogg's withdrew as advertiser. Everything that we added to the story in this post took about an hour to research and the main sources were Wikipedia, Kellogg's own websites, Forbes Magazine, and publically disclosed records and public statements made by some of the principals involved.
And Breitbart is now calling for a Kellogg's boycott and their editor-in-chief complains that the company is 'waging war' against Breitbart News. Well, Kellogg's seems to have been waging a 'culture war' for some time, and Breitbart was quite content to look the other way while Kellogg's was stuffing cash into Breitbart's pockets.
This is not to say that Bryant and Kellogg's were innocent either. They were perfectly happy to put their politically-correct activism on the back-burner and advertise with Breitbart when Trump's popularity was soaring during the election. Now that Trump has been elected, Breitbart won't have the same numbers as during the campaign; so now Kellogg's plays the offended Liberals.
This disgusting episode illustrates clearly everything that is wrong with the American Media. Everything hinges on the bottom line and the smart boys' ability to capitalize on news instead of pursuing truth.
Two editorials recently appeared in the British news outlet The Guardian, which are interesting because they show objectively several points about the Manosphere and its Red Pill/Game Cult which we have been raising here as well. The first of these is written anonymously and is the story of how researching the so-called Alt-Right affected the author's thinking.
The anonymous author is evidently a White Liberal, affected with the kind of false guilt common to that demographic. But if one can read past those biases, the author shows how easy it is to succumb to Red Pill thinking:
"About a week before the US Election, I heard one of these Youtubers using the phrase 'red pilled'---a term from the film 'The Matrix'---in reference to people being awakened to the truth about the world and SJWs. Suddenly I thought: 'This is exactly like a cult. What am I doing? I'm turning into one of those a-------s.'"
Exactly like a cult. 'Taking the Red Pill' is actually more than an awakening: it is a conversion process. It's noteworthy that the author began researching the Alt-Right in relationship to anti-Islamic movements. And note that he states: "The anti-SJW stuff also moved on to anti-feminism, Mens' Rights Activists, all that stuff. I followed them on Twitter..."
Isn't interesting how exposure to MRA writings always seems to lead down the path of extremism? The author notes, after his awakening that: "It's clear that this terrible ideology has now gone mainstream. It hit me like a ton of bricks. The online radicalization of young white men. It's here, it's serious, and I was lucky to be able to snap out of it when I did. And if it can get somebody like me to swallow it---a lifelong Liberal---I can't imagine the damage it's doing overall."
Not being Liberals ourselves, we can explain the practical dynamics of what the author merely felt. Dr. Paul Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Minister was an expert in convincing otherwise decent people to do stupid and immoral things. Goebbels worked out the formula for effective propaganda: you mix just enough general truth with a lying message to give the lie plausibility; then you keep repeating the lie. Once the lie goes mainstream, people take it for granted and don't examine its underlying premise. That is exactly the formula that Red Pills and other cultists follow to gain and hold converts.
The second article, written by author Matt Lees, is a more in-depth study showing how the Red Pill Cultists used the phony 2014 Gamergate controversy to insinuate themselves into political movements. Lees makes a very prescient observation: "The greatest strength of Gamergate, though, was that it actually appeared to represent many Left-leaning ideals: stamping out corruption in the press, pushing for better ethical practices, battling for openness...The strangest aspect of Gamergate was that it consistently didn't make any sense: people chose to align with it, yet refused responsibility. It was consistently demanded that we debate the issues, but explanations and facts were treated with scorn. Attempts to find common ground saw the specifics of the demands being shifted; we want you to listen to us; we want you to change your ways; we want you to close your publication down. This movement that ostensibly wanted to protect free speech from cry-bully SWJs simultaneously did what it could to endanger sites it disagreed with."
Like the first author, Lees is addressing this from a politically Liberal perspective; hence he misses the underlying dynamic. The Red Pill Cultists were never about adopting ideals: their goals were, are, always have been to shut down and discredit those who oppose them. If we read their writings closely, the Red Pill Cult is all about reversing---not changing---corrupt social paradigms. They claim, for example, to be anti-feminist: they have nothing against gender supremacy so long as men are supreme. They claim to oppose reverse racial discrimination: but have nothing against things like Affirmative Action, so long as Whites are the only beneficiaries. So it was with Gamergate: the Red Pills never objected to the 'Narrative'---they simply wanted to change who controlled it.
Lees cites philosopher Umberto Eco to the effect that Fascism is built on 'frustration and machismo'---another way of saying, as the first author did, that young men are being radicalized. "The requirement of this formless Fascism would be---above all else---to remain in an endless state of conflict; a fight against a foe who must always be portrayed as impossibly strong and laughably weak. This was the methodology of Gamergate, and it now forms the basis of the contemporary Far-Right movement."
Not exactly. Lees misses the point that the basis of the movement predated Gamergate. The Red Pill Cult has its roots in the Game/PUA Movement now controlling the MRM. They were the ones who gave Gamergate its impetus. Game/PUA taught precisely that gender relations were in an endless state of conflict; and consistently portrays women as impossibly strong and laughably weak. The Gamergate proponents learned from the Red Pills---not vice-versa.
Lees concludes by saying: "We have no idea where this will lead, but our continued insistence on shrugging of the problems of the internet as unreal---something we can just log out of---is increasingly misled. 2016 has presented us with a world in which our reality is being willfully manipulated."
Very true. What these two authors are writing to Liberal audiences is just as important for Conservatives to understand. The Red Pills pose as Conservatives and Christians---while attacking both and openly expressing their goal of supplanting both. The tactic they employed in Gamergate is the same: they claim that the Republican Party and the Church has been feminized and they approach both institutions as Lees describes above. They are just as great a threat to freedom as the Far Left: and we must encourage Conservatives and Christians to oppose them at every turn.
It is a common, though often unrecognized facet of the male nature is its reaction to guilt and redemption. This is rarely discussed both because of our culture's general hostility towards masculinity, and because of false information circulated in the Manosphere and their counterparts, the Feminists. Men experience guilt typically by turning their anger inwards and seek redemption through action. With females this typically works the opposite way; and of course we are speaking here of moral men and women. The immoral never acknowledge guilt or the need for redemption in the first place. And even more typically, our culture has no sympathy whatsoever for fallen men.
This weekend's feature is a 1969 Western that highlights this psychological theme perfectly. Night of the Serpent stars Luke Askew and former beauty queen Magda Konopka.
Night of the Serpent is not by any means a standard Western, although there is plenty of action. A once-famous gunfighter known only as Luke (Askew) has hit bottom after a tragic accident in which he killed a young boy. Now a hopeless alcoholic, Luke has drifted to Mexico where he lives with a gang of bandits and is known only as 'The Gringo'. Luke is so far gone that the bandits assign him menial camp chores in exchange for tequila; and often bully and abuse him.
Meanwhile, a group of corrupt military officers plot to seize an inheritance by murdering a young heir. They approach Pancho, the leader of the bandits, to dispatch an expendable member of his band to commit the murder. The one chosen is going to be caught and executed. Pancho chooses Luke for the job. But when Luke confronts the boy, he comes face-to-face with the reality of what he has become; and come to grips with the circumstances that led to his moral and psychological breakdown. He decides to fight for the boy's rights instead: but can he be the great gunfighter he once was? That will be seen when watching.
Among fans of Westerns, Night of the Serpent has a strong segment who consider it one of the greatest Westerns of all time. It is a film that has an appeal to men who can relate to it on an intellectual level. By intellectual here we mean that class of men who can empathize with a character like Luke's. Real men have a deep respect for other men who can redeem and pull themselves out of terrible circumstances and come through when the chips are down. Unfortunately, this character-type has largely disappeared from pop-culture---mostly because the concept of redemption has also disappeared from it.
It is often---though mistakenly---believed by many that our Postmodern culture denies human evil and considers all actions equally moral. This is an illusion. Postmodernists reject morality, but embrace its opposite---immorality---as normative, and reject the idea of redemption. A character like Luke's, in their scheme of things, never has nor deserves forgiveness; no matter what he does.
Going against that philosophy is what makes Night of the Serpent a great film. This is a film and storyline that has a certain reality to it that real people can really follow. It's a display of the depths and heights a man can achieve when his actions are determined by moral choice.
Night of the Serpent is currently available only on DVD. It sometimes is listed under the title, Nest of Vipers.
