
The Triumph of Stupidity (1933) - mutor
http://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM
======
jasim
In "How to Make Wealth", pg points out that the emergence of the rule of law
made the modern economy as we know it possible. It did - social progress has
made institutions like democracy and ideas like liberty and rationalism more
popular than it has ever been in history.

This used to give me a dangerously false sense of optimism - that the modern
society is a stable scientific one, where good intelligent people are in
charge, and that the state of affairs are always improving. This notion partly
came from the privilege of never having lived in a war-zone. The life of chaos
of those who are unfortunate to be in one is even now beyond my understanding.

I think that the idea that humanity is always marching forward to better days
is something implicit among people who live in peaceful affluent societies.
But if you look at history, the world has always gone through cycles. No
matter how much we improve socially, a regression seems almost inevitable. The
Roman Empire did fall, and was followed by the Dark Ages.

Even in the most democratic countries of the world, fascism is only just
around the corner. There is a large chunk of society who're easily swayed by
purely emotional rhetoric based on in-groups and out-groups, and likes to
follow leaders who make a show of macho masculinity. The status-quo is pretty
fragile. The nerds aren't safe. Those with warrior tendencies always have
upper-hand over those with nation-building tendencies, and that reads like a
tautology.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
> _There is a large chunk of society who 're easily swayed by purely emotional
> rhetoric based on in-groups and out-groups_

I think this sentence is the biggest indicator of the problem. The Problem
being not that there are large parts of society swayed by emotional rhetoric,
but that to most people, the emotional swaying happens to _others_. It's never
me who's swayed by emotions, it's always less rational people, and if only
those people could get their shit together, _like me_ , we'd be in a much
better place.

You're just as swayed by emotion as those non nerds, you're just swayed on
different values. Pretending like you're above it gets us nowhere, because it
perpetuates an unhelpful me vs everyone else mentality. It's very satisfying
to the ego but it just serves to further drive a wedge between you and
everyone else.

~~~
mcguire
That's what struck me most about the article, as well. Russell's essay is very
flattering, until you realize the _we_ that he terms "the best men of the
present day" are probably not the _we_ of Hacker News.

In particular, when Russell writes about "the philosophical radicals ... who
were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are[, who] dominated
politics and ... advanced [the world] rapidly both in intelligence and in
material well-being," he is very likely writing about people who would
definitely be a Hacker News _they_ , given what I know about his politics and
given statements like "if at any future time there should be danger of a
Labour Government that meant business, [the British Fascists] would win the
support of most of the governing classes."

So, if this essay leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling about your "wider
and truer outlook" and the feeling that you are being oppressed because of
your "skepticism and intellectual individualism", well, congratulations!
You've discovered the power of emotional rhetoric.

~~~
Sven7
Great point.

It's why the Elon Musk's, Larry Page's and Bill Gates of the tech world
retreat into their own private dreamlands as far away from the politics of the
real world as possible, cause they know they don't stand a chance against the
rhetorical snake charmers that are Bush, Obama, Clinton and now Trump.

I'll leave here, Matt Taibbi's more modern take on this that blames the media
or what I like to call the rhetoric amplification industry.
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-is-too-
dum...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-is-too-dumb-for-tv-
news-20151125)

The solutions are complex but eventually we'll have to start looking at China.
Cause no one else seems to be working on alternatives to what the media has
become today.

~~~
poof131
Wow. Democracy can be ugly, but to look to an oligarchy for the solution? I
think this is the antithesis of Russell’s thrust.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, the democracy can't build nuclear power plants and fast trains, an an
oligarchy can. So there's that.

But still, if you want to look for an alternative to western media, you'll
need to look elsewhere - China is turning more and more free, and is becoming
increasingly like the rest of the West - good and bad, the whole package.

~~~
nl
_the democracy can 't build nuclear power plants and fast trains, an an
oligarchy can. So there's that_

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 _Maybe_ the case for fast trains stacks up (in some places), but Nuclear
power just doesn't. I know some people assume that because some of the safety
problems are overstated it makes it a good option, but that chain of reasoning
doesn't hold.

~~~
TeMPOraL
[http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

This book does a pretty decent and math-based argument that the chain of
reasoning for nuclear energy holds up pretty well. Have there been some new
developments that suddenly made it not so?

~~~
nl
Considering it doesn't address the _cost of building the plants_ I'd say it
isn't very compelling at all.

Heres a good article on the costs: [http://theconversation.com/what-does-
nuclear-power-cost-old-...](http://theconversation.com/what-does-nuclear-
power-cost-old-plants-dispel-easy-answers-41379)

------
mattgibson

      "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are 
      cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."
    

This seems to be the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. Knowing more means
having greater awareness that what you know is only a small part of what you
_could_ know.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

    
    
      "A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent 
      men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are"
    

If true, I wonder what caused this. Could anyone suggest cultural, social or
technological reasons that may have temporarily united the intellectuals of
the age?

~~~
tomp
> the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men

Does anyone know _who_ these men were?

~~~
dev1n
Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Epictetus etc..

~~~
tomp
Maybe I didn't quote enough :)

> A _hundred years ago_ the philosophical radicals formed a school of
> intelligent men

~~~
lentil_soup
I'm guessing the ones during the Enlightenment? Rousseau, Kant, etc.

------
noja
"In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America
democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what
is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment."

Oh.

~~~
creshal
How the mighty have fallen.

~~~
ajkjk
Hm? I feel like this still applies reasonably well to America.

For all of the radical lunacy in our politics, our government's actual actions
remain fairly moderate. (Of course maybe that's because political gridlock
prevents us from having time to enact radical policy.) And we still are
leading the world in all sorts of things, like scientific progress and
technological progress.

~~~
gizmo
Moderate? Hardly.

\- The war on drugs is utterly radical, as well ineffective and brutally
oppressive.

\- Assassinating people (including Americans) by Drone strikes, based on "meta
data". No due process or oversight.

\- Disregard for the Geneva Conventions (Bombings of hospitals and other
civilian targets)

\- Torture. Including public defense of torture.

\- NSA. Privacy used to be an inalienable right.

\- Military bases in 200+ countries.

The list goes on, but I think I've made my point. The US is only "moderate"
for the most creative definitions of "moderate".

~~~
titzer
74 countries according to this article:

[http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-
the-u...](http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-the-us-has-a-
military-presence/)

Point stands, nonetheless. That's a lot.

~~~
gizmo
I appreciate the correction.

------
jacquesm
That's an incredibly prescient piece of writing, to see that clearly what
would happen in the next 14 years and to write it down so un-ambiguously and
tersely. Who is our present day Bertrand Russell?

~~~
mathgenius
Chris Hedges writes alot about this nowadays. His background as a war reporter
for nyt gives him a bit of a radical perspective, but like much of modern
social commentary, it makes me depressed reading too much of it.

Joe Bageant (RIP) is really good too, and he can be funny aswell. Hedges is
never humorous.

We should add Chomsky to the list, although I can't stand reading his stuff.
I'm sure it's good what he writes, but he is just too high-brow for me.

~~~
jacquesm
Chomsky is obviously strongly influenced by Russell, he's usually on the mark
but takes 25,000 words where Russell takes 500 or so to make the same point
and much stronger.

------
yc1010
Replace Germany with Russia in article and you would be describing the sad
state of things in modern Russia, the most brutal and stupid are running the
show there now.

Aside here is an interesting article regarding this >
[https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/russia-great-
for...](https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/russia-great-forgetting/)

~~~
tomp
Hm.. as opposed to Germany, Turkey, UK and the US?

~~~
stefantalpalaru
Don't forget France. A politician noticed a PS4 console in a terrorist's room
and concluded that that's what they used as a super-secret communication
channel. Turns out they used good ol' SMS. Already intercepted. They announced
that from now on they'll also intercept the PS4 messaging traffic anyway.

Then there's the plan to put ankle bracelets on "known extremists"...

~~~
tomp
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but (disregarding the risk that I
might get as well) I agree. Especially how quickly Hollande seized the
opportunity of the tragedy-shocked nation to start attacking Syria...

------
nabla9
"civilised world" is kept together by midddle- and working class people. What
people need is hope and predictable outcomes from their personal efforts.

The Great Depression of 1929 struck America hard but Weimar Germany much
harder. Incremental changes and hard work did not produce improvements. Life
was uncertain and critical amount of people felt that life was unfair to them.
They were ready to try stupid and unorthodox.

I find it unlikely that radical and stupid ideas alone can rock liberal
democracies. They are always present. What is needed is personal uncertainty
and fear of the future that resonates with the society.

~~~
walod
> "civilised world" is kept together by midddle- and working class people.

Well, sort of. I think first you need technological innovation, and then the
middle- and working class fill the labor to maintain that technology, but they
for the most part didn't create it. They are users of it. Companies do
investments and allocation of capital to produce that technology. Without a
central source of capital, it would be hard to get the investments needed to
research and produce it. I think technology (in all its forms from basic to
advanced) is what enables the motion of society and individuals and the
freedoms.

And also civilized society is just as much about daily life and consumption of
information and perceived oppression or unfairness as it is pure work. It
feels like a lot of modern arguments are about these perceived unfair
situations, but on a personal level rather than systematic level. This leads
to systematic "macro" chaos but predictable individual "micro" movement in the
system (based on emotion and current view of the world). As long as the
technology and resources can be maintained, there will be some order in the
basics in society, since everyone needs food, shelter, clothing, security and
so forth, so I would say, the whole system is what keeps the civilized world
going and then some day, something fundamental breaks in some way, due to the
accumulated macro momentum of micro scale movement, and then the macro breaks,
or something like that.

Edit: also as an addon, these micro movements are decided today, by so called
"thought leaders", and so these thought leaders are also responsible for the
civilized world in that sense. An idea or representation of something has a
huge effect I think.

------
yread
> In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power
> deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and
> wholesale imprisonment.

Well all was not perfect even there - just a couple of years later all
Japanese were "wholesale imprisoned".

~~~
Synaesthesia
Thereafter black americans since the 1970s

------
Dowwie
Thanks for sharing. We could spend hours drawing from this essay.

Let's consider this part:

"A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent
men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was
that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in
intelligence and in material well-being."

Another example of this is neo-liberal capitalism: from Hayek [1] and his
disciple, Friedman [2], to myriad think tanks, Reagan and Thatcher, SCOTUS (eg
Powell [3]), etc. We're still living with the outcome of a generation of
intelligent, organized, ambitious people united by a [flawed] ideology.

[1] Hayek - "The Road to Serfdom"
[http://amzn.to/1PRWyDj](http://amzn.to/1PRWyDj) [2] Friedman - "Free to
Choose" [http://amzn.to/1QKIewt](http://amzn.to/1QKIewt) [3] Powell - "Attack
on American Free Enterprise System"
[http://bit.ly/1Q2bHR7](http://bit.ly/1Q2bHR7)

~~~
sysk
Just a nitpick but Hayek and Friedman were both _classical_ liberals.

~~~
madaxe_again
Strictly speaking Hayek was the first Hayekian liberal - but did self-describe
as a classical liberal.

------
jonnybgood
I don't understand this essay. It seems to be a romanticism of intelligent
individuals, but he refers to Nazi Germany as the triumph of the stupid.
However, isn't Nazi Germany the product of a small group of highly intelligent
individuals?

~~~
adwn
> _[...] isn 't Nazi Germany the product of a small group of highly
> intelligent individuals?_

Yes, a small group of intelligent individuals, who succeeded in rallying the
"stupid" masses behind them.

~~~
splouk
Wouldn't any successful political movement need the support of the "stupid
masses"?

------
RyanMcGreal
Haunting and frighteningly timely short essay. This particular part jumped out
(not least because the first sentence is highlighted):

 _The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid
are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the
intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to
combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points._

Around the same time (1930), Sigmund Freud articulated the concept of "the
narcissism of small differences" in his book _Civilization and its
Discontents_ , a concept that is endlessly useful in understanding how
otherwise like-minded people tend to tear themselves apart. A related concept
in software development is "bikeshedding".

~~~
FatalBaboon
However in "bikeshedding", like-minded people tearing themselves apart over
small things is a byproduct of the underlying problem: they're procrastinating
the bigger issue.

~~~
bakhy
Maybe that's the point. I feel sometimes like the world today is so complex,
that it's hard to be sure of any politics whether it will work, or produce
more misery than good. So, perhaps on a subconscious level, it's easier to
bicker about details and never actually do anything.

Moral high ground is the privilege of those that don't do anything...

------
scrrr
I think it is a potentially dangerous mistake to put the "stupid" label on all
those that support anti-democratic tendencies.

Among other things, such as having a false impression of what else is possibly
going on, one might be inclined to dismiss the problem too easily.

------
simonh
It's a classic, but I do think there's more to it than stupidity versus
intelligence. It's also about conviction versus cowardice.

In my experience bullying and persecution are very often more about fear and
insecurity. If you're persecuting and blaming someone else, you're not being
persecuted and blamed yourself. It's a way to deflect hostility and
responsibility away from yourself and on to other people. It seems to me most
of the people Russel was writing about may not even have been going along with
the mainstream because they genuinely thought Jews, Communists etc were a real
threat, but because if everyone is having a go at them they're not having a go
at me. If I join in then I become one of the team and can buy safety and
security for myself that way. In the uncertain and dangerous times Germany had
been through, any route to personal security and safety must have looked very
attractive.

How is this relevant today? Clearly Putin is using this sort of response to
great effect by using conflict and rivalry with foreigners to deflect
criticism away from his abysmal record at actually achieving anything of value
for the Russian people. Even having a Russian jet shot down by Turkey plays to
his advantage in that respect.

For us the question is, how to treat Muslim minorities in the West, and what
to do about the Syrian refugee crisis. The refugees didn't create this crisis
and are the primary victims. The vast majority of Muslims in the west are
against ISIS and deplore it's tactics. But blaming 'The Muslims' for all of
this and using excuses such as that terrorists will infiltrate the west
disguised as refugees are blinkered and cowardly. What are we going to do?
Drive millions of refugees back into the Mediterranean sea?

It's going to take determination and perseverance to do the right thing. Take
as many refugees as we can. Build bridges with Muslim communities in the West.
Confront IS and it's backers militarily and economically. There will be
further attacks. Integrating so many refugees is going to be expensive, hard
work and there are going to be negative consequences and mistakes made. It's
not going o go smoothly. But we still have to do it not because we are
'Intelligent' but because we have courage.

------
dmichulke
_Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, individual Germans have done
more to further civilisation than the individuals of any other country; during
the latter half of this period, Germans, collectively, have been equally
effective in degrading civilisation._

Russell here is making the same mistake as most people today. It wasn't the
"Germans collectively", it was the German government, tolerated by a mostly
ignorant population with a few "hawks" to show support for the government
action.

Contrary to the top post here right now, this is the same thing happening in
the US right now. The government bombs another country every 1-2 years and
people let it happen. We're still in appeasement times but the state already
gradually disrespects individual liberties and soon America will become a
collective much like the one described in the article.

~~~
DodgyEggplant
"The government bombs another country every 1-2 years"

This is dumbing down history. The world would as we know it would not exist
without all the US army involvement around the world in the last 100 years:
notably WWI,WWII, the cold war, & many more.Some less glorious, indeed. But
it's not "bombing every 1-2 years" but a mixture of defending freedom,
sometimes financial interests, mistakes and more. But overall, there would not
be a "free world" without the US power and the will to use it

~~~
fsloth
If only US military involvement was only in WW1 & 2\. The US was one of the
good guys then, sure. Most of the other conflicts US army has taken part sound
like a powertrip from an arrogant white man. Indian wars and the resulting
genocide, Vietnam war where the french wanted the US to spank their unruly
colony into submission... I'm sorry to say, the parties who like to smear US
have quite enough fact based material.

That said, I'm not claiming US is _evil_ but it's not a force of good either.

------
applecore
Yeats's _The Second Coming_ , written in 1919 and following the cataclysm of
the First World War, conveyed the same horrific and accurate vision of the
future:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate
intensity.”

------
lquist
Reminds me of Yeats' The Second Coming
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_\(poem\))):

    
    
      Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.
    
      Surely some revelation is at hand;
      Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
      The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
      When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
      Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
      A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
      A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
      Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
      Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
      The darkness drops again; but now I know
      That twenty centuries of stony sleep
      Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
      And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
      Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

------
jcrei
Is there a way forward? A way to avoid the same mistakes and perhaps save
humanity from the triumph of stupidity?

~~~
eggy
I believe there is, but for me the skepticism comes from my belief that there
are a lot of 'well-read' people today thanks to the internet, Google and
Wikipedia, although not many critical readers and thinkers. The best
illustration of this for me is in the movie "Good Will Hunting", where the
main character overhears a cocky college student, and puts him in his place
[1]. That scene epitomizes a large portion of talk I hear about me, but with
no real substance, or a Will Hunting to put them in their intellectual place.
I think we don't teach basic critical thinking any more except in special
classes or programs when it should be part of every class - common sense.

    
    
       [1] http://theartofspokenwords.blogspot.co.id/2011/04/good-will-hunting-bar-scene-quote.html

------
randcraw
I think it's not stupidity (nor the Dunning Kruger Effect) that leads mankind
astray; it's groupthink, in any shape or form. When you blind yourself to
whether you and your allies do more harm than good, in service of some
abstract ideal or philosophy, you fail.

------
lquist
Fukuyama presents an interesting counterpoint in The End of History
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man)):

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing
of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government."

------
gtpasqual
Today, Americans shouldn't take this as luck, but as a cautionary tale.

------
windhover
Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring, and the other leaders
of the National Socialist party were horribly brutal, but they were not
stupid. They were some of the brightest in the most well-educated country in
the world. The same goes with French influenced Marxists such as Pol Pot and
the Khmer Rouge. Bertrand Russell is right on many points, but he's terribly
wrong to think the enemies of civilization are stupid. Read Machiavelli.

------
shitgoose
Russell wrote this piece in 1933, just one year before US government
confiscated gold from its citizens
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)).
"Brightest spot" didn't last long.

------
dmfdmf
> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid
> are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

It was Hume and Kant who injected skepticism back into Western thought and are
responsible for empowering the stupid, including the Nazis. If you know the
cause of your plight then you can fix the effect.

------
yAnonymous
I think it's simpler than that. Politics attract assholes and intelligent
people avoid assholes.

------
myth_buster
For me it was present day US in place of Germany.

It would be interesting if people reading this would say here which country
they associated Germany to. I suppose almost all the countries will be on the
list.

So an interesting question would be which country you associated the US in the
essay to?

------
dennis_jeeves
Opportunist here, riding on the popularity of this post. See my recent post
which is partly along the lines of thoughts expressed by Bertrand Russel:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611416)
Summary - readers who think that vast majority of individuals are 'stupid' \-
please contact me. One of the failings of 'sane' intelligent people is that we
do not band together.

------
henriquemaia
Written in 1933. In the same year, Heidegger joined the Nazi party.

Now go figure who was the most prescient of the two.

------
DrNuke
aka the raging cretinisation of the world or overfitting, from data science
jargon; second time in a row I'm forced to write this here on HN, I'm probably
overfitted too. :(

------
DyslexicAtheist
>>> By murder, by torture, by imprisonment, by the terrorism of armed forces,
they have subjected the intelligent and humane parts of the nation and seized
power with the view of furthering the glory of the Fatherland.

reminds of current US foreign policy.

------
d--b
This does not belong here.

~~~
DanBC
Why not?

~~~
d--b
Oh, and because it invariably leads to comments which are in breach of HN
guidelines. See these comments about Donald Trump?

~~~
DanBC
This is a good point and it's a shame you got downvoted for it.

(I up voted it, but it's still grey.)

------
littletimmy
_By murder, by torture, by imprisonment, by the terrorism of armed forces,
they have subjected the intelligent and humane parts of the nation and seized
power with the view of furthering the glory of the Fatherland._

^ The terrorism of armed forces part is particularly important. We tend to
think that terrorism is something crazy non-state actors do in religious or
delusional fervor, but it is really just the use of violence to achieve
certain political ends. This is precisely what the American army started doing
around the world after World War II. If you include psychological manipulation
with it as well, as recently evidence by the disclosure that the DOD was
paying NFL to propagandize during games, we get a very concerning picture of
the role of the US military in today's world and in the US itself.

 _In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America
democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what
is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment._

^ How dated that sounds. Wonder what Russell would say about the America of
today, with the oligarchy entrenching itself to replace a democracy, a wide-
scale militarization of the police, a pogrom against Muslims in some southern
states, the wholesale imprisonment of African Americans, and the popularity of
near-fascist leaders like Donald Trump.

~~~
steve_g
"a pogrom against Muslims in some southern states"

That's just untrue. A pogrom is an organized massacre of an ethnic group -
it's not happening, in southern states or anywhere else in the US.

~~~
acqq
littletimmy, how about citing sources for these extraordinary claims ("a
pogrom against Muslims in some southern states")? I can't believe it wouldn't
be widely known in the current "politically correct" environment.

Even if you are now aware that "pogrom" wasn't the right word to describe
something "against Muslims" that is worrying you, please do write what that
is.

~~~
celticninja
your reply was not to littletimmy so he may not answer you. However it is
possible he was talking about things like this:

[http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/11/armed-
protesters-...](http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/11/armed-protesters-
set-up-outside-islamic-center-of-irving.html/)

Whilst not a pogrom it certainly does lay the ground for some future issues.
All you have to is consider the reaction if Muslim Americans decided to use
their 2nd ammendment rights to protest christian or jewish churches, whilst
covering their forces and armed with semi automatic weapons.

~~~
acqq
Was it a protest "against Muslims" as persons of the religion as whole, or
just against the goals or actions of just some militant or extremist Muslims?

The messages of the protest were "solution to islamic terrorism -> ted cruz"
(obviously a call to the solution of the assumed problem through voting, that
is, politically, they refer to:
[https://www.tedcruz.org/](https://www.tedcruz.org/) ) and "stop the
islamization of america" according to the picture from the same site:

[http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/files/2015/11/pan.jpg](http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/files/2015/11/pan.jpg)

Isn't even filing such event as something "against Muslims" (implying "in
general") a big misinterpretation? Who benefits from such misinterpretations?

And did the protesters break any law?

~~~
halflings
How is a protest against "islam the religion as a whole" where people protest
by wielding guns is acceptable?

The main theme is pretty clear here: "Against the islamization of America" And
they're standing outside a mosque holding rifles.

The precise reason is written in the article: "he was convinced that Irving’s
mosque had established the country’s first Islamic court earlier in the year—a
false rumor that started online but grew in popularity after Mayor Beth Van
Duyne made it the focus of speeches to Tea Party groups.

“They shut the illegal court down,” Wright said, incorrectly. “And then, they
threatened to kill the mayor.”"

A bunch of gun-wielding lunatics that think mosques are setting up secret
courts.

~~~
acqq
> How is a protest against "islam the religion as a whole" where people
> protest by wielding guns is acceptable?

My argument was, it wasn't "against Muslims" as a whole but just against
"islamization" by supporting the candidate of protesters, that makes a big
difference. For example, Ataturk was effectively against islamization of
Turkey, as its top political leader, and made it much more modern and more
secular state, ending sharia courts in 1924. Which was a worthy goal for
anybody who wasn't an islamist.

