> It was the first time that Smaker realized that her film might be controversial. “She hadn’t seen the film,” Smaker recalls, “but seemed unhappy that I — as a non-Muslim — was making a film about Muslims.” After she saw it, Chehab went on to write on the TRT World website: “The only perspective needed is the Muslim one. . . . When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic, my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn’t.”
I would encourage folks to resist seeing this as “white versus brown” or “Muslim versus non-Muslim.” Identity politics is not sectarian politics—groups of people with common interests aligning against other groups with different interests. It’s about using identity as currency in politics.
Note the phrasing: “the Muslim [view] … my voice.” The same people who say they don’t want white people to speak also usually don’t want other Muslims, with different viewpoints, to speak either. What she wants to do is to speak for Muslims—use them as silent weight to bolster her own point of view.
I agree, especially because there is no "muslim view" actually here since they disagree.
That said it is important to keep in mind that the biggest defenders or retarded practices are often the ones victim of it. Same for excision in Africa.. its often the grandmother who take the little girls to the "doctor" to have it "performed".. so its not a generality
I will refrain from commenting on the specifics of this situation. But I’m curious if the logical fallacy of appealing to group authority is a new rhetorical tactic or simply an old one that we’ve leaned into. Nixon’s appeal to the silent majority a generation ago sounds quite similar.
Perhaps the difference is that the old tactic did not tell one group to “shut up” as the newer tactics did. Did Nixon do that? I’m too young to remember
Yes, Nixon did - frequently. However in fairness this did lead to his resignation.
As I recall there have been other famous examples of us vs. them rhetoric dating back to the Roman empire. However it's tough to be rigorous about the frequency of this ocurence.
I'm writing this as an Iranian immigrant, and feel compelled to say so because it is apparently and depressingly necessary in order to lend legitimacy to my statements (though I don't think it does).
The idea that a white American can't understand non-white non-American views, makes the same amount of sense the other way around. Both ways around need a great deal of research by the ones trying to understand, and I believe she's tried her best.
I'll go even further and say that she understands some things better than those in the culture she's covering, since she's an outside observer, giving her some objectivity that those inside can't have. I know I have this with the particular "white" culture I'm integrating into right now.
I will say that there are some things she'll find difficult to impossible to grasp -- and might not even realise she's missing -- but to say she's not even allowed to try belittles us as human beings. This exclusionary race mentality can go away.
Even if the film was made by a non-white non-American muslim, the implication of their reasoning would be that any white/American/non-muslim wouldn’t be able to properly understand the film.
This comes close to denying that there can ever be an understanding between cultures at all.
It is peculiar how the segregationist isolationists and cancel-culture-peddlers use exactly the same lines of reasoning, while 1 gets tagged as racist and the other a radically anti-racist.
It is about time for people to look at the core ethics that guide either thought and at least draw the association between the two. What to name this collective community is anyone's guess, but at least the cognitive dissonance will be gone.
To aspire to understand each other is at the core of facilitating diversity and inclusion. That includes asking stupid questions, difficult questions and sometimes offensive questions. It includes tolerating faux pas and cultural appropriation.
And lastly, it requires treating other communities with the capacity for occasionally just as much good and at other times just as much malice as any other community suffering from the human condition.
It’s not just peculiar, the fight against the injustices of racism has become racist. They aren’t separate now, they are actually the same.
Having spent so long fighting against something, the movement has accepted the premise of the things they were fighting against and started fighting for it. Reinforcing separation between people, putting labels on a person, and declaring what a person is allowed to do based on those labels.
They are explicitly for dividing people into races and giving each of those groups permissions.
Racism = being in favor of dividing people into races.
Luckily you posted this anonymously because if your name was ever tied to a comment like this, you'd face the wrath of the woke mob. Your comment is extremely benign as far as "right-wing" comments go, but if you would've posted this on your company Slack, you'd be crucified.
Thank you for posting this. Many of us agree with you.
That’s a claim but it’s not true. If you actually talk to people you’ll find out that the crazy cancel racist left is actually a very small loud group and few real people actually align with them. The rest of the left just doesn’t speak up because they don’t care to get into fights.
To throwawayallday's point though, I do think there's two large trends that tend to lead to this sort of labelling, one in America, and one in the context of the Anglosphere and much of Europe.
In America the Democrats, as the left-er of the two major parties, tend to bend heavily to the will of any adjacent loud minority and eagerly adopt their rhetoric, even if they don't adopt their policies. This gets amplified in both directions by social media, especially Twitter, where advocates press politicians for vocal sup[port, that when given increases the demand and visibility of these requests, ad infinitum.
In the Anglosphere and much of Europe, there is a common pattern of some subset of (usually young) people viewing all issues, even local ones, through an American lens. I have no idea how America established such an overwhelming level of political-cultural imperialism in the last decade or so, but at this point it seems ubiquitous. A discussion on America's policies causes everyone else to examine and start dialogue on their own policies, almost without fail. This leads to any American hot button issues becoming the issue of the week for dozens of countries, and it's all framed through American battle lines.
Yeah. I feel weird that BLM movement is treated as a global problem, like OSS project or GCP API page have static banner for that. I completely agree for BLM and racial crimination is a worldwide problem, but BLM (specifically blacks are killed by police) is a specific problem in the US.
I've only had much experience with US culture in the USA, and living in Japan. I guess the language/cultural barrier between the US and Japan is still substantial enough that US politics don't really make their way into the Japanese zeitgeist, since I never heard anything about US politics from anyone I know living there other than Americans.
The article is written by Sebastian Junger, an author and documentary-maker who co-directed Restrepo with Tim Hetherington. He also used to own a bar in Manhattan called The Half King.
When Hetherington was killed in 2011, The Half King was soon filled with Hetherington's incredible war photography, which was an odd thing to look at if you were there for a quick pint after work, but a good way to remember an incredible photojournalist.
I almost stopped listening pretty early on because she was all over the place with her talking points, but am really glad I listened to the end. It was a fascinating and moving story.
Tangentially related is the recently rebroadcasted episode with Yasmine Mohammed, who wrote the book "Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam". Related to the woke mob losing it's sanity when it comes to Islam and specifically relevant to the recent Iranian protests.
I heard about this first from Sam Harris’ podcast. Then went to the go fund me, and Harris gave $25k! I’m not sure why she doesn’t run a kick starter as well. I’d pay to get a digital download of the movie.
The adulation towards voluntary segregation disturbs me. I can't help but explain this queer desire as some sort of side effect of the various "bans" against discrimination. As best I can tell, regardless of circumstance or intent, there is a fundamental hunger for sameness, and the exclusion of otherness.
I don't see that as good or bad, but merely a confusion of ideas counter to everything the world seems to bombard and repeat and echo, on some kind of loop.
I just wish everyone would make up their mind and move on with living.
People never changed their attitudes, they just updated their language and their branding. In every era and in every identity group you have your MLK's and your Malcolm X's.
You know, I'm reminded of a topic that I brought up with some friends of mine just the other day.
I hope this doesn't come off as sounding "preachy" since I've been warned by the mods in the past for "preaching". I think it does fit the topic though:
"Food will not make us acceptable to God. We are not inferior if we don’t eat, and we are not better if we do eat. But be careful that this right of yours in no way becomes a stumbling block to the weak."
1 Corinthians 8:8-9 (HCSB)
I see it as something to the affect of, no matter what time we look at the world, posturing of some sort, over some reason, carries an inherent risk of: belittling those who do not do as we do, while artificially glorifying our own position, through a means of self-defined terms and metrics. That there is a push to not just to do what is right because it is right, but instead to do what is right because of how it makes us appear.
I think that there is a matter of arrogance, pride, and glory that each of us needs to struggle with on our own terms, to find a means to humble ourselves and show humility to others. Some way of reminding ourselves that our "greatness" (good + extra works) is merely a thing that is defined by some arbitrary, outside force of what is right. Instead, we raise ourselves up because of whatever stick we use to measure by.
I'm not even sure if the people who enact this kind of rhetoric perceive their own actions in the heat of the moment. There is a sort of self-induced high we get through "going the extra mile" by insisting on be not just right, but extra right.
I hope that makes sense. It's hard to really put into words; it sounds kind of pseudo-intelectual. I just mean something like: if a man is sitting in a chair, he is not raised up off the floor just because he pulls upward from the legs of the chair. I think it's a thing we're all prone to doing. It really seems to be a matter of recognizing the risks of that thing, and being able to say "I was wrong" and turn away from it when we finally see the error.
I hope that the sorts who push for this voluntary segregation stuff do see the severe error in it. I guess I just still have some kind of twinge of regret in even holding them accountable for it, because I have absolutely tried to posture myself as better than everyone else many times, for very little reason or incentive - I just had the luck of it not making it to a national/international spotlight.
Freedom of association is a freedom many (most?) people like and practice all the time, by peacefully self-sorting (interests, beliefs, consumption choices, moving to new place). "The Big Sort" etc.
Though it does seem almost schizophrenic that everyone preaches the opposite as the highest virtue, while doing it.
Some groups and even countries do it more than others.
Sounds like it isn't a "woke mob" coming after her, but the actual subjects of the film really feel like they're being taken advantage of, their perspectives are really distorted and they felt she was re-interrogating them. The idea that the film is being cancelled solely because the filmmaker is a white woman seems to be being pushed by the filmmaker.
It doesn't seem obvious to me that we should happily censor a film because the subjects of the film don't like it.
Suppose we did a film about the Sackler family https://www.hulu.com/series/the-crime-of-the-century-63a06ef... and the Sackler family says they don't like it -- they feel they were misrepresented, and claim they didn't consent to participation, despite having signed consent documents. Is that legitimate grounds to censor the film?
Some may feel that the Sackler situation is different. You might see the Sackler family as known "oppressors" and "bad guys". And you might see Guantánamo detainees as "victims of oppression" -- perhaps you even think they're "good guys".
I don't think this argument works -- it is exactly through documentaries such as this that we can form accurate opinions about who is a "good guy" or "bad guy"; who is the "oppressor" vs "victim of oppression". If we allow anyone claiming to be a "victim of oppression" to censor stuff that makes them look bad, that just serves to lock in our current views regarding who is a "victim of oppression" -- which means we won't be able to update those views as more evidence comes in, or as circumstances on the ground change.
If someone doesn't like a documentary that was made about them, they can do a point-by-point refutation. Censorship doesn't seem like a good solution.
It isn't being censored. Private institutions like film festivals shouldn't be compelled to show it if they find that they agree more with the petition by the subjects of the film. Other institutions can show it if they like. That is just freedom of association.
The way I'm using the word "censorship", it applies even if done by a private entity. For example, if B&N removed a top selling book from their shelves due to a pressure campaign from people who disliked the book, I'd say B&N was censoring the book.
I don't advocate using government force to compel film festivals to show particular films.
Do you feel the same way when conservatives protest to remove childrens books on LGBTQ+ stories from childrens school reading lists? Essentially, the book is still available in other channels.
I think you're missing the point. The point is not about who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, who's a victim or an oppressor; it's about honesty.
If you do an adversary investigation about the Sacklers, using public footage or even private conversations that you obtained without them participating in any way, then sure you don't have to care about what they think.
But if you do a documentary where you ask for your subjects' help, then you owe them something, and the least you can do is not exploit or spin their testimony to fit a specific point of view -- esp. a point of view they would discover after the fact. That's a betrayal.
(I don't know if that applies to the film in question, which I haven't seen.)
>But if you do a documentary where you ask for your subjects' help, then you owe them something, and the least you can do is not exploit or spin their testimony to fit a specific point of view -- esp. a point of view they would discover after the fact. That's a betrayal.
It sounds like you are saying that it's unethical to include interviews in a documentary unless the interviewee is on board with the message of the documentary?
I don't agree with this claim either.
Suppose I'm a documentary filmmaker approaching the Sackler story with an open mind. I call up the Sacklers and say: "Would you like to tell your side of the story on camera?" They say yes. I interview them.
As I continue investigating, I discover lots of evidence that the Sacklers are villains, and their villainy ends up being the message of my documentary.
The Sacklers watch my film and discover it has a point of view they dislike. They feel that they've been exploited, that their testimony was spun, and that I owed it to them to not betray them this way, since they helped me with the documentary.
Do you agree with the Sacklers in this hypothetical?
Personally, I don't find the argument as stated particularly persuasive. If the Sacklers could demonstrate that their interview footage was cut in a way that misrepresented what they said, then I'd find fault with the documentarian on the grounds of making a misleading documentary. But I don't believe in a reciprocity obligation of the kind you describe. It seems to me that such an obligation is incompatible with the idea of investigative journalism.
Side note: In practice, it is already in the self-interest of journalists to play this kind of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" game, in order to gain continued access to their subjects. I don't think it is a good idea to pile additional enforcement on top of the incentives that already exist.
My reading of the Guardian article is that the men feel they were interviewed under false pretenses. If true, that begs the question of the ethics of filmmaker. It also highlights a concern that those rushing to defend the film are either okay with the subjects being lied to or aren't aware of the primary criticisms.
Could you quote specific passages of the Guardian article that support the idea that they were interviewed under false pretenses? I just skimmed it a second time and nothing is jumping out to me as support for that idea.
This paragraph is where I inferred this, especially the second portion I'm putting down in the second >
> Mohammed Al-Hamiri, one of the men featured in the film, told the Guardian that he wasn’t aware the film would be accessible internationally and only found out that it had been made available online after its showing at Sundance. “My life is already difficult but this film poses a serious threat to my life and that of my family,” said Al-Hamiri.
> *Another man said that he had explicitly told the film-maker that he did not want to be featured in the film but his wishes had been disregarded.* The film’s director Meg Smaker says that all the participants in the film signed consent documents and denied that the men expressed any fears in correspondence with her.
Personally, I am more or less ambivalent to the film currently as I've only heard about it due to the controversy and that Sam Harris covered it. Perhaps it's extremely meaningful and perhaps not, I haven't had time to process it.
> Do you agree with the Sacklers in this hypothetical?
Yes, I think I would. I think the proper behavior in that case would be to return to them after you decide they're the villains, and let them respond to that. If they chose not to, fine, you can go ahead with the original footage. But if they choose to answer your new questions, you should include those too.
Sounds like we may be more or less in agreement then -- my proposed solution was to have Sundance show the film and include an addendum from the subjects at the end https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33215012 (last paragraph)
The facts of the Sackler family's behavior are well known and do not need a documentary to reveal them, a documentary merely provides more depth and context so you can form your own picture of the complete person or the nuances of their behavior. It is pretty reasonable to decide that they are "bad guys" without ever watching a documentary about them.
The flipside is also quite reasonable here. I don't need to watch a documentary in order to decide that people horribly abused in American prisons are victims, the facts are pretty clear on that. (A bad person can, also, for reference, be a victim simultaneously.)
As for whether a point-by-point refutation is the best and only remedy, that seems to require that the victim automatically have access to the resources necessary to air their refutation where viewers of the documentary will see it. Will the National Review bump an opinion column by a Republican senator in order to publish an opinion column by a Muslim detainee instead? "The remedy for speech is more speech" style defenses assume that everyone has equal access to speech and everyone's speech will be heard equally. Neither of those are true when we're talking about released films.
The world is in fact full of examples where victims are defamed in public and are not offered a real opportunity to refute it, in some cases in fact in the National Review, which published this piece. I think it's generally fine that things work that way, but you need to keep it in mind when making arguments of the sort.
I think it is worth distinguishing "conventional wisdom says X" and "the facts are clear that X". Bloodletting was standard medical practice for 100s of years. If you asked a doctor from 500 years ago whether bloodletting helped patients, they would probably say: "the facts are clear that bloodletting helps".
Just in the past few years we've seen some major examples of conventional wisdom being overturned. For example, very early in the COVID-19 pandemic, conventional wisdom was that wearing a mask wasn't helpful. Then the conventional wisdom was that wearing a mask should be obligatory. In 2016, the conventional wisdom was that Donald Trump couldn't win, and that didn't work out so well either.
The real world is often complicated enough that careful analysis is required to get to the bottom of an issue. If conventional wisdom doesn't derive from someone somewhere doing a careful analysis in some way shape or form, I consider it suspect -- akin to an uninvestigated urban legend.
To do a careful analysis you'll want to look at all the important facts, including new facts, and facts that are problematic for your current point of view. If people are suppressing the circulation of important facts by saying "we know these facts are harmful due to [conventional wisdom]", they're interfering with the very process by which conventional wisdom can be made accurate. It's like climbing to the top of a tree and chopping at the trunk below you.
The global war on terror is actually a great case study here. Right after the Sept 11 attacks, it was conventional wisdom that terrorism was a Big Deal, Something Had To Be Done, and people who asked inconvenient questions were Helping The Terrorists. If those inconvenient questions had seen the light of day instead of being suppressed, maybe conventional wisdom would've come more in line with a careful analysis which accounted for all the important considerations, and we could've conducted the "war on terror" in a more intelligent and humane way.
>As for whether a point-by-point refutation is the best and only remedy, that seems to require that the victim automatically have access to the resources necessary to air their refutation where viewers of the documentary will see it. Will the National Review bump an opinion column by a Republican senator in order to publish an opinion column by a Muslim detainee instead? "The remedy for speech is more speech" style defenses assume that everyone has equal access to speech and everyone's speech will be heard equally. Neither of those are true when we're talking about released films.
When it comes to speech suppression I think this is almost always an orthogonal issue. It seems clear in this case that the subjects of the documentary have a big platform -- big enough that they were able to get the film pulled from Sundance. If the film is a misrepresentation, they can use their platform to explain why, rather than using their platform to get it pulled. If Sundance is worried that festivalgoers won't hear their side of the story, they could let the subjects of the documentary send a video of themselves doing a rebuttal, and play that video as an addendum to the main film.
When there’s an open letter signed by lots of people who are guaranteed to be woke (documentary filmmakers!!), few of which have actually seen the film, how is that not a woke mob?
In the Sam Harris podcast Making Sense the director clears up the claim made by the guardian. If you’re interested in getting a better factual grounding on this issue I would recommend listen to it. In addition, the NYT article shows many inaccurate steps like the guardians and others took when writing about a film they hadn’t seen and simply passed along the protested opinion of others who they themselves didn’t see the film.
The National Review was a loud mouthpiece for the politicians promoting the war on terror, including the use of enhanced-interrogation-teqniues-don’t-call-it-torture. A piece of that national shame is all theirs.
I guess it’s nice they don’t seem to support it anymore, but it looks more like a shift of convenience to me — the better to stroke the current conservative narrative to redefine “free speech” so as to cast speech they dislike as “cancellation”, that it can be repressed while still claiming to own the moral high-ground.
>The National Review was a loud mouthpiece for the politicians promoting the war on terror, including the use of enhanced-interrogation-teqniues-don’t-call-it-torture. A piece of that national shame is all theirs.
Do you have a citation for this?
- - -
Supposing a journalist submits an article to the editor-in-chief, and the article expresses disagreement with a position that the publication took in the past. If the editor-in-chief says "no you can't say that, we need to present a consistent perspective for our readers", I'm less interested in reading their publication. This appears to be a case of the editor of the National Review passing that test.
>I guess it’s nice they don’t seem to support it anymore, but it looks more like a shift of convenience to me — the better to stroke the current conservative narrative to redefine “free speech” so as to cast speech they dislike as “cancellation”, that it can be repressed while still claiming to own the moral high-ground.
I don't understand how the national review writer could write this and not realize the documentary was unethical. Why is "carceral system" in scare quotes? By their own description the facility obviously meets the definition.
Yes, it's impossible to know for sure to what extent and how the men might have been threatened. That doesn't mean you throw up your hands and say "whatever, I now have no moral obligations".
> The accusation was rooted in the question of free consent: Even if the men signed release forms — which they did — they might have done so only because they were under the control of a “carceral system.” If that were true, though, it could be equally true that the men were forced to criticize the film and affirm the claims in CAGE’s letter. Either way, the idea that Smaker had coerced her subjects into cooperating and put them at risk became a doc-world trope that was impossible to disprove, because, by order of the Saudi state, the men were prohibited from communicating with anyone outside the country without permission.
> By your logic, any documentary that interviews prison inmates would be unethical.
All ethical filmmakers carefully consider ethics in situations where people might feel compelled to participate. Prison is one such situation.
I'm not saying it's impossible to ethically film inmates, but it is very worrying she brushes off the possibility she might need to carefully consider it.
It's (almost always) unethical to interview inmates held in repressive dictatorships because there are so many different ways you can violate their rights and put them at risk.
Smaker, who had already been cleared for contact, was in touch with three of the men throughout the months after Sundance. None of them ever brought up issues raised in the CAGE letter, and one even called recently to say — in a voicemail — that he missed her and wanted to know when she was coming back to Saudi Arabia for a visit.
Even on the face of it, a white woman in Saudi Arabia, probably isn’t running around a rehab centre without authorities knowing what she was up to.
> None of them ever brought up issues raised in the CAGE letter, and one even called recently to say
The article acknowledges these men are being held captive until the Saudi government decides they're properly reformed, and restricts what they're allowed to say. How can you trust they're genuinely consenting in that environment.
> Even on the face of it, a white woman in Saudi Arabia, probably isn’t running around a rehab centre without authorities knowing what she was up to.
You've got the problem completely backwards: I'm not worried she's sneaking behind the government's back, I'm worried because she let the Saudi government puppet her into making propaganda for them.
This framing of protest as "cancellation" in the context of supporting free speech is something I find perculiar. Surely protest is speech? If that is the case then if you support free speech you must logically support both the right to the original speech and the right of others to protest that speech.
When people say that people signed a letter denouncing the documentary without seeing it that's a little bit wide of the mark also. If free speech is a right that is to have any meaning whatsoever, it must certainly include the right to be wrong, not fully informed etc. If that's not the case, then speech can be shot down by saying the speaker doesn't have the right because they haven't done their research or the sources are inaccurate etc.
If I use my influential speech to get you to cancel a project or to have it removed from every major streaming service, am I merely exercising in free speech or also using social pressure to prevent you from speaking? The point here isn't that people are uninformed (that's bad, but obviously allows allowed) - it's that one group is demanding that something does not air and is claiming sole moral and cultural authority to do this. While it's their right to claim this, the consequences for everyone else are that they lose the ability to actually make the choices of which film they want to see on streaming services because another group has removed that ability. Why shouldn't the film air, and if it's terrible and awful beyond belief in every way, then the creators will forever have their names sullied? The reasoning here isn't even whether the film is good, but who the creator is, and not even because they've done anything bad really but because the single person the critics have focused on happens to be white.
You're making a completely false dichotomy. The complaint is not that people are just protesting the movie. It's that they're applying a lot of pressure on many parties to cancel the movie.
E.g. we're not talking about holding signs at the conference. We're talking about calling translators who worked on the movie, and telling them "denounce this film or we will make sure you never get another arab translation job again".
Not all speech is equivalent. Speech which is arranging a hit job is not protected free speech. Speech which is fraud is not free speech.
"I don't agree with this movie and I won't be watching it," is an expression of opinion and is completely fine with me.
"Withdraw the movie from the program and defund it," is a call for hostile action. Not as bad as "burn the director at stake", but still. I don't think it should be illegal to call for such measures, but it should be considered deeply shameful, on the level of advocating for slavery or torture.
You are doing the very thing you're criticizing here. Freedom of speech apparently includes making a movie, protesting that movie (both true) but not counter-protesting.
You've drawn that inference completely without support from what I wrote. I wholeheartedly support the movie, the protests about the movie and the protests about the protests about the movie. I don't agree with this categorization of protest as somehow different from the original expression in terms of free speech protection.
What's remarkable is that I can't imagine anything will happen to the activists behind the cancellation. They will lose no credibility. Have no drop in reputation. No public ridicule. They'll simply move on to the next target in the hopes that they will bend the knee with less resistance than Meg.
Doing these cancellations is effectively risk-free, and only incurs the opportunity cost of not deploying time onto a higher ROI target.
No idea what can be done about that in the current cultural climate.
What we can do is wait: as with all bad things, the more it happens the less it works: one day, being "cancelled" by morons will be as seeked by film markers as having a fatwah or a catholic church disapproval. It will mean you say something new, exciting and maybe even revealing.
Accusations are easy and can be made in seconds, a defense takes care and thought. See politicians lying impromptu, and journalists spending hours on debunking.
Great article and great story. It's not a rant against cancel culture, but a close look at the movie, the director, and the theme. It's well worth a read.
I don’t think this is good for her in the end. Sure, she’s got a lot of media coverage, but what about her career as a documentary filmmaker? Surely the better outcome would be the film screened at Sundance.
Please think more about this. The film is currently not being distributed. The crew was tracked down and threatened to disavow the film or not find further work.
That is absolutely cancel culture. That there is subsequent news coverage (still no easy way to watch the film!) doesn’t change that.
The safest play is to create all art as metaphor, just as the writers of great Russian literature did. You can’t be too plain spoken because that opens you up to attack by the mob. Rather, hide your meaning and the censors won’t feel it necessary to ban.
Introduce mandatory "what did the author mean" classes in schools, where children write down the one true interpretation of a corpus of sanctioned texts from preferably >100 years ago, under dictation, for many years; until they are completely incapable of approaching a work of art to understand it for themselves.
It's not 100% effective, but the remaining few percent end up mentally ill, so it's a win-win!
If the kids in question don't approach literature on their own with the intent to understand it they're not going to far well in that metric anyway, no matter how counter-productive the education system is.
They're just kids. Thrown into a hellscape of their parents' creation :) Do you think they're supposed to just somehow intuit out of thin air that there's such a thing as "literature" and that one is supposed to "understand it"? I thought they were supposed to teach them things like that in school - otherwise what's the excuse for having those classes in the first place?
The classes are dysfunctional and meant as a compromise between various groups in a society. But even in some Montessori paradise, a kid will need to have a natural impulse to get anywhere. It's not so much that a kid is supposed to intuit things out of thin air, but rather that the type of person who does well with literature or even approaches it at all will almost always also be the type of person that has already has this natural intuition and motivation. What great teachers can do is lend a spark to the wick, and luckily these specialists seem to magically appear when they are needed to the most, but even the most skilled farmer can't grow wheat out of rocks.
Stories of children failing state tests, because they provided an "incorrect interpretation" of a literary work, where the author after the fact states that it was actually a good interpretation, are plentiful. Education system really does punish interpreting things differently than prescribed.
You went to a school that actually taught you how to think? Consider yourself privileged, my friend.
The Prussian system of education, which is at the root of contemporary compulsory schooling, was designed to produce machine operators and obedient soldiers, not necessarily to educate anyone - the idealism of individual teachers notwithstanding.
This is standard operating procedure, and definitely my own personal experience during middle and high school. Do this over a couple of generations and you get a population largely incapable of basic reflection.
And since this form of "education" is, in fact, nonsensical, parents end up paying for tutoring so their kids can pass an equally nonsensical mandatory exam, so that they (supposedly) get better prospects. So teachers get a lucrative side gig giving private lessons to keep the system going, and as they get complacent, they become complicit.
Maybe in your community things are laid out different. Either way, larger populations still end up having a "critical mass" of eloquent people maintaining the tradition of the written word, and the benefits it provides to society; smaller ones just get dispossessed at scale. This contributes to consolidation of power, the establishment of global oligopolies that hold back progress for the sake of their bottom line, etc.
> The “authorship” or “inclusion” principle, as this is known, insists that filmmakers share the ethnic and cultural identity of their subjects. According to these standards, not only are outsiders incapable of understanding the experiences of others, they don’t even have the right to try; to do otherwise would be to take an opportunity away from a better-qualified person of color. As a white American, Smaker would be wildly inappropriate for a film about the Muslim world.
Certain sectors of the US government wouldn't be above starting a distracting fracas like this (and it's so very easy with useful idiots doing most of the work once it gets going) in order to silence, or more like drown out, a film that calls out the injustice that was done or dares to portray the victims as human. We're sitting here talking about not that, so it's working.
Google still has indexed her site. Is that odd? If I search for Jihad rehab, it's the top hit on bing and duckduckgo... but its nowhere to be found on google.
I wonder what is more terrifying, knowing that the people in her industry are cancelling her, or knowing the extremely high likelihood that islamist fanatics might permanently cancel her?
> But attacks would come from the left, not the right. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.
> Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.
> Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, had been the executive producer of “Jihad Rehab” and called it “freaking brilliant” in an email to Ms. Smaker. Now she disavowed it.
> The film “landed like a truckload of hate,” Ms. Disney wrote in an open letter.
You may not refer to it as a "woke mob", but that really seems what happened. As someone who has always identified as liberal, it is absolutely shocking to me how large swaths of the American left are OK with the idea that "Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men". To me, telling someone they aren't allowed to do something because of their race is the absolute antithesis of everything I felt it was to be "liberal".
Well the recent leaked LA city council tape should dispel any notions that left wing politicians aren’t racist. In fact the race-essentialism of the left is laid bare in that tape. “He’s with the blacks” etc.
In particular anti-semitism is usually associated with the right, but it has a pretty long tradition on the left as well. The 60s in the communist block were a good display of that, but also the 40s in France (Tony Judt wrote a couple books about that, e.g. the French Communist Party, as depicted in The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century).
Secular urban-Turkish-style Muslims are in the minority though. I agree people shouldn’t make sweeping statements, but the majority are indeed patriarchal conservatives.
And while there are definitely understandable concerns about interviewing a basically imprisoned population, 1. the fact that only a handful of prisoners opted to speak while the rest declined shows that they did have at least some degree of choice, and 2. the viewer can balance what the documentary presents against the circumstances in which it was created.
Considering the actual content of the documentary it’s hard to see how else this story could be told.
Finally, I thought we were past the whole “only people of a community can make stories about that community” thing. It would be one thing if someone with a similar background had stayed in the facility for a year and also made an equivalent story. Arguably they should get higher weight. But no one else did. This story is not displacing anyone else. In its absence all we have is a vacuum.
You need to realize that mobs are a real thing and in this case, they ruined a woman’s career for completely constructed, ridiculous reasons. This kind of behavior is disgusting. I don’t know why you describe this article as “whining”. This person had nearly a decade of her life’s work torn apart by people who only see the world through the lens of power and oppression, and whose only goals are to endlessly virtue signal to one another while creating nothing of value themselves.
In short, 'American imperialism is the root cause of 9/11.' Which happens to be the same explanation of everything since the end of 1991 according to the most dull and, sadly, seemingly most common strain of post-Soviet Marxist thought.
In that Marxism requires massive amounts of violence to push its political stance, and that the system itself views continuous violent oppression as the only way to implement and maintain itself?
This is all reminiscent of the 80s and 90s Christian right groups picketing outside of Rock and Roll concerts demanding that Marilyn Manson be forbidden from playing in their town because of his corrupting influence on the youth, that his music was going to lead to real physical harm. Same with dungeons and dragons before that. Had any of them ever listened to that music? Ever played a D&D session? Nope.
It's interesting how easy it was to ignore and ridicule those movements at the time, we'd go "ah, those silly fundies", how quaint. Remember Kevin Smith picketing with them outside of movie theaters at the Dogma premiere? We got a good chuckle out of it.
Yet look at how seriously the same people are taking the current flavor of moral panic.
Yes, McCarthyism and the censorship you highlight above were a poison of the right; modern cancel-culture is a poison of the left.
It is depressing how blind the left (my side!) are to it, you still see them denying it or - now that the mainstream has become aware of it and they are on the defensive - excusing it with nonsense about "accountability/call-out/consequence culture".
> This is all reminiscent of the 80s and 90s Christian right groups picketing outside of Rock and Roll concerts
The PMRC was an absolutely bipartisan effort. Tipper Gore was a founding member, and probably the most prominent person amongst their leadership. Probably a good idea to try and project your biases onto history a little less.
It's very unclear what you're saying. Are you saying the Tipper Gore is/was right wing? Are you saying that censoring music isn't something from the right wing of the political spectrum?
It’s very clear what I’m saying. The PMRC (which was the most influential music censorship lobby in the 80s and 90s) was a bipartisan organisation. To claim the music censorship initiatives of that period were right wing is simply to project one’s own biases onto history, and is trivially falsifiable.
Were the protests outside concerts also bi-partisan in nature or were they organised by Christian groups? I think the protests are different to the PMRC actions.
Edit: actually ignore me. I don't think we have matching definitions of left and right wing. And I definitely don't have knowledge of whether the US Democrats are left wing by any definition I'd use
> Were the protests outside concerts also bi-partisan in nature or were they organised by Christian groups?
In the 80s and 90s, about 90% of US adults identified as Christian. So your question here doesn’t really make sense.
> I don't think we have matching definitions of left and right wing
I’m getting the impression that your idea of “right wing” is just all the things that you don’t like, such as Christianity. Irrespective of actual the histories of right and left wing politics…
I think you're jumping to conclusions about my opinions with very few data points. I'm not from your country so I'm also not sure what history we'd be looking out without a lot of 'true scotsman' arguments about definitions.
As for Christianity, I hope we can agree that the teachings of Jesus are quite to the left on the political spectrum.
I don't remember where, but I heard a podcast with someone who did music promotion for some of these artists. They would call the newspapers and feed them stories about the terrible musicians who do things like "eat bats live on stage", to get outraged parents to boycott these concerts. This was a very successful promotional effort for them.
Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday talks a bunch about how much of outrage about movies and music has actually been intentionally manufactured by guerilla marketers in order to promote the product to edgy teens wanting to purchase a controversial product that their stuffy conservative parents hate.
I wouldn't be completely shocked if some of the initial outrage about Jihad Rehab was triggered by a shrewd marketer, similarly how marketers would tip off the Tucker Max movie screenings to feminist organizations around campuses in the hopes that they would call for a cancellation.
Doubt we'll ever see the evidence for that though.
Is there any metal album that you can play backward and it says "Praise Jesus, my lord and savior!" I wonder what the Christian groups would do with that?
It continued all the way into the 2000s. A particularly stupid episode was the outcry around Mass Effect, which was thankfully short-lived due to Geoff Keighley's excellent response [1]. I'm not sure if it's a coincidence, but the moral panic around video games seemed to die down around the time Jack Thompson was disbarred.
Famously, after Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, a flood of derogatory letters were published in Soviet newspapers, each beginning with "I have not read the novel..."
As a result, Pasternak was forced to decline the Nobel Prize.
Though with the dirtbag left now flirting with being "trad cath" and softening towards racial realism, it does seem like it's approach the intellectual fascism of the nazis.
This is incorrect in its facts and framing. I’m not going to get into a long political discussion, this doesn’t seem the place for it, but I would implore you to look further into this before you start throwing words like fascism and nazi around when you’re talking about people who basically want to give everyone free healthcare.
You can have authoritarian left and authoritarian right. That's not really related to healthcare. Authoritarians tend towards abuses of power - I kind of don't find it terribly relevant if millions were killed or imprisoned because of the differences in their ideals, which is what the horseshoe theory speaks to. What it speaks to is mainly that the methods - e.g. unconstrained power of an executive or government, become more similar than not as extremism increases. It's not really saying that the ideology necessarily comes to match, only that the ideology matters less than whatever horrible things are coming your way, beliefs be damned.
In the UK it’s the far left (Labour after it was taken over by Momentum) who’ve had major issues with antisemitism and ignored it for years until they were forced to take action. Thirty years ago it would have been the far right.
Momentum isn’t far left, the Communist Party of Britain is. Labour wasn’t taken over by Momentum, people that liked Corbyn joined Labour. And finally, antisemitism accusations were used cynically by the right of Labour for years, trying to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Have a look at the Labour Files at least.
> Momentum isn’t far left, the Communist Party of Britain is.
If you support terror groups - and I mean in the strictest sense, as in people that attack civilians - you're on the far edge of politics. Before you shout that Corbyn was 'reaching out' to terrorists by saying they're his friends, that punishing people that killed innocent people in Brighton was a show trial, or laying wreaths at their funerals: everyone involved in Northern Ireland or the Middle East peace processes claims that Corbyn, a Labour back bencher at the time, had nothing to do with either of the Northern Ireland or the Middle East peace process.
> People that liked Corbyn joined Labour
Because of a Momentum campaign that cynically exploited a brief moment allowing anyone to join the Labour party for 5 pounds.
> antisemitism accusations were used cynically by the right of Labour for years
And obviously the far left is still denying them even after the party's own investigation found they had substance.
You’re just spitting out agitprop with no underlying point except “left bad.” It’s not well thought out or discussed with room to agree or disagree, or even based in fact, you’re basically just shouting into the void about something you don’t like. That brings down the level of discourse here, and belongs on Facebook where you can share memes with a bunch of smooth brained people that agree with you.
If you think my points are issues with the mainstream left rather than the far left I don’t think you’ve been reading the posts you keep writing replies to.
I’m not going to put effort into describing where and why you’re wrong, I don’t think talking to you is worth the effort. You’ll never change your beliefs.
Fair enough. I’ll point out as that as the person complaining about the level of discourse you’re the only person in this conversation that has resorted to insults and refused to address reasonable questions.
Yes, the Nazi state existed for the Volk[1], the Nazis' economic policy was that of privatization[2] and Social Darwinism. Universal healthcare as implemented in Germany in the 1800's covered more groups than what the Nazis considered the Volk, depending on the implementation, free universal healthcare flies in the face of economic privatization, and Nazis' Social Darwinism said that the weak who can't take care of themselves should be culled.
Nazis piggybacked on the popularity of socialist movements at the time, but the Nazis were explicitly not Marxist-inspired socialists, they say so themselves. According to them, they re-appropriated the word to redefine it to something else, an ideology opposed to socialism that was meant to empower the Volk[1].
According to the Nazis, Marxism, socialism and communism were Jewish conspiracies to weaken the Volk. They chose to redefine the popular term so that it is explicitly divorced from its Marxist origins to mean something else entirely. Marxist socialism is explicitly about workers owning the means of production, while Nazism exalts the Volk and seeks to restore the domination of the German people/Volk.
I don’t follow your logic- my statement was that that the nazis openly considered themselves socialists and class warfare was a huge part of nazi ideology. Your state that’s probably false - but then don’t prove either of those statements false. It’s entirely possible to fight between factions of the same side of politics.
Ridiculous. Like I said, goldfish brained thinking. If you read just a little bit and used some critical thinking, you could figure this out yourself but it sounds like you prefer to think what you currently think because it supports your current ideology.
Both the fascists and the nazi never considered themselves socialists.
This is proven by numerous quotes from mussolini, hitler, various party members and verified by historians.
The fact that both fascists and nazi imprisoned, tortured and killed socialists and communists (again, widely proven by historians) is perfectly aligned with that.
Additionally, both fascists and nazi never implemented policies or took actions that would be aligned with socialism.
Trump is not advocating for political violence? Huh. Well, I guess that's debatable.
I'd argue that his election related claims are exactly that, if the elections are fraudulent what alternatives are there to solve that but violence? What other alternative could there be if the other party has truly pulled off such a coup?
Trump also pushes extreme religious views, such as abortion bans (In fact, he claims the abortion ban to have been decided by God himself).
By that novel standard anyone else with an equally ridiculous conspiracy is calling for violence. Think Trump got in by secretly collating with Putin? Call to violence. Neither situation is how the far right, eg the BNP or German neo nazi groups would operate.
One doesn't need seeing the film to notice the racism in the title. The title could be "terrorist rehab", but it now looks like jihad is bad per se, while jihad for Muslims can mean anything from "struggle against self ego" to "defend country from invasion". All Muslim scholars denounce terrorism and yet she chose "jihad" in the title.
The article mentions that "jihad rehab" is the name of the Saudi program the subjects of the documentary are enrolled in. She didn't chose "jihad", she chose "jihad rehab".
"Terrorist rehab" would be quite an ill-suited name. There is no indication that the men in the documentary ever were terrorists, aside from one of them.
You could have suggested "Guantanamo rehab". That would have better qualified the men in the film than "terrorists". Even then I think it's unfair to call racist her decision to name the film after that Saudi program.
If your issue is that you find the title racist, then your issue is with the Saudi Arabian government, not Ms. Smaker. The filmmaker accurately named her documentary after the subject of the film, which was a Saudi government program. If you read the article instead of immediately having a knee-jerk reaction to perceived "wrongspeak", you could easily have ascertained that information.
Well, the Arabic version of that same Wikipedia article provides the Hadeeth transmitter’s analysis of the Hadith regarding Al-‘Asmaa bint Marian, and the verdict that this hadeeth is fabricated (Mawdoo’). It simply isn’t true.
Moreover, the language of the claimed poet - I’m an Arab - is far different from the language of the time, far from being poetic, and the statement claimed that Prophet Muhammad said has a very different tone from his usual tone (He said “Who’d save me from Al ‘Asmaa bint Marwan?” and the Prophet himself mentioned that there is no savior other than Allah. The prophet approach would be something like يريحني (v. make me relaxed) from so and so. It’s a very horrible and easy to spot fabrication, the fabricator almost didn’t put any effort in it and used the language of his time instead.
You don’t need to mention a fabricated story to attack Islam’s take on free speech. Free speech is simply not a principle that was ever well-regarded in Islam. “Whomever believes in Allah and the last day should only say good or be quiet” and “Are people thrown into the depth of hellfire except by the sowing of their tongues” and “It is enough for one to be described as a liar is to talk about everything he heard”. The notion of “freedom” is a very western notion that - in its current form - very alien to the sort of freedom that Islam talks about: minimal freedom that is constrained by rules. Free speech certainly isn’t regarded as part of that minimal freedom. More like “constrained speech”, because of the inherent Islamic belief that free speech brings chaos. In times of Fitnah (tribulation, calamity) people are commanded by the Prophet not to speak a word: “Hold your tongue, stay at your home, and abandon the matters of public”; which is absolutely against free speech because people’s opinions are stirred most when there are events, and they’re commanded to be quiet and bottle it in.
It is just that we, Arabs, are a radically different culture that values stability and tradition. Something of the sort of “People should mind their own business”. Free speech undermines both. It’s a significant cultural difference that the west has no intent to respect, because they regard it as oppressive.
You don’t need to mention a fabricated story to highlight that.
"It is just that we, Arabs, are a radically different culture that values stability and tradition. Something of the sort of “People should mind their own business”. Free speech undermines both. It’s a significant cultural difference that the west has no intent to respect, because they regard it as oppressive."
This is an interesting remark that gave me some new insight into Arabic culture.
That said, free speech wasn't a value in much of the West either, much less in places like Taiwan that are now democratic. Most of Europe was pretty conservative in the 19th century and the revolutionaries who fought for liberal values were mostly educated city folk, a smallish class.
The value of free speech is in the fact that it prevents the country from committing some serious mistakes, or at least reduces chances thereof. Authoritarian systems look awesome from the outside, while democracies with their free speech are obviously messy and chaotic. But in the long run, authoritarian systems tend to commit fatal mistakes like going into an all-out war that they lose (it is happening right in front of us in Ukraine), because no one dared defy the Emperor.
The stability of yesteryear is now gone. With the Internet, any idea can reach any audience in milliseconds, and Arab societies, like those conservative European societies earlier, will have to live with the inherent chaos. IDK what is means for the future of Islam; Christianity in Europe has already collapsed or is (demographically) collapsing. Even in former strongholds like Poland, the majority of young people are no longer religious and this trend, once it sets in, has proven almost impossible to reverse.
I noticed the same trend among youngsters in Turkey, though Turkey isn't an Arab country; but it is an important trendsetter in the Islamic world.
Free speech is necessity for democracy. Democracy is necessity for the movement of enlightenment and justice. Enlightenment and science based governance led to the technology revolution, medical understanding and productivity boost.
Authorian societies will never be as productive productive and never be good source of innovation. If people wish to live according to tradition, conservatism and authorian rule it is ok, but it is unlikely they will ever catch Western democracies in quality of life.
We don't just have democracy vs. authoritarianism in a vaccuum, we have specific countries adopting specific ideologies with specific material starting conditions.
The UK used to be a massive colonial power that grabbed the world like it were an ice-cream cone, now they can barely respond to domestic crises. Yet they have become less authoritarian and conservative during the timeframe of their downfall. Currently, China has significant problems that could kill their future but they are currently demonstrating great innovation and scientific output. They have their own space station, are developing their own supply chains, have massive and ambitious infrastructure, TikTok is beating the Americans at their own game, and so on. Meanwhile, they have not seen a decrease in authoritarianism.
In fact, the current trend seems to illustrate that as economic growth stalls in the West, the population is turning to more authoritarian leaders. Perhaps our freedom was just a side-effect of fair weather, and we'll revert back once material conditions decrease?
Is this true for the UK proper? (Not the colonies, including Ireland.) Britain used to be quite a "lean state" domestically, while now being famous for having a lot of onerous laws micromanaging everything.
"now they can barely respond to domestic crises"
Interestingly, that was the case in the colonial era as well. Domestic problems in the UK were harder to address than wars on foreign continents. The Irish question was particularly stubborn. In 1914, shortly before the outbreak of WWI, there was actually a real risk of a civil war in Northern Ireland.
That is true. The speed of how thought transmits and how notions are, for a lack of a better word, globalized is a great challenge for cultures that emphasize tradition. There is a passive agent in the dissolution of traditional cultures by means of “globalization”.
Language, size, politics (especially the more polarizing they are) and the availability of resources (labor, land, capital and the like) has a big impact on which “traditionalist culture” is a big part of what dictates the active agents of that transformation. Biden’s administration aimed at being an active agent (E.g., statements to make Saudi Arabia a pariah) but the circumstances are not allowing that at the moment. The Saudis are aware of this intention of active intervention, which is why they emphasized the notion of “Arabs are a different people from the west” during Biden’s visit.
Being conservative (in the actual sense, not the political connotation) in the presence of the internet and the huge mass of consumable media - that is biased from a conservative perspective - is a challenge indeed.
Turkey seems to be embracing the inherent chaos easily, and I suppose that’s due to the presence of some Sufism that allows a great deal of tolerance (although, as an Arab Salafi so-called Wahhabi, that tolerance comes with a great deal of blasphemy, like worshipping by Mawlawi dancing, Rumi’s and Ibn Arabia’s spiritual pantheistic Wujood notion). That makes it similar that’s akin to Buddhism in how easy for it to spread. I heard of a Turkish Dervish creating some sort of a “Western Sufi Order” where dance moves are taught. But again, I’m not Turkish so my perception might be incorrect or misinformed. Would be interested to learn more!
I think that is a willful misrepresentation. "God is the light of the heavens and the earth". Possibly I can make pantheism out of that Quranic statement asserting truth.
Ibn Arabi's reading of Qur'an was exceptionally subtle. Do you know what he got out of that very familiar story of Abraham and his son to sacrifice? "You have believed the dream/vision" (37:105) His take on this sign completely floored me. He was reading at an entirely different level. A superior level, imho. Comparing what is generally understood from this story of Abraham (in 'orthodox' Judaism, Christianity and Islam) to what Ibn Arabi says it means, really highlights the difference between the legalistic and mystic approach to religion. But yes, Prophet did indeed choose 'milk' over 'water' and 'wine'. There is that. And Jesus chose water but showed how at the end during 'celebration of wedding' it turns into 'wine'. So some of us go straight for the 'wine'. It is unorthodox, but "blasphemy" is a matter for a specific Authority to determine. I personally think this is the root problem in the Umma ..
> [T]here is a passive agent in the dissolution of traditional cultures by means of “globalization”.
I agree with this and used to worry about it too, but there is (at least in my analysis) an element of 'conspiracy to social engineer the planet' involved. Further, can mankind even be made homogeneous, and, is a homogeneous mankind the inevitable end result of globalization?
Consider: "O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you." (49:13)
So the verse concludes, as you probably know!, with "Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, Fully-Informed".
It's funny. I was watching the other day a very amusing clip (on yt) of an interview of Stephen King on when he first met Stanley Kubrick (in course of making The Shining). And it starts off with King retelling how he got a call in the morning and it was Kubrick, and Kubrick starts off with "I think horror stories are ultimately rather optimistic". King asks, why? Kubrick says ~, because it implies an existence beyond our mortal life, and that's optimistic! King replies, but what about hell? (lol) And Kubrick says, I don't believe in hell. :)
Point being I feel optimistic that given that Allah is All-Knowing and Fully-Informed, then obviously it will end in sunshine, this "peoples and tribes" that God apparently wants to intermingle and get to "know one another".
/& Salaam
p.s. "know one another" seems to put some pressure on "traditional culture", don't you think? Change does occur after acquisition of knowledge, don't you agree?
Tolerance for free speech that’s disruptive to social harmony and order is a distinctively western thing. East Asians aren’t big fans either. Which is fine. We don’t all need to be the same.
That’s ridiculous. I hope you experience the other side of the coin, where you are contrary to social harmony, perhaps because of your race, romance, gender, class, etc. Just because evil is widespread doesn’t normalize it and make it ok. There are even lots of protests in China, but the dictatorships have always limited their spread, more so today.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for, so please stop doing that.
As US is becoming less Europeanized, less Anglo, less liberal, through the large scale population replacement, you yourself will get to experience what it’s like to live in a society that values the liberal values much less than the people who founded and built this country.
Liberal values developed over time in course of which many tears were shed and much blood was spilled. In Europe and also here. [In other words, not 'innate' to the Europeans.]
I think your prognosis (which comes across as fear actually) may come to pass, but it will not be because US population is no longer primarily of European stock (some word!)
The primary driver has always been and remains culture. And culture in our age is an industry. And industry is subject to law & market. Liberal values are eroded because of the cultural content that undermine its validity and appeal. Non-Europeans will respond, I assure you, just as readily to formative cultural forces that engender an appreciation for liberal values, as do their "Anglo" fellow citizens. Likewise, both Anglos and the rest of us will also respond accordingly to cultural forces that are otherwise.
>Nowadays, lineage isn’t something that matters much.
they call it "caste" in indian subcontinent and unlike what the indian hindu ideology is around their caste system, everyone assumes that islamic lineage taking is same as hindu caste division which is not it.
> Hinduism started with "a great war". Buddhism started with a war.
This is an interesting take on Hinduism and Buddhism. I am assuming you are referring to Great Wars of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Everyone participating in those was were the followers of Sanatan Dharma which is known as Hinduism today. Both wars weren't fought of religious ground. Buddhism started with Siddhartha noticing dukkha (pain) of life and leaving home to find solution.
That’s what I mean about not seeing this as about “Muslims versus non-Muslims.” What’s at issue in this specific context is not theology. Muslim Americans are sensitive to criticism of the prophet, but in the same way America Christians would be at blasphemy. It’s breach of an American social norm that requires being respectful of religion, not Islamic theology.
Identity politics in this context involves something different. Chehab is using her Muslim identity to jockey for position in white-dominated spaces and gain access to platforms controlled by white people.
Terrible story. This should not have happened to this film. I do not know what has happened to a country which has free speech and press enshrined in it's constitution.
It is also sad that the National Review which paints itself as this bastion of objectivity publishes such breathless headlines.
I would encourage folks to resist seeing this as “white versus brown” or “Muslim versus non-Muslim.” Identity politics is not sectarian politics—groups of people with common interests aligning against other groups with different interests. It’s about using identity as currency in politics.
Note the phrasing: “the Muslim [view] … my voice.” The same people who say they don’t want white people to speak also usually don’t want other Muslims, with different viewpoints, to speak either. What she wants to do is to speak for Muslims—use them as silent weight to bolster her own point of view.