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Potent possible parallelisms?

Friday, September 13th, 2019

[ by Charles Cameron — you know I’m fascinated by parallelisms and analogies — here are some I’ve noticed recently — enough for three fine posts, and you get three in one ! ]
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Parallelisms of interest that have surfaced in my reading recently include:

  • between Trump speeches and the Crusius El Paso manifesto
  • between Trump’s and Hitler’s uses of language
  • between AQ’s Sami al-Uraydi and French revolutionary Saint-Just
  • between ISIS strategy and use of social media and western Neo-Nazi terrorism
  • between Christchurch and El Paso
  • between the Gildead of Margaret Atwood and the Family of Jeff Sharlet
  • between the Family of Jeff Sharlet and the Muslim Brotherhood
  • between 11 Sept 2001, NYT, and 11 Sept 1683, Vienna
  • oh, and on a different note altogether, there’s:

  • between the arts of architecture and cartooning
  • **

    El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language:

    At campaign rallies before last year’s midterm elections, President Trump repeatedly warned that America was under attack by immigrants heading for the border. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” he declared at one rally. “That is an invasion!”

    Nine months later, a 21-year-old white man is accused of opening fire in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 20 people and injuring dozens more after writing a manifesto railing against immigration and announcing that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

    Sources:

  • NY Times, El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language<
  • Intercept, After El Paso, We Can No Longer Ignore Trump’s Role
  • **

    A professor of German history explains the true horror of Trump’s response to Charlottesville

    We haven’t had a Reichstag blaze, nor a Kristallnachtnot even close!!! — still, if we consider rhetoric alone, there’s food for thought:

    “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” he declared at one rally. “That is an invasion!”

    Nine months later, a 21-year-old white man is accused of opening fire in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 20 people and injuring dozens more after writing a manifesto railing against immigration and announcing that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

    Source:

  • RawStory, A professor .. explains the true horror of Trump’s response to Charlottesville
  • **

    Here’s a nice one observed by jihad-scholar Cole Bunzel:

    Looks good, though one wonders whether the parallelism comes from the translator’s memory-store rather than al-Uraydi‘s?

    Wikipedia quotes St-Just thus:

    Those who make revolutions by halves do nothing but dig their own tombs.

    and gives the date as January 1793 and the source as Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 414.

    **

    Here’s the Stratfor analysis:

  • Stratfor, What White Supremacism and Jihadism Have in Common
    .
    Like jihadism, the various ideologies driving white supremacism are not going away any time soon, and comparing the two can provide valuable lessons for understanding the ongoing threat. [ more.. ]

  • I’ll have a separate post on whether white supremacists as well as jihadists should be classified as terrorists — a matter on which opinions are divided..

    The other piece referenced in the DoubleQuote above:

  • Rantt, White Supremacist Terrorists Operate Like ISIS, Trump Shrugs
  • And here’s an impressive, alternative contrast by Tim Furnish:

  • Stream, White Terrorists vs. the Sultans of Slaughter
  • **

    There’s something akin to a waterfall of manifestos on the supremacist, arguably starting with Breivik, and thence to Christchurch and El Paso:

  • WaPo, Christchurch endures as extremist touchstone
    .
    In the days after a gunman killed 51 people in March at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, analysts warned the attack could become a rallying point for extremists.

    It was a high-casualty attack, intended to be imitated by others, live-streamed on social media, accompanied by the release of a white supremacist manifesto decrying immigration and immigrants.

    On Saturday, a similar manifesto appeared online, with similar grievances. The author opened by expressing “support” for “the Christchurch shooter.” Within minutes, a gunman opened fire at a shopping center in El Paso, killing 20..

  • The second quote in this above DoubleQuote says what it needs to say in the subtitle: “the more oxygen these manifestos get…”.

    Onwards. Here’s a rather more disturbing aspect of the El Paso > Christchurch parallelism:

  • WaPo. Two mass killings a world apart share a common theme: ‘ecofascism’
    .
    Before the slaughter of dozens of people in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso this year, the accused gunmen took pains to explain their fury, including their hatred of immigrants. The statements that authorities think the men posted online share another obsession: overpopulation and environmental degradation.

    The alleged Christchurch shooter, who is charged with targeting Muslims and killing 51 people in March, declared himself an “eco-fascist” and railed about immigrants’ birthrates. The statement linked to the El Paso shooter, who is charged with killing 22 people in a shopping area this month, bemoans water pollution, plastic waste and an American consumer culture that is “creating a massive burden for future generations.”

    The two mass shootings appear to be extreme examples of ecofascism — what Hampshire College professor emerita Betsy Hartmann calls “the greening of hate.”

  • **

    On the existence of “so much similarities between the family and Muslim Brotherhood: praying groups“<:

    OK dear friend I have done a full thread to that in Arabic. I’ll try to make it in English:

    First major similarity is the refusal to be organised with official presence. The founder and up tell now calling it “Al-gama’a”… And they call each other “Brother”..

    [ thread ]

    **

    The Family: More Gilead than Godly:

    In both Gilead and Virginia, men in inner circles have been anointed by God to lead. Conversely, those women chosen to be of service remain in the background where they respond to these godly guys’ commands with a heavenly “blessed be.”

    **

    A stunner:

    Here’s from the London Review of Books review of Lawrence Wright‘s The Looming Tower:

    Wright offers the sense among the jihadis that America was the centre of Christianity, and that the Christian world had been winning the battle of faiths since the Islamic host began to be beaten back from the gates of Vienna on 11 September 1683.

    I’d be interested if anyone has evidence connecting 2001 to 1683 in the mind of UBL

    Timothy McVeigh, after all, timed the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City to coincide with the date set for the execution of Richard Snell, who had earlier plotted to blow up the same building, also the date of the final holocaust of the Branch Davidians in Waco two years earlier, the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord — the “shot heard ’round the world” –and the start of the FBI’s siege of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord compound in 1985. Quite an impressive concatenation of anniversaries!

    Anniversary dating, indeed, is not solely a white nationalist phenomenon. According to Hussain S. Zaidi‘s Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, the principal suspect in the 1993 bombings, Tiger Memon says:

    Friday, 12 March, is the seventeenth day of Ramazan. It will be the day when the Holy Prophet fought the first battle of Junge-Badr against the heathens of Mecca and forced them to retreat. The auspicious date will help us achieve success.

    Or as Anuraga Kashyap‘s film Black Friday has it:

    Tiger‘s memory reaches back to 624 CE.

    **

    And for a sunnier thought..

    Here’s a parallelism between architecture and cartooning, courtesy of Bill Benzon:

    Eve of Destruction, eighteen years ago today

    Tuesday, September 10th, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron ]
    .

    A quick reminder.

    It’s the title of Barry McGuire’s song, not it’s Vietnam era, nuke, and Jordan River contents, that concerns us here, reminding us that eighteen years ago to the day was the Eve of Destruction of the Twin Towers in NYC — an infant born eighteen years ago tomorrow would tomorrow be eligible for military service without seeking parental consent.

    **

    What a choice: to jump to one’s death, or burn alive in a kamikaze’d building.

    **

    McGuire‘s song.

    Usama bin Laden is long gone, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried, if he still lives, in 2021.

    We remember the fallen, and honor our first responders and all who serve and save.

    More, more — this might be # 36?

    Sunday, April 14th, 2019

    [ by Charles Cameron — if Rich Pickings was 35 and maybe concluded was 34, this would be 35 in what’s clearly an ongoing series, though a bit less intense than it was? ]
    .

    A delirious conspiracist DoubleQuote:

    **

    Miscellanea:

    The art of the dodge is a time-honored Washington tradition ..

    [W]e all know who tends to fare the worst when the pitchforks come out .. [from Bloomberg: Billionaire Hedge Fund..]

    [for the arc collection*****, from They Had It Coming]

    But even before the molting, never in my wildest imaginings had I dared to dream that the arc of the moral universe could describe a 90-degree angle and smite down mine enemies with such a hammer fist of fire and fury that even I have had a moment of thinking, Could this be a bit too much?

    From Ford Foundation, for sludge collection*****]:

    The urge to change the world is normally thwarted by a near-insurmountable barricade of obstacles: failure of imagination, failure of courage, bad governments, bad planning, incompetence, corruption, fecklessness, the laws of nations, the laws of physics, the weight of history, inertia of all sorts, psychological unsuitability on the part of the would-be changer, the resistance of people who would lose from the change, the resistance of people who would benefit from it, the seduction of activities other than world-changing, lack of practical knowledge, lack of political skill, and lack of money. Lack of money is a stubborn obstacle, but not as hopelessly unyielding as some of the others..

    [From:The Church’s life-and-death struggle with Santa Muerte]

    A Mexico City strFrom eet vendor explained the appeal of Santa Muerte to us by saying: “She understands us because she is a battleaxe like us.”

    **

    Melber 4/10/2019:

    … also warned Trump he would be boxed in a canypn ..

    [Chuck Schumer] The majority, by taking yet another step to erode that legacy, risks turning this body [the Senate] into a Coliseum of zero-sum in-fighting

    **

    All IN Chris Hayes:

    The Justice Department is going to serve as the Roy Cohn for this administration, and that the Attorney General and his deputy are consiglieres rather than representatives of the people of the United States.

    **

    Rachel Maddow:

    DoubleQuote, Rachel?

    11th Hour, Bryan Wms:

    Frank Figliuzzi:

    What he [Barr] did today by invoking the spying connection was, he threw what I would call a flash-bang into the room.

    Anyone who has been involved or associated with tactical teams or the military will know a flash-bang grenade is designed to disorient and distract, with a flash of light and a loud noise, but it’s not made to take our personnel.

    What he did today was to toss a flash-bang grenade into the room at the behest of the President..

    **

    Odds:

    He [Barr] is a weapon, not a servant..

    Two fighting chyrons:

    and:

    We shall see — yesterday it was Bannon vs Francis — now Benedict XVI?

    And a terrific DoubleQuote!

    Two death tolls, 9/11 and Puerto Rico

    Wednesday, September 12th, 2018

    [ by Charles Cameron ]
    .

    Simply:

    A boon for conspiracists

    Sunday, April 2nd, 2017

    [ by Charles Cameron — FBI Pentagon photos from 9/11 h/t Nada Bakos, and an anarchist logo ]
    .

    The FBI just released a portfolio of previously unseen photos from 9/11 at the Pentagon, and Politico published them yesterday. My immediate reaction was to think what a boon they’d be to Truther conspiracists, since they could now measure and calculoate and generally insinuate a whole raft of new hypotheses regarding how the whole thing was staged, a false flag, a deliberate own goal.

    And then, see upper panel below, I noticed the circled inverted A in several of the slides:

    That’s all the confirmation we need! It’s anarchist graffiti — see the same A in a circle in the lower panel for confirmation!

    **

    As I write this, it is still April First, and I am not seriously proposing that 9/11 was a put up job, nor that the inverted A in the Pentagon photo has anything to do with the anarchist A in the lower panel — but that’s how conspiracies unfold — a plausible match that supports an obsession or paranoid fantasy, and voila!

    The anarchists did 9/11!


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