Another Update on DezNat

[ttribe]

2 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I’m honestly sorry I looked into it. Just vile stuff from vile people (but they love us and want us to repent). 

My bad.

[jkwilliams]

17 minutes ago, ttribe said:

My bad.

The odd thing is that they seem to be convinced they’re doing good. I don’t get it. 

[LoudmouthMormon]

21 hours ago, Calm said:

23 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

my wife receives recurring death threats, at least one or two a year, from various animal rights activists. 

Why?

She's a bit of an online influencer in the chicken community, and is friendly towards both "chickens are my pets" people and "chickens are food" people.    Animal rights activists hate both communities.  When it comes to them actually showing up and doing something, it usually involves dumb stuff like covering themselves with red paint or cutting locks at the state fair or something.  Very rarely do they actually show up en masse to someone's house.  But they sure talk big on Facebook.

[Calm]

10 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

She's a bit of an online influencer in the chicken community, and is friendly towards both "chickens are my pets" people and "chickens are food" people.    Animal rights activists hate both communities.  When it comes to them actually showing up and doing something, it usually involves dumb stuff like covering themselves with red paint or cutting locks at the state fair or something.  Very rarely do they actually show up en masse to someone's house.  But they sure talk big on Facebook.

I have never understood why some of those demanding humans be more humane seem to lose some of their own humanity.

[LoudmouthMormon]

40 minutes ago, Calm said:

I have never understood why some of those demanding humans be more humane seem to lose some of their own humanity.

Oh, that's easy:  Many of them detest humans and humanity.  Many wish there were fewer humans, they figure humans are the source of all nature's problems, they think about ways to have there be fewer humans.  Many of them loathe themselves.

(Please understand, I'm only talking about the militant animal rights activists.  There are plenty of decent and wonderful animal rights folks who are engaged in good things like raising awareness of the realities of factory farming.  Nothing wrong with vegetarianism or veganism just by itself.  But like any other ideology, it has it's extremists.   Just like conservative saints and the DezNat movement.)

Edited September 9, 2023 by LoudmouthMormon

[Calm]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Oh, that's easy:  Many of them detest humans and humanity.  Many wish there were fewer humans, they figure humans are the source of all nature's problems, they think about ways to have there be fewer humans.  Many of them loathe themselves.

(Please understand, I'm only talking about the militant animal rights activists.  There are plenty of decent and wonderful animal rights folks who are engaged in good things like raising awareness of the realities of factory farming.  Nothing wrong with vegetarianism or veganism just by itself.  But like any other ideology, it has it's extremists.   Just like conservative saints and the DezNat movement.)

Except the only reason they can care is because they are human.   Not like humans are always logical though.

[smac97]

On 8/4/2023 at 8:07 AM, smac97 said:

We have previously had a few discussions about DezNat:

• September 2019: DezNat (Deseret Nation) = White Nationalism?
• December 2020: DezNat (Deseret Nation) = White Nationalism? - Part 2
• November 2020: Fair Mormon's new YouTube branding strategy
• April 2021: Deznat (deseret nation) = White nationalism? - Part 3
• June 2021: Deznat (deseret nation) = White nationalism? - Part 4
• July 2021: Alaska Assistant Attorney General in "DezNat" Trouble
• December 2021: #DezNat users say they're defending the church; those they target say it's not Christ-like

The Salt Lake Tribune published this on July 30, 2023: Why dismissing all #DezNat users as overzealous, over-the-line Latter-day Saints may be wrong

Today the Trib published this: Study suggests a darker side to DezNat movement that says its only aim is to support LDS Church leaders

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Study suggests a darker side to DezNat movement that says its only aim is to support LDS Church leaders

In this online forum, says researcher, “we’re seeing influences from the ugly corners of American conservatism”

By Tamarra Kemsley   | July 13, 2024, 6:00 a.m. | Updated: 9:28 a.m.

 

Six years ago, the hashtag #DezNat appeared on X, then known as Twitter, and a movement was born.

 

Hmm.  I wonder how prevalent DezNat is as a "movement."  That's not to say we should ignore this, but I would like to understand its actual scope and breadth.

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The largely anonymous accounts that have since embraced the term (short for Deseret Nation or Deseret Nationalism, depending on whom you ask) are united in the belief that allegiance to leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints past and present ought to be total.

But, as a recent study of the movement found, it’s not quite as simple as that.

According to its authors — Spencer Greenhalgh, an associate professor of communication at the University of Kentucky, and Amy Chapman, operations director at the New Jersey Psychological Association — DezNat “provide[s] an opportunity to consider overlaps between Mormonism, the far right and aggressive anti-feminism.”

I am hoping the referenced study is clinical, not politicized.   A hashtag doth not a "movement" make.

I would like to better understand the "Nat{ion}" part of the #DezNat hashtag.  If it is supposed to be a referent to Religious/Christian Nationalism, then that could be problematic.  If it's just a riff, then that may be more innocuous.  Creating a hashtag is not exactly rocket science.

The study addresses DezNat-related allusions to violence, which I find troubling:

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In another echo of far-right groups, some DezNat tweets flirted with the idea of violent solutions to perceived problems. Two tweets depicted Church president Russell Nelson as the genocidal Marvel villain Thanos, who had recently been depicted in film as making half the living beings in the universe disappear. Drawing from this imagery, DezNat’s Nel-son-as-Thanos was shown as wiping out either perceived “apostates” (document 673) or progressive Mormons who shared a then-current rumor that the Church would soon no longer forbid coffee (document 1047).

There are some things that are, or ought to be, beyond the bounds of civil discourse.  Religionists joking about violence against "apostates" or "progressives" within their group falls into this category, IMO.  Way out of bounds.

That said, "two tweets" doth not a "movement" make.  There is a temptation, particularly in partisan ideological/political settings, to point to isolated instances of one person in a group doing something bad and then, without evidence or reasoning, attribute that bad act to the ideology of the group.  By way of example, our own @HappyJackWagon even went so far as to assert that the Colorado nightclub shooter was acting on Elder Holland's "musket" reference.  I responded:

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Your inability to even consider the possibility that violent metaphors/teachings/stories could lead to violent behavior is astounding to me.

Right back atcha.  Your inability to construe anything the Church says or does in any but the worse way possible is astounding to me.

No, there is no reasonable possibility that Elder Holland's reference to "metaphorical muskets" could "lead to violent behavior."

Do you blame Bernie Sanders' generalized political philosophy/rhetoric for the 2017 mass shooting by one of his supporters, James Hodgkinson?

Do you blame the Democratic Party for the killing of Cayler Ellingson by Shannon Brandt, apparently due to a political dispute ("'Brandt admitted to striking the pedestrian with his car because he had a political argument with the pedestrian and believed the pedestrian was calling people to come get him,” the court document continues")?  

Do you blame Rand Paul's political/ideological opponents for the physical assault on him by his neighbor, Rene Boucher ("Earlier accounts of the incident suggested bad blood between the neighbors, who have known each other for roughly 17 years, including a dispute over a property line and possible distaste for Paul's politics, as well as those of his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul.")?

I suspect your answers will be "No," "No" and "No."  And I would agree.

Back in 2020, Tom Kimball, a seemingly prominent member of the "Ex-Mormon" community, committed suicide after information came out about his purported sexual abuse of children.  @Juliann started a thread about it, in which I do not recall anyone blaming that community for his alleged misconduct.  Conversely, Lindsay Hansen Park seemed to have tried to blame the Church ("our Mormon community") and/or "men" for it:

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From Lindsay Hansen Park's post: 

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My friend Tom had a very serious problem, likely an attraction to children, which he acted on many times. In very heinous ways. The impacts of his abuse will live longer than he did. I am so angry at him. He has many victims. It's indisputable and undeniable. Tom was running from and covering up something that was a long time in the making.

When I heard the news, I was conflicted. The Mormon motto is "mind your business." Especially in Mormon Studies. 

In our Mormon community, there's just so much shame around sex, and confusion around power, that the subject is so enmeshed with projection and secrecy. 

Because of the terrible resources and discourse around this subject, many people have done weird sex things growing up and with no resources to unpack or talk about it, they prefer silence. When a story like Tom's comes up, the instinct is to shove it down and keep it quiet. 

She rambles quite a bit, but this part does seem to be a "blame-the-culture" kind of thing.

I'm not sure what to make of her remarks about "terrible resources and discourse" in "our Mormon community."  What does she mean here?

This part also sort of bugs me:

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To the men that trusted Tom, you will probably never understand what it feels like to those of us who loved him like you did, but now have to worry if Tom had been spying on us like he spied on some of his victims. Or had secret photos taken of us, likes some of his victims. I have to wonder now if I have been safe. In the past couple of weeks, I have heard things Tom had said about me to others that make me sad, and extremely uncomfortable. He and I did not see our friendship the same way.

To you who will never have to wonder about this, you are lucky to love Tom without the fear some of us feel. 
...
I am so tired, just sick to death of women having to be the ones that hold this line in our community. I am sick to death of the women who silence other women. I'm exhausted at our shame. Why is the instinct to not talk ill of the dead when the dead died to escape accountability?

Oi.  It sure would be nice to be able to have a discussion about such things without importing the Gender Wars into it.  There are plenty of men who were abused as children, but because they are men they "will probably never understand."

There are plenty of men who are upset at, and speak and act again, abuse, and yet LHP is saying she is "so tired, just sick to death of women having to be the ones that hold this line in our community."

Meh.

Back to the referenced study and its discussion of DezNat allusions to violence:

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Other tweets also included echoes of right-wing violence. One participant (document 1416) described DezNat as sheepdogs serving “the shepherd,” a reference to both Jesus Christ and a popular right-wing metaphor that divides the world into helpless sheep, violent-but-evil wolves, and violent-but-heroic sheepdogs (see Cummings and Cummings 2015). Similarly, a DezNat leader tweeted a link to a story that the Church was building firing ranges for its security forces with the comment “#DezNat summer camp” (document 13). Another participant combined right-wing survivalist thinking and Latter-day Saint exclusivism by expressing hope for the opportunity to raid Mormon fundamentalist compounds after an apocalyptic disaster (document 281). After the congregation at the priesthood session of the April 2019 General Conference sang a Latter-day Saint hymn with militaristic language, First Presidency member Henry Eyring quipped that he “felt like we were ready to go” (Eyring 2019; quote appears only in video). One DezNat account responded with “Ready when you are,” accompanied with a picture of Captain Moroni, a military leader in the Book of Mormon (document 707).

In a separate thread, this same account leveled violent rhetoric against critics of the Book of Abraham, a controversial entry in the Latter-day Saint canon. Attaching an image of the book’s first facsimile, a supposed depiction of attempted human sacrifice, the participant commented, “what I love most about the Book of Abraham is that it contains an instructional diagram showing how to deal with those who criticize the Book of Abraham” (document 186). In a second tweet, the participant made his interpretation explicit, labeling the person doing the sacrificing as “DezNat” and the person being sacrificed as a “retarded ex-Mormon about to be blood atoned” (document 188), a reference to former Church president Brigham Young’s since-repudiated teachings on blood atonement, which held that some sins must be paid for with the sinner’s own life (see Mason, 2019). DezNat critics present in our data suggested that this was not the only account during this time to employ these references (document 239; see also Hitt 2019).

Not good, this.  It does not seem to have yet translated into actual conduct, and there is often a big valley of difference between bloviating online and actually acting out IRL.  Still, the former can be a preliminary step toward the latter.  We as Latter-day Saints need to be on guard against, and speak against, these things, even in their nascent form.

Back to the Trib article:

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The Utah-based church has emphasized that these self-anointed defenders of the faith are not affiliated with or endorsed by the global religion.

The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with Greenhalgh about the duo’s research and why Latter-day Saints — many of whom have never used X and probably never will — should care.
...
 

What is DezNat?

DezNat is an online movement that’s particularly prominent on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, but has been active in other online spaces as well.

While prominent accounts and those who are kind of loosely the leaders of the movement have claimed that it’s about supporting the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, critics have pointed out that there are a number of right-wing references that get brought up over again.

Critics have sometimes described the movement as alt-right. Personally, I think it’s a little bit more ambiguous than that, but there’s no doubt that there are far-right influences.

When did DezNat form and how representative is it of U.S. Mormonism more broadly?

August 2018 is when the hashtag was first used on Twitter. They are arguably more conservative than even your average Latter-day Saint.

"{A}rguably."

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What are you basing that on?

Honestly, that’s a gut feeling. I don’t have hard numbers on that.

Oh.

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But there are influences of white nationalist ideas in DezNat and as conservative as U.S. Mormons can be, they famously had trouble with Donald Trump in 2016, and in DezNat we can see influences that are pro-Trump and even to the right of Trump. These are not Mitt Romney Mormons. We’re seeing influences from the ugly corners of American conservatism today.

Based on his CV, Spencer Greenhalgh seems to pay huge amounts of attention to Twitter (37 references), social media (32 references), and games/gaming (dozens of references).  Not much in the "academic rigor" department.

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What issues are DezNat most concerned about?

There’s a strong insistence on the traditional hierarchy and the traditional ecclesiastical structure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the need for everyday members of the church to fall in line rather than question, discuss or even criticize the pronouncements that come from higher-ups.

It is, of course, possible to take a sound principle and stretch and distort it.  To do so does not negate the soundness of the principle itself.  Paul addressed this well in Romans 10:

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1 Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.
2 For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.
3 For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

Jacob also touched on this:

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But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.

The Brethren would not condone violent allusions such as those referenced above.

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Our data primarily comes from prior to 2020, before church leadership started talking about things like vaccines and — more so than in the past — the need to take a stand against racism. Had we looked at 2020 or 2021, would there be that same emphasis? I’m not sure.

But, in 2019, at least, the emphasis was on getting in line behind church leaders. Often in practice, what that ended up meaning was taking traditional conservative approaches on things like gender and sexuality and making sure that Brigham Young University students were falling in line with the Honor Code.

So there are some legitimate questions about whether DezNat cares about traditional authority structures or whether those structures happen to line up behind issues that they care about.

So their data is . . . five years out of date?  

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Why should the average church member care about DezNat?

DezNat raises questions about what appropriate boundaries within Mormonism are.

Anti-feminist discourses that are present in DezNat have some overlap with church teachings. Where is the line between what is preached at General Conference and aggressive behavior towards women online? Can you form a boundary between those? Can you form a boundary between sustaining Ezra Taft Benson as a former president of the church and accepting that earlier in his life he wanted him to run for president with famous segregationist George Wallace?

I don’t know where those lines are. That’s largely an exercise for Latter-day Saint leadership and membership. But it does blur some of those boundaries in ways that I think are challenging and maybe even disturbing.

I think we also need to address the prevalence of DezNat, a point he touches on below.

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Do they ever advocate for violence?

There’s no denying that there is violent language. I think DezNat accounts would describe it as over-the-top humor. But this sort of strategic ambiguity is the hallmark of the far right, especially since 2015 and 2016.

I concede he has a point here.  We as Latter-day Saints cannot endorse, directly or obliquely, on violence under the pretext of "over-the-top humor" and "strategic ambiguity."

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Do you have a sense for how big the movement is?

Between Feb. 1, 2019, and Dec. 12, 2022, we collected 114,573 original posts containing #DezNat and 144,970 retweets of those posts, for a total of 259,543 posts. Those came from 5,158 different accounts, some of which only used the hashtag once and some of which used it a lot more frequently. There are 14 accounts that tweeted more than 1,000 times and about 10 accounts that retweeted #DezNat posts more than 1,000 times (those two lists are overlapping).

The founder of DezNat tweeted or was retweeted over 20,000 times over this time frame. He left after his real identity was exposed, but another influential user has 6,000 followers — not huge, but not insignificant either.

Hmm.  This does not sound like a lot of people.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Snodgrassian]

On 7/13/2024 at 3:55 PM, smac97 said:

Back in 2020, Tom Kimball, a seemingly prominent member of the "Ex-Mormon" community, committed suicide after information came out about his purported sexual abuse of children.  @Juliann started a thread about it, in which I do not recall anyone blaming that community for his alleged misconduct.  Conversely, Lindsay Hansen Park seemed to have tried to blame the Church ("our Mormon community") and/or "men" for it:

Tom Kimball’s abuse occurred during the time he was a Mormon, how/why would the exmormon community hold blame for it? 

[ttribe]

On 7/13/2024 at 12:55 PM, smac97 said:

Today the Trib published this: Study suggests a darker side to DezNat movement that says its only aim is to support LDS Church leaders

Hmm.  I wonder how prevalent DezNat is as a "movement."  That's not to say we should ignore this, but I would like to understand its actual scope and breadth.

I am hoping the referenced study is clinical, not politicized.   A hashtag doth not a "movement" make.

I would like to better understand the "Nat{ion}" part of the #DezNat hashtag.  If it is supposed to be a referent to Religious/Christian Nationalism, then that could be problematic.  If it's just a riff, then that may be more innocuous.  Creating a hashtag is not exactly rocket science.

The study addresses DezNat-related allusions to violence, which I find troubling:

There are some things that are, or ought to be, beyond the bounds of civil discourse.  Religionists joking about violence against "apostates" or "progressives" within their group falls into this category, IMO.  Way out of bounds.

That said, "two tweets" doth not a "movement" make.  There is a temptation, particularly in partisan ideological/political settings, to point to isolated instances of one person in a group doing something bad and then, without evidence or reasoning, attribute that bad act to the ideology of the group.  By way of example, our own @HappyJackWagon even went so far as to assert that the Colorado nightclub shooter was acting on Elder Holland's "musket" reference.  I responded:

Back in 2020, Tom Kimball, a seemingly prominent member of the "Ex-Mormon" community, committed suicide after information came out about his purported sexual abuse of children.  @Juliann started a thread about it, in which I do not recall anyone blaming that community for his alleged misconduct.  Conversely, Lindsay Hansen Park seemed to have tried to blame the Church ("our Mormon community") and/or "men" for it:

Meh.

Back to the referenced study and its discussion of DezNat allusions to violence:

Not good, this.  It does not seem to have yet translated into actual conduct, and there is often a big valley of difference between bloviating online and actually acting out IRL.  Still, the former can be a preliminary step toward the latter.  We as Latter-day Saints need to be on guard against, and speak against, these things, even in their nascent form.

Back to the Trib article:

"{A}rguably."

Oh.

Based on his CV, Spencer Greenhalgh seems to pay huge amounts of attention to Twitter (37 references), social media (32 references), and games/gaming (dozens of references).  Not much in the "academic rigor" department.

It is, of course, possible to take a sound principle and stretch and distort it.  To do so does not negate the soundness of the principle itself.  Paul addressed this well in Romans 10:

Jacob also touched on this:

The Brethren would not condone violent allusions such as those referenced above.

So their data is . . . five years out of date?  

I think we also need to address the prevalence of DezNat, a point he touches on below.

I concede he has a point here.  We as Latter-day Saints cannot endorse, directly or obliquely, on violence under the pretext of "over-the-top humor" and "strategic ambiguity."

Hmm.  This does not sound like a lot of people.

Thanks,

-Smac

1 - If you don't spend any time on Twitter/X, then you have no idea of the prevalence or depth of DezNat activity.

2- Using this as just another launching off point for your polemic attacks on fellow board members and allegedly prominent exmos demonstrates how unserious you are about actually learning anything about this subculture.

[smac97]

5 hours ago, ttribe said:

1 - If you don't spend any time on Twitter/X, then you have no idea of the prevalence or depth of DezNat activity.

2- Using this as just another launching off point for your polemic attacks on fellow board members and allegedly prominent exmos demonstrates how unserious you are about actually learning anything about this subculture.

Okay