The Mind of a Propagandist
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Louise.
Bal, since you seem to have difficulty understanding plain English, let me make it very clear to you. I support what these people are doing. Their website is an excellent source. I just don’t agree with some of the style used by my principal contact with the organization. Where or not he is genuinely Muslim, I have no way of knowing and, besides, it is irrelevant. Go that? And this silly argument of yours that no Muslim would ever entertain adapting their holy book to modernity, shit man, Christians have done that several times throughout history. Biblical scholars are constantly reinterpreting passages of scripture. Get a brain!!
Louise has leaped to the defense of foul-mouth neocons raising money by pretending to be Muslims Against Sharia. She was an early supporter of and contributor to MAS, but eventually began to take exception to their “style”, by which I assume their habit of posting theological analysis like this one:
“You must be a total moron to expect people to take your shit. When you have a mouth full, of dick all day long claiming that other people are on drugs is beyond projection.”
Despite that, Louise finds them, as you can see, an “excellent source of information” (by which she means, I think, it’s a handy, one-stop shop for recycled propaganda gathered by all the other Muslim-hating sites and bloggers – Atlas Shrugged, Israpundit and the like).
There are two interesting points (well, maybe not “interesting” – but worth flaying) in Louise’s position.
One is her misstatement (through either obtuseness or simple dishonestly) of my point on the MAS “Let’s Invite Internet Users to Edit the Koran!!” Project.
Yes, Christian scholars are constantly examining, reinterpreting, and retranslating scripture. They do it carefully, reverently, and on the basis of long, methodical reflection, research and interpretation. They do not invite a world of unskilled amateurs to dive in and edit. There is no parallel. None.
Moreover, the folks who rewrite or reinterpret these texts are reverent, knowledgeable, scholarly Christians. Now, Louise suggests above that the actual religion of the folks behind MAS is irrelevant. What an interesting assertion. So let me set out the following scenario.
You stumble across a website called “Christians for a Revitalized Christianity”. This group is soliciting your money. They want your donations because they are preparing a new, edited version of the Bible. The Bible contains some elements that they feel are human interpolations into the divine text, and they want to cleanse the Holy Book of those elements.
Then suppose you learn that these “Christians” were in fact not Christian at all, and that they also ran a number of other websites criticizing and mocking virtually every aspect of Christianity.
Would your perception of the project, and the group behind it, change?
There’s a more fundamental point at issue here, though, inherent in Louise’s statement: “Where [sic] or not he is genuinely Muslim, I have no way of knowing and, besides, it is irrelevant. Go [sic] that?”
And that’s as nice a summary as I’ve ever seen, I think, of the difference between honest blogging and propaganda. For a Scentinel, a Shaidle, a Right Girl or a Louise, the truth doesn’t matter; all that counts is the usefulness of the lie.
These clowns are still around, are they?
Indeed they are. Check out the “Jihad Barbie” thread, here.
Reading through all that, one thing becomes painfully clear:
It’s not easy for some people to admit they’ve been duped, had, conned, scammed, hosed and played for a sucker.
On the upside, Xanthippa seems nice.
If I ever make a mistake about anything, JJ, I’m sure I’ll acknowledge it immediately. That’s just the kind of person I am. I almost look forward to being mistaken about something, someday, so that I can add “frank humility” to my list of virtues.
Louise is a regular at Abandoned Stuff. She now routinely tells me I need to learn to read.
It’s a shame, sorta. She clearly has some interesting life experience, she’s articulate, and she did, albeit grudgingly, acknowledge the questionable nature of MAS. It would be interesting to actually engage her in discussion. But she’s unfortunately stuck in that faux-Shaidle mode of arrogant, ideological truculence, which is, in itself, a depressing echo of Kathy’s Coulter-worship.
I could’ve sworn I’ve seen at least one cleansed version of the Christian bible online somewhere as well during my many years of surfing. I’ve seen it come from all sides of the spectrum as well — Anarchist to Totalitarian, Atheist to Fundamentalist. At this point I’m sad that I didn’t bookmark them because I thought they were simply wastes of time. However, as far as I know, none of these were published officially or got much further than the starting stages. Yet, they are examples of the same phenomenon as this “rewrite the Koran” garbage.
Especially in modern society, it seems common place for ordinary (read: not reverent, knowledgeable, or scholarly) people to schism from their church and adapt their interpretations of the bible accordingly. Normally, most of these schisms are largely ignored. However, once in a while, a sect becomes large enough to be “legitimized” and suddenly you have yet another protestant church (or Catholic sect).
I agree that creating a website to rewrite any holy book is a load of tripe — Especially rewriting a holy book to argue a specific ideological cause. You may as well just piss into the wind. It will provide some relief, but most people can clearly see you are just pissing on your shoes. At best, they’ll preach to the choir and get some cash from a few suckers.
Just as a weird coincidence.
I ran across this today: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/12/29/Green_Bible_controversial/UPI-36051230586414/
As far as I can tell, Mrvn, this isn’t a “new” bible – it’s the standard NRSV translation, with some additional essays and cute marketing.
Technically it would have to be considered yet another bible translation rather than a rewrite but it does possess some amusement value.
Breaking News!!
Louise has just responded on her site by posting a news story about how the Turkish Government has hired a group of Muslim theologians to rewrite other Islamic holy texts. Since my point was that the revision of religious texts is normally and appropriately undertaken by scholars, and since the foul-mouthed trolls at MAS are clearly not scholars, it would seem she’s conceding the point.
Thanks, Louise, that’s very gracious of you.
From SJR’s comments yesterday:
“I value my computer equipment and my blog. I will not risk contaminating it by visiting his blog. I do have the keys to the door of this place too, and will use them to lock out the mob, if need be.”
Since then: *crickets*
I guess The Mob had other items on its agenda.
Heh. She owes me a note of thanks – on my last visit, I noted that the only current threads on her site that show any comments are the ones in which she’s either raving about me, or filling in our meme. Crickets, indeed. Well, let’s leave her to it. My appetite for URQ-stupid is pretty much slaked.
There really is a lot about blog culture I don’t get.
I look at our rightward-leaning folks here -the regulars like Candace, Peter, Nasty, lrC, Raphael, and the occasionals like Amazon and Darcey and Olaf, and I’m grateful for their presence. Things get heated here, even rude, but almost inevitably we’re actually talking to each other. And sometimes people learn things, and sometimes people change their minds.
But sites like Louise’s, or SDA – there’s just nothing there but ideological assertion and demolition of disagreement by any means – lies, willful incomprehension, or when all else fails, a tirade of unimaginative, witless abuse. (I’m a huge fan of inventive insults. but ceaseless repetitions of “fuckin retard” just don’t cut it.)
I couldn’t find a single thread at Louise’s that featured a reasoned exchange of opposed views between posters. Or at SDA. It’s significant that in the quote you pulled, JJ, she views disagreement as something she needs to shield against.
Why does that seem to be the norm among the URQs? Am I just looking in the wrong places? Where’s the URQ equivalent of a site like Dawg’s, where the norm is heated, spirited argument that’s by and large between people who are actually listening to each other?
That’s the problem with rationality to the URQ’s – you give it an inch, and it takes a mile…and then where would they end up? Way down here with us. Best to not give in at all.
Balb – Now there’s a comment that deserves to be a post of its own.
“There really is a lot about blog culture I don’t get.”
“…But sites like Louise’s, or SDA – there’s just nothing there but ideological assertion and demolition of disagreement by any means – lies, willful incomprehension, or when all else fails, a tirade of unimaginative, witless abuse.”
I’m baffled by it also. From what I can see there are 2 kinds of blogs — the informative kind and the regurgitoria.
It’s not your imagination that a disproportionately high number of URQ blogs are regurgitoria. Propaganda/talking points are spewed, commenters clap like seals, and anyone who disagrees is an outlier and object of ridicule. These places are about getting circular reinforcement for ideas already formed and cemented in place, not about learning anything new.
“It’s significant that in the quote you pulled, JJ, she views disagreement as something she needs to shield against.”
Typical. Anyone who feels threatened by disagreement is not someone who’s confident in their own ideas. But that’s why they seek out reinforcement.
“Where’s the URQ equivalent of a site like Dawg’s, where the norm is heated, spirited argument that’s by and large between people who are actually listening to each other?”
I don’t know that there are any URQ equivalents to Dawg’s, or stageleft, or any LLQ blog that welcomes dissenting views. (Raphael gets a mixed bag of discussion sometimes, but even then most of the URQ commenters tend to stick to their talking points and take a hike when the discussion isn’t going their way.)
It’s certainly interesting. Maybe some of your URQs will weigh in on it.
I made a few posts on Louise’s blog in which I disagreed with her stance on some issues and the bitch deleted me and told me to ‘bugger off’.
I guess she doesn’t like trolls either.