Stuff I Learned From Using Conservative Internet Forums

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Hi all. I have a question. Have any of you ever been to a right-wing internet forum run by conservatives? I have. What did you learn from your experience?

What I Learned

- Right-Wing political correctness is just as bad as left-wing political correctness. The people on conservative websites will rant about left-wing safe spaces ... but then they will ban you for posting facts that contradict their worldview. I agree that left-wing safe spaces are pathetic because people need to expose themselves to other points of view. Of course, right-wing hugboxes are just as bad in this regard. If you say anything negative about Israel, they will ban you for triggering them and being offensive. True story.

- Islamophobia is still a big problem in the West. On most conservative sites, you will get banned for criticising Israel in any way, and yet you can advocate nuclear genocide against the Middle East without getting any sort of punishment. Overall, the people on conservative sites seem to think that the Middle East is a monolith containing no internal disagreements. This is pretty chilling when you realize that most Islamic extremists promote a similar monolithic view of the West. Furthermore, these conservatives seem to be unaware of the fact that Islam exists outside of the Middle East. In other words, none of them have an opinion regarding East Turkestan or the South Thailand Insurgency. Overall, a conservative forum is a safe little bubble where you never have to learn anything about the outside world. It's a place where people hold their "patriotic" ignorance of the outside world up as a symbol of pride. It's somewhat similar to liberal sites that refuse to say anything negative about the world outside the West. Thus, the complexities of the wider world are ignored by both sides.

- They, much like liberals, love being offended. Liberals incessantly obsess over celebrities who maybe said something racially insensitive. Conservatives are the same in that they will obsess over people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton ... even though neither of them have any political power. Yes, they are both stupid and embarrassing. I choose to ignore them since they are attention whores with no real political power. This seems to be one of the main problems with modern politics in general. In modern politics, everyone has skin as thick as toilet paper. Thus, anyone can draw attention away from human deaths by being an attention-whoring windbag. This makes people on both sides of the political spectrum obsess over their puny little first world problems in their puny first world bubble as the rest of the world burns.

- Every country has crap like this. I've been to Canadian conservative sites. I've been to American conservative sites. They're all the same. Sometimes these sites also get visitors from England and Australia who agree with them on everything. It's the same in every country. Patriotism is cancer.

Likely true if you are talking about "Republican" so-called conservatism, which I must assume since you say they all support Israel. The new right/alt-right/neo-reaction whatever you want to call it is much better on these things and is usually open for a debate, though it's not immune to this kind of behaviour. It's a human failing, rather than an ideological one.



Here we go. Islamophobia is not a real thing, it's a made up word, a made up idea to trick dumbass liberals into defending Islam, something so completely antithetical to everything they believe. When people observe
- how generally crappy Muslim societies around the world are
- how many, if not most Muslims, after many generations, have failed to integrate into (formerly) Christian societies or any non-Muslim society for that matter
- how they demand special treatment and extra respect at every turn, including arranging what has become a de facto blasphemy law in post-Enlightenment Europe of all places
- the historical truth of Islamic expansion and that "integration" is very unlikely to happen, ever
- last but not least the terrorism that follows them around like a bad smell, often cynically used as an ethereal threat by Muslims who do not use violence in order to get yet more special treatment

and we decide quite reasonably that we don't want to live in an Islamic society and that welcoming large numbers of Muslims into our homelands is maybe not the smartest of ideas or perhaps at the very least we should tell Muslims to get bent when they ask for special treatment - that is not a phobia or some other kind of mental disease. It's not even prejudice, it's reasonably informed post-judice.

It's very presumptuous of Muslims to demand a blasphemy law (related to the Sharia Law) within a country which is secular.

If one does that, I would most definitely advocate that the person "get bent."

That makes you an Islamophobe in some circles, a "irrational" human who is picking on an innocent victimised group because of your uncontrollable intolerance.

Y'all overthinkin this.

Bottom line, adrenaline is addictive, which makes hatred a drug.

One of the reasons old poots become savagely political - besides dementia - is that the other hormones go away first, so the only thing left to auto-mainline after the testosterone and estrogen are gone is adrenaline. (Cortisol is too dysphoric).

So whatcha get is a bunch of haters clubs. The basis for the hatred, and its focus, are secondary. The primary objective is group cohesion around the hate-hobby. Which, of course, requires an outgroup, or Other, on which to focus the hate. It really does not matter what the Other is - the object is to hate something, anything, because hating is such a rush.

And that's why extremist hate groups all resemble one another more than they resemble the more moderate adherents to whatever belief systems are involved. It's also why they often turn to fighting savagely among themselves at the slightest (real or fabricated) provocation. It's not about the values, it's about the rumble.

One can extend the addiction metaphor; there are hate-pushers, there are hate-profiteers, and you can believe they know what they're doing.

The sad thing is that oxytocin is pretty damn nice too, but it's not as easy to get that going. Hate, OTOH, is a cheap, easy "fix".

And there you go. In fact, there we all go, if we don't figure out a constructive alternative, and soon.

Well ... at least we share a healthy dislike of the Republican Party. This site still has some conservatives around ... but the worst ones have largely left. Good riddance.

You have a point when you imply that the Republican Party isn't "really" conservative ... though genuine conservatism has some complications as well.



This is where your post slides off the deep end. In the not-so-distant past, I have been critical of King Salman, Abdulla Yameen, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bashar al-Assad. I've also been extremely critical of that monster Suharto of Indonesia ... who was supported by the US Government. I'm willing to criticise Muslims when they deserve it.

In the past, I have spoken to people who literally believe that all Muslims are evil. Conservative sites are full of people who literally can't see the difference between Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Amadou Bamba, simply because they are both Muslim.

Some people also insist that Islam is "not a religion, but a Middle Eastern death cult". This completely ignores all the flattering things that the Quran says about Jesus and Mary.

When I used conservativesforum.com a few years ago, there was a user called "American Infidel". He told me that all Muslims wanted to kill me. I asked him if he was joking. He said "No, I mean it." What do you call that?

When clowns like Geert Wilders throw free speech out the window in favor of banning the Quran, what do you call that?

Yes, the word "Islamophobia" is sometimes thrown around by people who dismiss all criticism of the Quran as hateful. Does this mean that Islamophobia isn't real?

There are some extremists who think that "fart rape" is a real thing. Does this mean that rape isn't real?



This Happened
VVV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

During the Middle Ages, Europeans envied the wealth of the Islamic world.

Additionally, the Middle East is in a crappy state right now because Western governments will financially support the most evil Middle Eastern leaders.



I live in an area where Muslims are fairly common. I have yet to see an Islamic terror attack with my own eyes.

Some of my best friends growing up were Muslim. About half of my Uber drivers are also Muslim. I once had a pleasant conversation with a Muslim Uber driver because we both hated King Salman.



Well ... you do have a point here. I actually agree with you here ... except I'm not sure if all Muslims support blasphemy laws. That's a mathematical improbability, given that there are 1.57 billion of them in the world today.



Totalitarian leaders expand their empires whenever they are allowed to. Have you forgotten about the Christian fundamentalists who aided America's manifest destiny? Have you forgotten about all the European polytheists who were slaughtered in the name of Christendom? Are you forgetting about what the Russian Empire did to the indigenous Siberians? Are you forgetting about what the Ustaše did to the Serbs? Are you forgetting about The White Man's Burden?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden



Notice how most of the Islamic terrorism in the world comes out of the Middle East nowadays. You almost never hear about Albanian terrorism. Most Albanians are Muslim, and yet most Albanians like America a whole lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albania%E2%80%93United_States_relations

Why? It's because America hasn't attacked Albania ... because the Albanian government is okay with globalisation.



I watch travel videos all the time. It definitely seems like Europe is still full of things that are distinctly European.

Most of these Middle Eastern immigrants aren't fond of ISIS. That's precisely why they left the Middle East in the first place.

By the way, Dave Sim describes himself as "mostly Muslim" and yet most people in the alt-right seem to like him.

*All* "The people on conservative websites will rant about left-wing safe spaces."
I find that hard to believe...

"What is good for the goose is good for the gander..."
I wouldn't visit closed minded forums, but I am happy for forums to cater for those who lack intellectual, objective and ethical capacity...
They are a great source for sociological and behavioural studies...<shrug>

Yeah, one of many reasonable put downs of mainstream conservatism is describing it as "whatever the left were doing 10 years ago". They conserve nothing and they eventually betray every cause they put their names to.



Yeah I went off the rails a bit. People like American Infidel probably do deserve the term, but as you know, it is not used just for them, it's used as a weapon against people like me. If I do have a phobia, which I don't think I do, it's "humanophobia". Muslims are humans, and humans do as humans do, that's the problem.



Western intervention is a factor, but the Islamic Golden Age won't return once the West leaves, it was backwards and crappy long before we started playing around there. The situation is just as likely to get worse as it is to get better with such a power vacuum in the region.

Re: The golden age, it was not a result of the imposition of Islamic culture and belief directly, it was a result of Empire, an option open to potentially any determined group of humans. The imposition of a common law, common currencies, relative peace, order and the opening of trade routes across a vast territory often creates a short lived "golden age". An age of trade, vast wealth and intellectual flourishing, alas these things are always unsustainable. Any group that conquers as much as they did will experience something similar, indeed many have historically before and since.



Just because a Muslim doesn't gun you down on sight, infidel, it doesn't follow that they are therefore integrated into a society.



Events like these inform my world view more than anything else. Where you say "totalitarian leaders" I say "human leaders". This is humanity, for better or worse. "They" are no better than "us", "we" are no better than "them". You either wear the boot, or it stamps your head. You either have an empire or you are part of someone else's. You either privilege and protect your religion, or find yourself subject to a foreign faith. You either pursue your ethnic group's interests at the expense of others or get picked apart by groups that do just that for their own.



I'm with you there. I use a more recognisable example to illustrate the same point. That of Russia and Turkey. The emerging Turkish autocracy is in many ways worse than the Putin one. Both governments lock up journalists, both have annexed territory in living memory and still sit on it, neither country is a liberal gay pride parade etc. Erdogan however, is not particularly against the US project, in fact Turkey is a NATO member. Putin is opposed to US interests, so we're slowly moving to war footing with Russia, while Erdogan prances around giddy as a child.



For now. This isn't something that happened a hundred years ago, it's something that is happening now, as we speak. These things take time to change, but the signs are here right now, if you care to look.



That doesn't mean they are therefore fond of Europe and its culture, they aren't coming because they venerate Christianity, our political system, our history or our great thinkers etc. They aren't here to embrace Europe and become part of it's future. They come because its safer and richer, everything else they would rather keep the same and that is exactly what they do. That's why you see people dressed for the Arabian desert in the middle of London.



I don't know who that is, but it wouldn't surprise me. Remember the media image of the alt-right being Mr Spencer and his nazi friends is their narrative, not necessarily the truth. I'm not saying Richard Spencer is definitely controlled opposition, but if I were a Western oligarch with media influence concerned about the political situation, my controlled opposition would look a lot like Richard Spencer marching under the swastika fighting in the streets with masked thugs sporting the sickle and hammer. Having said that, there are plenty of idiots around for this to have emerged organically.

The Kurdistan Worker's Party - which is a secular-progressive organisation - has been labeled a terrorist organisation by the US government. The US government tends to be more friendly towards the Syrians who oppress them.

This is what happens where there are no legal barriers against corruption. The lobbyists run everything and they supress progressive organisations in the third world.

Why? It's very bad for business if organisations in the third world fight for labor rights.

The people of the third world are human beings, just like us. They are being supressed by the same force which oppresses us - the Western financial elite. In other words, the Western elites don't want the third world to become more civilized.

That's how modern international relations tend to work. Neoliberal capitalists in the third world receive financial support from the West. Progressive organisations get stomped out.

That's why so many people in the third world side with Stalinist and Maoist leaders. When people are being exploited by Western businesses, they will often side with Stalinists just to piss off the West.

Stalinists are brutal and oppressive, but, compared to true leftists, they generally have more combat experience. Thus, they have a greater chance of winning a war with the West.

That's why the US government succeeded at taking out Salvador Allende, but hasn't taken out Kim Jong Un. Salvador Allende was more freedom-loving than the Kims. Unfortunately, freedom-loving leaders are often sub-standard in combat.



The vast majority of people don't want war and oppression. Most people want peace.

The real problem is authoritarianism. People who have political power often become addicted to it. That's why democracy is required. Unfortunately, Western democracy (especially American democracy) has been heavily corrupted.

In America, there is almost no correlation between public opinion and public policy. This is because corruption is legal in America.

Humans function more effectively in countries that restrict lobbying. Lobbying is restricted in Scandinavia. It's working wonders there. That's what happens when the middle and lower classes actually have a voice.



In ancient Europe, the Celts were seen as filthy animals.

Did they eventually develop? You tell me.

Nowadays, Scottish and Irish people are just considered white.



Many white people who live in the West don't even respect great Western thinkers, Western history or the Western political system.

One of the greatest thinkers in Western history was Charles Darwin, and yet many Westerners know nothing about him. Addionally, the vast majority of Westerners only have a very vague idea of who Socrates was.



... and yet many of them go to universities.



You can't always judge people by the clothes that they wear.

Many women who wear hijabs go to university and self-identify as feminists.

If I dress like a cowboy, does this automatically mean that I want to murder Native Americans? Of course not.



Dave Sim is the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark. He eventually went insane because he overworked himself ... so he started his own religion and became flamingly anti-feminist.

His religion is a mix of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though he is "mostly Muslim" ... in his own words.

Regarding: "...get bent."
I would say: "Talk to the hand..."

I use this analogy:
You invite someone into your home...
And they then proceed to nail the windows shut, barricade the doors and declare themselves an independent sovereignty...
I wouldn't be a happy puppy either... <meow>

I don't like it when people use "inviting someone into your home" as an immigration analogy. It doesn't work because a private home and a country are different.

An average home has enough room for just a few people and has limited food resources. A country is far larger than a home. Many countries have many houses that are not in use. Most countries have a great amount of unused open space. This is very true of the United States.



Addionally, every single country currently in existence is ruled by an greedy upper class which hoards essential natural resources in order to exploit those who lack these resources. This could be fixed with political action, which would help the immigrants quite a bit.

Overall, these analogies don't work because your country is not entirely your private property.

These analogies also don't work because immigrants are not just one person. They are different from one another.

"Islamophobia" is a racist concept in which people hold non white people to a lower standard than they would whites.

How is this a reply to what you quoted of me? This just a complete tangent.



Too simple. People want a lot more than just peace. There is peace to be found being a well behaved chattel slave. Would you tolerate that or go to war?


No. See below.


Yes, humans seek power constantly and hate letting it go. Authoritarianism is one of many symptoms of this, not the problem in and of itself.



I disagree, democracy is a terrible system for almost all human endeavours. It's infinitely corruptible by its very nature, more so than absolute monarchy. You are very concerned about money in politics, something I agree with, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to democracy's other systemic problems. Democracy is a wonderful tool for self serving cynical power seekers to gain status and fortune at the expense of an electorate, a problem that will exist with or without lobbying. Off the top of my head I can list these problems with a democracy, problems that either do not exist or are lessened in more rigid hierarchies, where power is not handed out in a game of musical chairs every few years.

- a country's problems often require plans that take decades to implement and see through, short term cycles mean plans must by their nature be short and often short-sighted
- politicians and parties spend most of their time planning the next election campaign, rather than immerse themselves in policy and rule
- voter memory is short, complete screw ups from early in a government are forgotten by the time the election comes around again
- perverse incentives to stupefy a population, with drugs or poor education or information overload, leaving them even more susceptible to frauds and status seekers
- perverse incentives to destabilise the demographics of your voting base for cynical gain, potentially leading to civil conflicts
- perverse incentives to play up identity politics and class wargames, leading to further civil instability
- a politician will inevitably come up against a decision where he must choose between doing what he thinks is right and doing what is popular ie. keeping his job
- perverse incentives to extend suffrage to people who will increasingly be less suitable to make a sensible choice. Won't be long before 13 year olds have the vote here.
- perverse incentives to make shady deals with the media or censor the internet, the information gatekeepers. The latter is coming soon to Western democracies near you!
- in my opinion democracy dies as soon as would-be politicians realise they can bribe voters with tax money (really their own money) and take out huge loans on their behalf to pay these bribes ... so about 5 minutes? The march of democracy is ever leftwards with a few hiccups here and there, until economic collapse. Fantastic.

And these issues exist even if you stop corporations buying politicians.



They were conquered and subjugated by more powerful civilisations, does that count?



This is a deflection again, perhaps I confused you. The point is they aren't coming to be Europeans, they are coming to be whatever they are, just richer and safer. Governments encourage them to do this, that is what multiculturalism is.



What does that have to do with anything?



Can't always, but in this case you can. Muslim clothing is a badge, a tribal symbol, not just a fashion choice.

Cheers, m8

To be honest, I don't believe most immigrants are that way. Most immigrants want to assimilate into the ways and mores of their adopted country.

I know this....because I have known many immigrants.

scorpions in a bottle. nobody cares who made the bottle. if only those meanies knew what awaited them after the boatmen take them to their otherworldly abode. mebbe if a few of them might be persuaded to google Howard Storm.