New Source/Analysis on Brigham Young and Racism

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Sorry, I don't buy into your dogma at all: you frame it as "us" versus them, you use very right-wing sources, you rely on anecdote, you use language that is over-generalising and you rely on foregone conclusions.

I cited my sources which are based on factual rather than ideologically apriori conclusions.  Both the totalitarian right wing and the totalitarian left wing hate the Constitution and rule of law.  For them, the First Amendment is irrelevant.  For BLM and ANTIFA, free speech and free thought is too messy.  People need to be forced to comply with an Orwellian set of standards.  The press needs to couch all such events in carefully controlled terminology.  Those who refuse must be cancelled and fired.  Only one POV is permissible.

11 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I've read Joanna Brook's article in Dialogue which carries compelling and historical arguments. Her position is accurate when looking at the data and lived experience of multiple sources. I look forward to reading her new book when it becomes available to me.

Systemic racism is a modern problem in America and it has been an ongoing problem in the church. It takes with it a heavy spiritual toll which should be dealt with righteously.

Most people in America (including most white folk) are not racist, and the shooting of unarmed black men by police is very rare.  The stats don't lie.  However, the lie we are being told by doublespeak media is the opposite, and cancel culture will not tolerate any other story.

11 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

If you've contributed to advancements in civil rights, that's great, but it doesn't mean you're right about the current movement. And what I'm hearing from you sounds very slanted and peppered with fallacies. 

Of course it does, and that is what the neo-Marxist ideologues want you to believe.  Like many well-meaning and kind-hearted people, you have been taken in by the lies and deceit of the new racism, which utterly rejects the standards well taught by Dr King and by Frederick Douglass -- which are the sources you should be reading, instead of the baneful and bitter Joanna Brooks.

Just look at what is happening in Seattle right now, in which the racist BLM has city employees undergoing segregated racist brainwashing sessions -- exactly the method used by the Chinese Communist Party in self-denunciation sessions.  History tells us all we need to know about how that was applied in the USA by Sen Joseph McCarthy (well before your time).  Totalitarianism is right at your door, Meadowchik.  Are you going to invite it inside?

[Meadowchik]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I cited my sources which are based on factual rather than ideologically apriori conclusions.  Both the totalitarian right wing and the totalitarian left wing hate the Constitution and rule of law.  For them, the First Amendment is irrelevant.  For BLM and ANTIFA, free speech and free thought is too messy.  People need to be forced to comply with an Orwellian set of standards.  The press needs to couch all such events in carefully controlled terminology.  Those who refuse must be cancelled and fired.  Only one POV is permissible.

Most people in America (including most white folk) are not racist, and the shooting of unarmed black men by police is very rare.  The stats don't lie.  However, the lie we are being told by doublespeak media is the opposite, and cancel culture will not tolerate any other story.

Of course it does, and that is what the neo-Marxist ideologues want you to believe.  Like many well-meaning and kind-hearted people, you have been taken in by the lies and deceit of the new racism, which utterly rejects the standards well taught by Dr King and by Frederick Douglass -- which are the sources you should be reading, instead of the baneful and bitter Joanna Brooks.

Just look at what is happening in Seattle right now, in which the racist BLM has city employees undergoing segregated racist brainwashing sessions -- exactly the method used by the Chinese Communist Party in self-denunciation sessions.  History tells us all we need to know about how that was applied in the USA by Sen Joseph McCarthy (well before your time).  Totalitarianism is right at your door, Meadowchik.  Are you going to invite it inside?

This is quite an elaborate structure necessary for you to denounce anti-racist agendas. 

I'm not relying on such faulty ideological towers. From the macro point if view, it follows naturally that centuries of slavery would result in economic and psychological impact today. The micro bears this out, when looking at things like generational wealth, implicit bias, and the way both have had disproportionately negative impacts on Black Americans.

Moving away from totalitarianistic approaches is a large part of the agenda for police reform. When I listen to grass roots activists, I am hearing them organising community food banks, creating platforms for better police accountability, providing safe and affordable housing for people regardless of race or sexual orientation, providing emergency help for vulnerable people.

Other activist voices I hear are talking about the ways government support programs are less likely to benefit Black Americans because of the way they are structured. An example is recent coronavirus relief small business loans being more accessible depending on the banks people use. Incarceration rates also suggest implicit bias resulting in disproportionately incarcerated Black men even when accounting for other factors.

In other words we need to be more aware about how unjust structures harm (like how police with insufficient accountability are bad for everyone) and yet how they tend to harm vulnerable people even more, largely because of implicit bias. We need to decrease authoritarian, totalitarian-like structures.

It's pretty straightforward, when we acknowledge the obvious of history and then realise that basic human forces can impact us insidiously, then decide to bring that awareness to a more caring position.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2020 by Meadowchik

[USU78]

My grandfathers' grandfathers were the last in the last slaveholding American generation. My grandchildren, all twelve of them, bless 'em, are not responsible for any inherited screwiness in any of the last slaves' grandchildrens' grandchildrens'grandchildren, any more than that beautiful Japanese toddler in the current meme is responsible for Pearl Harbor.

So why impute fault to me and my generation, my children and their generation, or my grandchildren and their generation?

It's patently ridiculous.

[Robert F. Smith]

8 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

This is quite an elaborate structure necessary for you to denounce anti-racist agendas. 

Of course I was denouncing the new racism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat which is accompanying it, as mediated by woke and very naive officials.

8 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

........................ From the macro point if view, it follows naturally that centuries of slavery would result in economic and psychological impact today. The micro bears this out, when looking at things like generational wealth, implicit bias, and the way both have had disproportionately negative impacts on Black Americans.

Moving away from totalitarianistic approaches is a large part of the agenda for police reform. When I listen to grass roots activists, I am hearing them organising community food banks, creating platforms for better police accountability, providing safe and affordable housing for people regardless of race or sexual orientation, providing emergency help for vulnerable people.

Other activist voices I hear are talking about the ways government support programs are less likely to benefit Black Americans because of the way they are structured. An example is recent coronavirus relief small business loans being more accessible depending on the banks people use. Incarceration rates also suggest implicit bias resulting in disproportionately incarcerated Black men even when accounting for other factors.

In other words we need to be more aware about how unjust structures harm (like how police with insufficient accountability are bad for everyone) and yet how they tend to harm vulnerable people even more, largely because of implicit bias. We need to decrease authoritarian, totalitarian-like structures.

It's pretty straightforward, when we acknowledge the obvious of history and then realise that basic human forces can impact us insidiously, then decide to bring that awareness to a more caring position.

Everyone talks the talk, but few actually walk the walk.  These wonderfully compassionate generalities are frequently heard, but seldom actual dealt with realistically.  All could have been implemented decades ago.  Instead we got a crime bill which made the USA the most incarcerated society on the planet.  We needed healthcare for all.  Instead we have an exclusionary ACA written by the health insurance companies (our health expenses are per capita double those of any other civilized country).  We needed fairness and transparent mortgage practices.  Instead we got predatory lending, which destroyed an entire generation of home-owners.  I could go on, but my main point is that the primary victims of these travesties are minority communities.

The lies of BLM and ANTIFA are not designed to correct those problems, and indeed not to reform anything.  Their intent is to destroy.  Well-intentioned people buy into their lies and deception, virtually guaranteeing that we will not see actual improvements.  As Simon & Garfunkel sang it for Mrs Robinson, "any way you look at it you lose."

[Meadowchik]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Of course I was denouncing the new racism, and the dictatorship of the proletariat which is accompanying it, as mediated by woke and very naive officials.

Everyone talks the talk, but few actually walk the walk.  These wonderfully compassionate generalities are frequently heard, but seldom actual dealt with realistically.  All could have been implemented decades ago.  Instead we got a crime bill which made the USA the most incarcerated society on the planet.  We needed healthcare for all.  Instead we have an exclusionary ACA written by the health insurance companies (our health expenses are per capita double those of any other civilized country).  We needed fairness and transparent mortgage practices.  Instead we got predatory lending, which destroyed an entire generation of home-owners.  I could go on, but my main point is that the primary victims of these travesties are minority communities.

The lies of BLM and ANTIFA are not designed to correct those problems, and indeed not to reform anything.  Their intent is to destroy.  Well-intentioned people buy into their lies and deception, virtually guaranteeing that we will not see actual improvements.  As Simon & Garfunkel sang it for Mrs Robinson, "any way you look at it you lose."

I thought we were in agreement about a great deal, which is why your disagreement continues to be perplexing. 

I really think you're looking at BLM and Brooks with too shallow a lens.

in regards to the church, Ezra Taft Benson criticised civil rights movements as  communist conspiracies and his politics continues to be influential in Mormonism. I think Brooks paper Invested in Rightness gives a cohesive historical and theological commentary on Brigham Young's white supremacy impacting Mormonism for generations, contributing to wrongheadedness exemplified in Benson's racial paranoia. 

Her paper talks about how the church became more authoritarian and that rigidity helped perpetuate Young's racism on an institutional level.

It's ironic to me that you raise the alarm about alleged totalitarianism through BLM in this conversation, when indeed spiritual authoritarianism likely prolonged racism in the church.

Mormonism has a long history of tension between beliefs in prophetic infallibility and personal revelation. The church's struggle with its own racism is intertwined in that tension and it is a mistake to conclude that the struggle is over.

[Robert F. Smith]

15 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

I thought we were in agreement about a great deal, which is why your disagreement continues to be perplexing. 

I really think you're looking at BLM and Brooks with too shallow a lens.

in regards to the church, Ezra Taft Benson criticised civil rights movements as  communist conspiracies and his politics continues to be influential in Mormonism. I think Brooks paper Invested in Rightness gives a cohesive historical and theological commentary on Brigham Young's white supremacy impacting Mormonism for generations, contributing to wrongheadedness exemplified in Benson's racial paranoia. 

Her paper talks about how the church became more authoritarian and that rigidity helped perpetuate Young's racism on an institutional level.

It's ironic to me that you raise the alarm about alleged totalitarianism through BLM in this conversation, when indeed spiritual authoritarianism likely prolonged racism in the church.

Mormonism has a long history of tension between beliefs in prophetic infallibility and personal revelation. The church's struggle with its own racism is intertwined in that tension and it is a mistake to conclude that the struggle is over.

The BLM and ANTIFA are united terrorist organizations, and I do not distinguish them from the Nazi Brownshirts or the KKK.  All of them believe in destruction and murder as a means to a nefarious end.  You might pay closer attention to the fine reporting of Andy Ngo -- whom I cited for you in this thread.

The pathetic fallacy makes organizations into humans, which they are not.  Humans struggle, not churches.  So, while it is regrettable that both B. Young and E. T. Benson ignored and even rejected Joseph Smith's capacious and compassionate Gospel of Jesus Christ (Orson Pratt making Brigham especially angry), very few LDS members today believe in any sort of racist or white supremacist ideology.  Brooks is as wrong and delusional as the early Benson in her own special way.  Moreover, the younger generation does not remember Benson at all, whose main focus as Prophet was on the Book of Mormon, and not on politics.

Also, while it is true that some yokels within the LDS faith actually believe in prophetic infallibility, the Brethren themselves constantly inveigh against that view.  And anyone familiar with Scripture certainly knows better.  Finally, the LDS Church is not a spiritually authoritarian organization.  Indeed, getting the Saints to do the bidding of SLC is like herding cats.

[Meadowchik]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The BLM and ANTIFA are united terrorist organizations, and I do not distinguish them from the Nazi Brownshirts or the KKK.  All of them believe in destruction and murder as a means to a nefarious end.  You might pay closer attention to the fine reporting of Andy Ngo -- whom I cited for you in this thread.

The pathetic fallacy makes organizations into humans, which they are not.  Humans struggle, not churches.  So, while it is regrettable that both B. Young and E. T. Benson ignored and even rejected Joseph Smith's capacious and compassionate Gospel of Jesus Christ (Orson Pratt making Brigham especially angry), very few LDS members today believe in any sort of racist or white supremacist ideology.  Brooks is as wrong and delusional as the early Benson in her own special way.  Moreover, the younger generation does not remember Benson at all, whose main focus as Prophet was on the Book of Mormon, and not on politics.

Also, while it is true that some yokels within the LDS faith actually believe in prophetic infallibility, the Brethren themselves constantly inveigh against that view.  And anyone familiar with Scripture certainly knows better.  Finally, the LDS Church is not a spiritually authoritarian organization.  Indeed, getting the Saints to do the bidding of SLC is like herding cats.

Andy Ngo is a far-right propagandist. His WSJ opinion piece on Muslims in the UK pathetically exposes his own agenda-deep, fact-poor assessment of Muslims in the UK.

It looks to me like he does similar in the US, cherry-picking footage and facts out of context.

He is not adding journalistic value to this conversation.

 

[Storm Rider]

39 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Andy Ngo is a far-right propagandist. His WSJ opinion piece on Muslims in the UK pathetically exposes his own agenda-deep, fact-poor assessment of Muslims in the UK.

It looks to me like he does similar in the US, cherry-picking footage and facts out of context.

He is not adding journalistic value to this conversation.

 

Do you have a link to Ngo's piece in the WSJ on Muslims? I have not read it and you need a subscription to read the article. The part you could read indicated that he was writing from his memories as a teenager visiting London and Muslims had the biggest impact of that trip.

I lived for eight years in Abu Dhabi and Doha. I had the occasion to talk with many Imams from Oman, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Further, I had the occasion to read the Qur'an, the writings of the first four rightfully guided caliphs, and the Hadith. I have many friends that are Muslim and continue to be friends since I have been back almost five years.

This article  you are talking about really is about the images of teenager's perception of Muslims rather than a review of Islam (without reading the whole article, I cannot tell if the entire article was from teenage memories). I did read an opinion piece, that was not complimentary in the least. Unfortunately, the opinion piece was quite repetitive. 

[Meadowchik]

21 minutes ago, Storm Rider said:

Do you have a link to Ngo's piece in the WSJ on Muslims? I have not read it and you need a subscription to read the article. The part you could read indicated that he was writing from his memories as a teenager visiting London and Muslims had the biggest impact of that trip.

I lived for eight years in Abu Dhabi and Doha. I had the occasion to talk with many Imams from Oman, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Further, I had the occasion to read the Qur'an, the writings of the first four rightfully guided caliphs, and the Hadith. I have many friends that are Muslim and continue to be friends since I have been back almost five years.

This article  you are talking about really is about the images of teenager's perception of Muslims rather than a review of Islam (without reading the whole article, I cannot tell if the entire article was from teenage memories). I did read an opinion piece, that was not complimentary in the least. Unfortunately, the opinion piece was quite repetitive. 

Sorry, I cannot give you my WSJ password. You'll have to set up an account. 

He starts with a short description of a visit as a teen and the shock of seeing women in niqab for the first time. He then mentions some recent violent attacks and then goes onto describe his return as an adult and his specific visit to a welcoming mosque and neighborhood with a high concentration of Muslims.

And then his article ends with :

Quote

Other tourists might remember London for Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and Big Ben. I’ll remember it for its failed multiculturalism. Or perhaps this is what successful multiculturalism looks like. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-visit-to-islamic-england-1535581583

His article is pathetic because he presents the short, cherry-picked as representative of alleged "failed multiculturalism" in England.

The article you mention in Business Insider is written by someone who lives in the neighborhood Ngo talks about. The author rejects Ngo's characterisation and points out that Ngo's mention of the no-alcohol zone has nothing to do with the Muslim presence. Although it seems like Ngo has tried to imply that it does.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

12 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Andy Ngo is a far-right propagandist. His WSJ opinion piece on Muslims in the UK pathetically exposes his own agenda-deep, fact-poor assessment of Muslims in the UK.

Andy Ngo lives in Portland and is a professional reporter.  He is not a right-winger at all, but the ANTIFA Nazis who assaulted him have a standard policy of lying and deceit, and any one who is honest must be right wing.  Ngo, who is gay, did a fair report on Muslim London, and came to the same conclusion which other intellectuals have come to:  London will be Muslim in less than 50 years, by birth rate alone.  English intellectual Douglas Murray (also gay) has written and spoken extensively on this fact, and he is left-wing just like Andy Ngo.

Quote

It looks to me like he does similar in the US, cherry-picking footage and facts out of context.

He is not adding journalistic value to this conversation.

The totalitarian pro-ANTIFA press failed to report the facts (which one can see on camera) of ANTIFA deliberately assaulting Ngo and causing him serious injury (brain hemorrhage).

Quote

“They view self-defense as necessary in terms of defending communities against white supremacists,” Mark Bray, a Dartmouth historian who studies antifa, told my colleague Sean Illing in a 2017 interview. “They have no allegiance to liberal democracy, which they believe has failed the marginalized communities they’re defending. They’re anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

Antifa does not have a central command structure, and its members are typically anonymous. While not all antifa activities involve physical confrontation, some do have a nasty habit of assaulting people — including journalists, as some reporter friends of mine like Taylor Lorenz, who were attacked while live-streaming in Charlottesville, Virginia, can speak to.

* *  * *

Ngo was recognized by the crowd, as people yell things like, “XXXX you, Andy Ngo!” He was punched without any attempt to retaliate, covering his face with his hands in a defensive posture. You can see him being hit with a milkshake (a common tactic used against right-wing figures in the UK), egged, and sprayed with silly string.

Footage from the aftermath, taken by Ngo himself, shows his face battered and bloody. According to a statement by Quillette’s editors, the attack produced “a brain hemorrhage that required Ngo’s overnight hospitalization.”

It’s important to reiterate: Beating people up is reprehensible. Whoever punched Ngo, antifa or otherwise, committed a crime.

The right/center and left narratives go beyond that central point to claim Saturday’s events for their team. In the process, they tend to distort the facts, trying to make it fit their worldview when it doesn’t quite conform.  https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/3/20677645/antifa-portland-andy-ngo-proud-boys

ANTIFA typically puts concrete powder in the milkshakes, which congeals and makes the milkshake a huge rock.  Is that the sort of people who are going to make a better America?

Edited July 14, 2020 by Robert F. Smith