zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — if hell exists — and we’re easily persuaded it does — best believe in paradise, too ]
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Bryan Alexander of Infocult headed his report, Earth opens campaign against Trump. Bryan has been following sinkholes around the globe for some time now, and has also been keeping a wary eye on Donald Trump, so the correlation wouldn’t surprise him, and he leaped to causation, with or without good reason.

Let’s take a look, first, at the hole itself:

It’s black, as though part of the world had been redacted for security reasons.

Sinkoles are not uncommon in Florida, and frequently feast on human habitations:

The City of Palm Beech is calm and carries on:

Sinkhole in front of Mar-a-Lago: A 4' x 4' sinkhole has formed on Southern Boulevard directly in front of… https://t.co/5xOpmJ8Y2v

— Town of Palm Beach (@townpalmbeach) May 22, 2017

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It takes the Washington Post to put the event in truly cross-disiplinary perspective, titling its article on the topic brilliantly:

Sinkhole forms in front of Mar-a-Lago; metaphors pour in https://t.co/pXmAxgtBTf

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 22, 2017

Indeed they did. Oliver Willis had the best reading of the Sign:

A sinkhole just opened in front of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate https://t.co/vlSlzzwBCP THE ORB DEMANDS SACRIFICE

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 22, 2017

The orb in question is the Saudi counterterrorism orb:

What Was That Glowing Orb Trump Touched in Saudi Arabia?, via @nytimes. Yeah Kristol https://t.co/LcCGx5giCm

— David Kalow (@daknycip) May 24, 2017

Bothing to do with Saruman, I assure you. But take a look at those eyes..

@KingSalman and @POTUS inaugurate The Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology in Riyadh. #RiyadhSummit pic.twitter.com/do6cFL7wBW

— Saudi Embassy (@SaudiEmbassyUSA) May 21, 2017

And FWIW, tthe orb’s direct impact on the pavement in Palm Beach is confirmed by Chad Fondiller:

The sinkhole began forming seconds after the Orb was touched. https://t.co/zBVio0ejjs

— Chad Fondiller (@ChadFondiller) May 22, 2017

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Some, like Conchita Leeflang, read the Sign more mundanely in terms of Trump‘s own rhetoric:

@owillis @Trumpnado2016 The Swamp is draining.

— Conchita Leeflang (@conchitaleef) May 22, 2017

That’s clever, but it doesn’t really explain this photo of the sinkhole alt-event now, does it?

What does that orb have to do with counterterrorism, BTW?

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This post is brought you by the folks who also brought you:

This tree was hit by lightning in Baldwyn, MS. It burned the inside. From @jkroxie pic.twitter.com/OKXNMZrmVi

— James Spann (@spann) April 22, 2017

[ by Charles Cameron — with application to paras from JM Berger & WIll McCants ]
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Two from Florida, both yesterday!

Really!

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The kid who converts from Neo-Nazi to Islam and then kills his disrespectful roomies makes for a brilliant & provocative case study, becaause it so confounds our usual expectations.

Consider. We are used to the idea of otherwise unexceptional people joining extremist groups, religious or political — we term the process “radicalization”. And under the banner of “countering violent extremism” we encourage people to leave violent extremist groups and fade back into the normal fabric of society — some become anti-extremist messengers, Kerry Noble and Maajid Nawaz being well known examples. And both coming and going, there’s the little matter of messaging — messaging for radicaliziation, messaging for deradicalization.

But converting from a far-right political ideology to militant Islam? What kind of process us that, and what kind of messaging is involved, or called for?

I want to focus in on this poor dumb kid Devon Arthurs because he offers an almost too-good-to-be-true instance of two significant ideas from two of our finest analysts.

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Let’s take Will McCants first.

McCants’ point is that every jihadist (and every extremist, by extension) is subject to a wide mix of drives, some more potent than others, but none of which should be viewed as the exclusive “explanation” for radicalization. As he writes in a gobbit that is now pinned to the top of his twitter-feed:

The disappoint stems from the desire to attribute the jihadist phenomenon to a single cause rather than to several causes that work in tandem to produce it. To my mind, the most salient are these: a religious heritage that lauds fighting abroad to establish states and to protect one’s fellow Muslims; ultraconservative religious ideas and networks exploited by militant recruiters; peer pressure (if you know someone involved, you’re more likely to get involved); fear of religious persecution; poor governance (not type of government); youth unemployment or underemployment in large cities; and civil war. All of these factors are more at play in the Arab world now than at any other time in recent memory, which is fueling a jihadist resurgence around the world.

If anyone elevates one of those factors above the others to diagnose the problem, you can be certain the resulting prescription will not work. It may even backfire, leading to more jihadist recruitment, not less.

That’s the general case: but you could hardly have a better instance of how sui generis the process is than our case of the young Neo-Nazi turned Muslim.

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Things get even more interesting, however, when we see how this case fits with a point JM Berger has been at pains to meke recently. In Extremist Construction of Identity: How Escalating Demands for Legitimacy Shape and Define In-Group and Out-Group Dynamics, JM expresses his growing sense that extremism should be studied as a category unto itself — that we should not limit our studies to such brands as “Islamic extremism” or “Right Wing extremism”. He writes:

More broadly, this paper is a first step in developing and testing the hypothesis that extremist group radicalisation represents an identifiable process that can be understood as distinct from the contents of a movement’s ideology. That is not to say that the content of an ideology is meaningless or unimportant. Rather, this research seeks to explore whether universal processes of radicalisation provide a more useful window into why identity-based extremist movements form in the first place and how they evolve toward violence.

In the case of Devon Arthurs we have someone who doesn’t only espouse one extremism, but two, in rapid succession. And thus it is plausible to say that it is not Nazism, nor violent extremist Islam, that attracts him, but extremism as such.

Thinking through our ideas about narratives in radicalization and derad with Arthurs as our instance, raises all sorts of questions: what messaging if any do the Neo-Nazis and Jihadists have in common? What message allows someone to slip from one camp in to the other? And what messaging would be an effectove counterbalance not to one ideology or the other, but to the general propensity for extremism?

All in all, this kid makes for a fabulous case study in the ease with which our assumptions can deceive us.

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Sources:

CBS News, Cops: Florida man kills neo-Nazi roommates over Islam disrespect

RawStory, FBI busts ‘Atomwaffen’ Neo-Nazi in Florida for making explosives

{ by Charles Cameron — Israel takes Saudi I kid you not ]
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This is a straight, unphotoshopped, slightly reduced screenshot from the online WaPo as it appeared in my browser today:

Ambitious peace-making!

[ by Charles Cameron — for lovers of choral music ]
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I am reminded of the Navaho Night Chant, which I have quoted here before:

In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

by the words of Arvo Pärt’s piece:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in me, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me,
Christ with me.

[ by Charles Cameron — ]
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Invocation:

Muggle, muggle, toil and trouble.

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Placement:

A great-great-..-grandson of Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab is seated between the Jew, Jared Kushner, and the Catholic, Steve Bannon.

On second thoughts, perhaps that’s an indication of interfaith solidarity..