Paranoid Piety and Mass Murder

ConversazioniHappy Heathens

Iscriviti a LibraryThing per pubblicare un messaggio.

Paranoid Piety and Mass Murder

1paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 12:19 pm

I've just finished reading (and reviewed) Red Pill, Blue Pill, which--for all its merits--I think undersold the religious contribution to American "conspiracist" ideation. "Evangelical Christians and conspiracy theories" gets only one page reference in the topic index!

For an up-to-the-month instance, the Atlanta serial murderer Robert Aaron Long seems to have been motivated mostly by his paranoid piety. The racial element highlighted in the mass media was so subordinate to Long's religious narrative (although implicit in it) that he couldn't even consciously admit to it. I find it kind of disgusting that the establishment media have taken Long's "sex addiction" auto-diagnosis at face value instead of examining its origin in his church milieu.

This week's killer in Boulder, Ahmad Alissa, grew up in a nearby suburb, and speculation about his attachment to international terrorism is probably empty. But there seems to be evidence that he was both psychologically disposed toward violence and highly defensive about his religious identity as a Muslim.

2LolaWalser
Mar 26, 2021, 1:24 pm

If Alissa had been bullied as a Muslim, refugee, newcomer etc., and it's easy to believe that he would have been, then being defensive in response is only natural. Of course, if one is also mentally labile, prone to mental illness, then losing control over one's responses becomes an even greater risk. But so far it doesn't look as if, say, him being Buddhist would have changed something. It looks more as a question of personality + condition + circumstance.

There's something about the notion of "piety" in this context that bothers me... maybe because "piousness" is generally seen as a virtue?--I realise it's qualified here with "paranoid", but that still doesn't address the real problem (as I see it), which is the content of the, shall we say, "pious material" these individuals were supposedly lumbered with.

It just seems off, if concentrating on the religious side, to call out the Atlanta killer's "piety" without reference to the fucked up content of his creed.

The notions of sin and sinning and how sex is dirty and women are sinful whores and prostitutes are sinful don't become healthier in the absence of paranoia and massacres.

3paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 2:30 pm

>2 LolaWalser:

In Alissa's case, the religious fault may actually have been that of his neighbors. The Denver suburbs are pretty rife with Evangelical Christians, who are likely to have been his harassers. I'm not saying his defensiveness wasn't justified, there's too little detail for that.

The notions of sin and sinning and how sex is dirty and women are sinful whores and prostitutes are sinful don't become healthier in the absence of paranoia and massacres.

My point is that some paranoia and massacres wouldn't get going in the first place without "notions of sin and sinning and how sex is dirty and women are sinful whores and prostitutes are sinful." The recent Atlanta events being a likely case. These notions are certainly a problem in and of themselves, but if anybody needed the harshest proof of their consequences, it's not hard to find.

4paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 2:54 pm

>2 LolaWalser: There's something about the notion of "piety" in this context that bothers me... maybe because "piousness" is generally seen as a virtue?--I realise it's qualified here with "paranoid", but that still doesn't address the real problem (as I see it), which is the content of the, shall we say, "pious material" these individuals were supposedly lumbered with.

I think the paranoid quality inheres in the doctrines (i.e. the "content") when looking at a lot of the US right-wing Evangelical landscape, like what Hedges discusses in the article I linked. There's a reason why Evangelical churches were such a fertile recruitment field for Q-anon--to the point where many of their Q-resistant clergy have become distressed or even run out of their congregations entirely.

"The world was divided into us and them, the blessed and the damned, agents of God and agents of Satan, good and evil. Millions of largely white Americans, hermetically sealed within the ideology of the Christian Right, yearn to destroy the Satanic forces they blame for the debacle of their lives, the broken homes, domestic and sexual abuse, struggling single parent households, lack of opportunities, crippling debt, poverty, evictions, bankruptcies, loss of sustainable incomes and the decay of their communities. Satanic forces, they believe, control the financial systems, the media, public education and the three branches of government. They believed this long before Donald Trump, who astutely tapped into this deep malaise and magic thinking, mounted his 2016 campaign for president."

5LolaWalser
Mar 26, 2021, 3:18 pm

My point is

I thought so, I'm just thinking it has to be spelled out because from what I see, most see "piety" as something a priori positive. "Faith" is a positive value for most people; questioning the nature of beliefs comes secondary.

There's a reason why Evangelical churches were such a fertile recruitment field for Q-anon

Isn't Hedges a Christian btw? Are the "doctrines" really that much different between the Evangelicals and the rest?

I recall from Insurgent supremacists that (for example) one of the more out-there Evangelical beliefs is that some people are literally demons (or literally possessed by demons), but, that's not a uniquely Evangelical-Christian thing, it's just toned-down elsewhere--but still a legitimate part of scripture and/or historical church teaching.

In short, I don't see that there is any variant of Christianity that doesn't have a basic problem with "content". Whether this or that flavour in practice seems more or less benign depends only on the good will of the believers to go with the "nicer" interpretations.

but in essence it's all toxic bullshit.

6paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 3:52 pm

Hedges is a Christian--an ordained Presbyterian minister, in fact. He thus has a "dog in the fight" in distinguishing especially pernicious brands of Christianity. I'm not a Christian, but I have studied Christianity enough to know that it's not monolithic, and little is gained by treating it as such in societies where it holds a majority or dominant position. (Ditto for Islam, etc.)

Something being "a legitimate part of scripture and/or historical church teaching" doesn't really qualify it as part of the lived religious experience or perspective of ALL contemporary (or historical) Christians. The "Christian position" on slavery is a useful case in point. There really isn't one, although different Christians have used their religious claims to bolster both opposition to and support of slavery--in antiquity and in the United States both. The preponderance of "scripture" is on the pro-slavery side, but different Christian sects use scripture differently. To say "the Bible accepts slavery, and so should we" is characteristic of Evangelical-type inerrantists. But some Christian churches played key roles in the US anti-slavery movement.

7LolaWalser
Mar 26, 2021, 5:36 pm

>6 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, sure. But as long as you have something in the text, you can always get someone going anew "it says right here..." Because it does. It does say X and Y and Z right there. Interpretation carries over less securely than scripture, and the scripture is frightful.

Not that there is serious hope for getting anyone to treat "holy books" like we treat textbooks: revise, update, discard as needed.

8paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 9:35 pm

The problem is that people DO treat "holy books" like history or science textbooks, rather than The Odyssey or Shakespeare.

9LolaWalser
Mar 26, 2021, 6:12 pm

Ah, not a fan of scientists either, are you. :)

10paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Mar 26, 2021, 8:46 pm

I like science and scientists very much, thank you. I just don't think religion is at its best when it pretends to be science (or is mistaken for it).

11LolaWalser
Modificato: Mar 27, 2021, 7:53 pm

>10 paradoxosalpha:

Right, but nothing to do with my point about the pragmatic expendability of textbooks though. What believers may imagine their religions to be is not the responsibility of any sort of science.