Why does Social Justice embrace Islam?

One of the more confusing aspects of the Social Justice movement is the embrace of Islam, and a fight against “Islamophobia”. In Canada there are competing resolutions, one offered by the liberals that specifically names Islamophobia as something the government opposes, and one offered by the conservatives that only includes crimes against individuals based on their religion. The liberal resolution is interesting, because it is specifically an attack on a set of beliefs and not actions based on any particular beliefs.

The Women’s March featured two speakers / organizers, both of whom may be considered questionable. One was a woman who has been found guilty of raping and murdering a man. The other was a woman who states that Islam is the most feminist friendly religion and that Sharia Law is feminist. This is the same set of law that states that women must be covered, that women are the property of men, that adult men can marry pre-pubescent girls. This is considered a belief system highly compatible with feminism.

Social Justice is opposed to the patriarchy, specifically the white cis heteronormative patriarchy. Why then would these people advocate tolerance for and acceptance of Islam? And where do they classify, given that religion isn’t listed in the progressive stack?

The roots of this can be found in the campaigns of Hillary Clinton. Her two attempts to run for President of the United States can be considered the basis of Social Justice acceptance of Islam. It started with Occupy Wall Street, which was supposed to be a protest about financial activities by the major financial corporations and their deep ties with government. It was subverted into a movement about social justice and ultimately destroyed from within. Then it was replaced by the forced movement Black Lives Matter.

Once a movement about finance was replaced with more identity politics, there was one problem left for the Hillary Clinton campaign to solve, and that was her large donations from countries that have very repressive laws against many of the minorities she claims to represent. Given that in predominantly Muslim countries there are harsh laws that repress women and harsher laws that result in the death of anyone who is not cisgender and heterosexual. It was necessary for the Hillary Clinton campaign to cast Muslims in predominantly Christian countries as minorities. The Syrian refugee crisis was a perfect vehicle for this, in spite of the trouble European countries are having with a rape epidemic committed by refugees from African and Middle Eastern countries.

Through the close ties between the Hillary Clinton campaign, most media outlets, and many identity politics groups, acceptance of Muslims as an oppressed minority group was forced downward. Now all over the Western world, from Europe to North America to Australia, female Muslims are expressing the idea that Islam is the most feminist and progressive religion. This is in spite of all the ample evidence to the contrary, and anyone who dares say this is considered oppressive.

Islam isn't a race, it is a religion. A religion is a set of beliefs. It is not an act of oppression to analyze and criticize a set of beliefs. Fear of a set of beliefs should never be considered a crime in any free society, even if that fear is irrational, which is not to suggest that anyone desiring freedom should lack concern about Islam. For women, homosexuals, and transsexuals to defend Islam is, however, quite irrational.

Why PewDiePie is important

Normally a person would not mention Donald Trump, Milo Yiannopoulos, and PewDiePie in the same context. PewDiePie is non-political and fairly inoffensive for all that he is the single most popular content creator on YouTube. For all that, he has something in common with the other two, in that he is at the center of a war between the old media and the new media.

YouTube user Sargon of Akkad has demonstrated the campaigns against both Milo Yiannopoulos and PewDiePie with the following video.

Moreover Sargon of Akkad launched a petition drive in support of PewDiePie on Twitter, which in spite of overwhelming support was removed from the trends by Twitter.

PewDiePie is basically an innocent victim caught in the cross-fire between the mainstream media and the new alternative media. He was chosen because of his high profile, to demonstrate to the alternative media that the mainstream media still has the power to control the narrative.

That the narrative is slipping is shown by Donald Trump and his infamous use of Twitter. Through his use of that platform he is able to communicate directly to the people, bypassing the media’s role as the gatekeepers between events and the public. He will make tweets that he must know are outrageous, simply to provoke a reaction from the media. That he restricted certain media outlets from his press conferences is called a threat to the First Amendment freedom of the press, in spite of him not taking any actions that would shut down those media outlets. He is denying their role in shaping the narrative, which is why so many in the media are saying he should shut down his Twitter account.

Both Donald Trump and PewDiePie are fighting a war against the power of the mainstream media. PewDiePie is doing it out of necessity due to him being a victim of a smear job the same way as Milo Yiannopoulus. Anyone who supports the free flow of information and opposes media smear campaigns should support PewDiePie.

As a side note, it has been noted that Daily Stormer has declared itself the number one fan site of the Wall Street Journal.

Pewdiepie did nothing wrong

YouTube user Pewdiepie is the single most popular content provider on YouTube. Having had his videos monetized, he has made millions of dollars per year for making videos. His subscriber count is over 50 million. For comparison, the Wall Street Journal's YouTube channel has almost 500,000 subscribers. He is so influential on the site that the owners of YouTube actually listen to his opinion, and he is aware of this. He will actually speak up for less popular and influential users when the issues don't directly relate to him but he feels it is important for the site as a whole.

Most of his videos are lighthearted, made simply for general entertainment value. Recently, upon finding a vendor who offers to make a video of themselves holding up a sign with any message, he decided to see if they were sincere. He commissioned them to hold a sign with an anti-Semitic message. He did not do this because of personal beliefs in anti-Semitism, but because he wanted to see if they would actually do it. Upon being called out on anti-Semitism, he went further. He stated that his accusers would take clips of his videos out of context, and inserted a clip of him watching a speech by Adolph Hitler, to dare them to take the clip out of context.

The Wall Street Journal rose to the occasion. Someone at the Wall Street Journal decided to accuse Pewdiepie of being an anti-Semite based on these out of context clips. These people at the Journal also pressured both YouTube and Disney to stop doing business with him, costing him a large amount of revenue. His YouTube channel still exists, but videos have been demonetized.

Rather laughably, when people started reacting to the smear campaign by the Wall Street Journal, they offered to give him a platform from which he could respond to allegations by the Journal, even though they had already cost him revenue. His subscriber count is more than one hundred times theirs, and they offered to give him a platform.

The print media is losing importance. One person with a YouTube channel, without any bosses to tell him what videos to make, may have more influence than the entire Wall Street Journal. Not in all areas or in all ways, but at least in some areas this one person is more influential. When the media lashed out at him, he was able to respond, able to get his version of event out. This goes beyond the old model of the internet keeping alive a story that the media wants to bury, this goes to a direct challenge against a media narrative. This is a direct challenge by someone who isn't even a politician, such as when Donald Trump bypasses the media and speaks directly to the public through Twitter. This one person who has gotten wealthy by making YouTube videos, has sufficient influence to counter the chosen media narrative directly.

This fight that the Wall Street Journal picked with Pewdiepie is the old media lashing out at the new media, in a manner akin to an injured animal thrashing wildly. And the way they chose to do it is so pitiful, because unlike in the earlier era of media dominance, anyone can see the source videos under discussion. They are still on YouTube. Anyone even mildly curious, even if their curiosity is "I want to see what that bigot said so I can hate him too" can go see the videos and see they are not what the Journal said they are.

This actually serves as a well deserved humiliation of the mainstream media. Between the election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the possible election of Marine Le Pen in France, the media is already losing control of the narrative. Choosing to fight with someone who is actually harmless, and losing because he is more influential in some areas, and more influential in the long run, is actually pitiful. To do so after the media recently embarrassed itself by having a discussion about fake news is humiliating. Pewdiepie did nothing wrong.

The Progressive Stack

During Occupy Wall Street, and one of the reasons it eventually fizzled out, to determine who would get priority to speak a technique known as the Progressive Stack was used. This was to give "underprivileged" voices a greater voice. In order, the progressive stack is:

1. Race
2. Heteronormativity
3. Gender
4. Sexuality
5. Ability
6. Class

Missing from this list is religion, and there is no listing of which races are prioritized over others. Unofficially different races are ranked differently based on how dark the race is, so an African American ranks higher on the stack than a Hispanic - George Zimmerman was considered to be white because the person he shot was Trayvon Martin. Heternormativity refers to gender expression, as opposed to gender or sexual orientation.

This is highly correlated to the Social Justice Warrior belief in privilege, a modern political equivalent of original sin. A person is born with privilege and never able to expunge it, the only way to account for it is to admit and apologize for it, and spend the rest of one life atoning for it. There is no proof that the person did anything wrong, other than being born, but still the person is considered to be saddled with a lifetime of guilt.

Assuming a black man and a black woman both wish to speak, they both get first place due to race. Then going down the stack eventually the third determinant is reached where the black woman speaks first. There is no indication if any stack rankings are cumulative - would a transgender female rank higher or lower than a straight black male? Or could it be considered a point system where one might have several lower categories that place a final higher rank?

The problem is, as much as this was done for progressive purposes it is ultimately divisive. Every person is judged not on individual merit but on innate characteristics of the person. People are not judged as people, but are judged entirely by their demographic. This is what ultimately drove many white men away from Occupy, to the detriment of the safety of those remaining at the Occupy locations.

This also contributes to why Hillary Clinton eventually lost the 2016 election. Her campaign was focused on appealing to demographics, various groups based on innate characteristics. She forgot to campaign to everyone, believing wrongly that she could hold the Obama coalition together by focusing on many of its component parts. In a way, the election of Donald Trump could be considered a revolt against identity politics.

Given the concept of privilege, the progressive original sin, rejection of identity politics IS racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. That is why, even though Donald Trump was the first person elected president to be in favor of Gay Marriage while entering office, there is a lot of rhetoric about how he is against the very ideas he is in favor of. Not being a bigot is the new form of bigotry because that is a denial of privilege.

Calexit

In 2008, when Barack Obama was elected to president, Governor Rick Perry discussed the possibility of Texas seceding from the United States. He was rather roundly denounced and ridiculed by the mainstream press for even speculating on the topic. In 2017, now that Donald Trump has become president, there is an actual movement for California to secede from the United States, called "Calexit."

Given the recent riots at Berkeley where violent agitators forced the university to "uninvite" Milo Yiannopoulos as a guest speaker, President Trump has threatened to cut off federal funds to the university. There is also a move to make California a "sanctuary state" in response to President Trump's plans to enforce immigration laws, again with a threat to cut off federal funding to the state (as well as any other states or cities that may declare themselves "sanctuaries").

An independent California would be no libertarian paradise. Unrestrained by the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the first thing to be eliminated would be any and all firearm rights. Still, if this were to go forward, the prospect for liberty as a whole look promising due to the ramifications outside of California.

The first thing to notice is the electoral balance. It is possible for Democrats to be elected to the presidency due to the 55 electoral votes provided by California, just as it is possible for Republicans to be elected due to the 34 electoral votes provided by Texas. Absent California, the Democratic Party would be at a serious loss, and not just in the electoral college. Removing California would remove two Democrat senators and a significant block of Democrat representatives. This would swing the rest of the country strongly Republican. That is not necessarily good for liberty in itself, but the eventual result could become a cascade of secession from other heavily Democrat states finding themselves in a country that has just swung strongly Republican.

Calexit would also mean that, for the second time, it is the Democratic Party leading secession. Due to the War Between the States, the concept of secession is highly tied to the idea of slavery and racism. Allegedly the parties have reversed roles on the subject of race, so if California were to lead a new wave of secession by the Democratic Party it would lead to untying the concept of secession from the racism. That would make secession a more available option for any state, whether predominantly Republican, predominantly Democrat, or fairly well mixed.

Then there is the subject of which states subsidize the others, known as red state socialism. If true, this would be an opportunity for the heavily Democrat states to stop subsidizing other states. A secession movement would actually decrease wealth transfers between states, leading to a necessity to reconstruct state budgets.

An independent California would not be beholden to the foreign policy of the United States. This would enable local solutions to the question of migration of people with Mexico. Also, in 1999, the California Public Employees' Retirement System considered divesting from Turkey for political reasons. This created opposition on the grounds that California was creating its own foreign policy contrary to United States foreign policy. Were an independent California to make such a move, there would be no similar controversy.

Ultimately this would weaken the federal government as a whole, as concessions will need to be made to prevent states from leaving when the federal government takes actions contrary to state wishes. This may be the key to finally recognizing legalized marijuana in several states, and the first step towards ending the drug war as a whole. This would also lead to greater competition between the states, especially the newly independent ones, in order to provide the best climate for people to want to live or work in those states.

That leaves just one major issue, should voters in California actually vote in favor of Calexit (not a likely prospect given the current polls). What would be the response from a Republican-led federal government? Would they allow California to leave? Would they risk looking like hypocrites given Governor Perry's musings in 2009? Would they stay true to Lincoln and attempt to stop the secession? It is difficult to determine exactly what would be the response.

Social Justice

The person in the video is YouTube vlogger Milo Stewart. She is not particularly remarkable for her views or presentation, but this video of hers is. It is not because she is expressing any new ideas, but instead her video is a summary and encapsulation of modern Social Justice views. She expresses the position that all white people are racists, men are misogynists, all straight people are homophobes, all cis people are transphobes, and all members of a majority are prejudiced against the minority.

The Social Justice movement is an extension of, and goes farther than its original parent, Political Correctness. There are those who defend both with the simple proposition that it is simply about common decency, and that any objection is based out of a desire to say or do things that would be at best impolite. The Modus Tollens argument is a good way of refuting this. If Political Correctness was simply about common decency, there would be no controversy. There is controversy. Therefore Political Correctness isn't simply about common decency.

If P then Q
Not Q
Therefore Not P

The stated intention of combatting racism is a good intention. That does not excuse any of the rest of political correctness, which extended to speech codes. Then, as the Social Justice movement grew out of it, more disturbing ideas grew out of it. First was the idea that members of minorities cannot be racist, based on the false idea that institutional power is required for one to be racist. This newer idea, that all members of a majority are automatically bigoted, is even worse. It is an automatic condemnation of groups of people based solely on the very secondary characteristics that one has no control over, the very same definition of bigotry.

It gets worse. It is considered acceptable to behave badly towards racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes, etc., which means that under Social Justice it is acceptable to behave badly towards anyone who is in any majority group. These people are considered guilty by definition, so treating them as guilty is now allowed.

This is then followed by a belief in privilege, as in "white privilege" or "male privilege" or "straight privilege". It is assumed that no matter a persons standing otherwise, a person with these characteristics is assumed to have privilege. It is an original sin that cannot be atoned for, and the only way to commit even the allowable partial atonement is by admitting to the existence of the privilege in the first place. Denying such privilege is considered to be a symptom of said privilege. This form of circular logic is particularly nasty, because all evidence against it is therefore considered to be evidence for it.

The definition of racism that combines racial prejudice with institutional power is found within certain schools of sociology, but not all of them. Those who prefer that definition try to argue that their definition therefore has scientific backing as they assert it is the definition with sociology. Instead, in their effort to be correct, they are doing far more harm than the original wrongs the movement started out to rectify.

Barack Obama did not pardon Hillary Clinton

One things many people anticipated in Barack Obama's final days as president was that he would issue a last minute pardon of Hillary Clinton much in the way that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Then people who expected this were surprised when such an event did not happen. Some fans of Hillary Clinton tried to claim this lack of a pardon was based on her having done nothing deserving of a pardon, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Given that the White House is inhabited by a Republican, and therefore the cabinet positions are Republican, and therefore the law enforcement apparatus is Republican, there is a good rason for Hillary Clinton to desire a pardon.

Then why would Barack Obama fail to pardon Hillary Clinton? One thing to consider is that in spite of them being in the same party and working together in the same administration, the two actually have never actually gotten along and actually do not like each other very much. His failure to pardon her could be due to him not wanting to do her any favors, as well as a punishment for her having failed to defeat Donald Trump in the general election.

Barack Obama has been shown that he can be quite petty. His behavior in escalating hostility with Russia is definitely an attempt to make things difficult for Donald Trump as he takes office. His failure to pardon Hillary Clinton could be even more petty than dislike. He could also be setting Hillary Clinton up for the uncomfortable position of being dependent on the good will of Donald Trump, making her dependent on his good will after a particularly vicious campaign. This would have the effect of making sure she behaves during the transition. She could have made this transition more difficult, but instead she had to stay on the good side of first Barack Obama and then Donald Trump. If she does anything to make things difficult for Donald Trump, he could always change his mind on the subject of legal activity against Hillary Clinton. This could be why she has been so completely out of the spot light since her defeat. She had no other choice.

A better reason to expand the House of Representatives

Increasing the number of Representatives in the House would address the issue of disparity in votors per elector, but that is neither the only nor the best reason to do so. This is actually a good idea in itself. It may seem paradoxical, but the best way to reduce government overall could be to increase one particular part of it.

This is technically feasible. An isolated hardwired network can be built, giving each Representative a physical key that can be used to activate that Representatives physical terminal, would make the voting possible. As the network is isolated, it is cannot be hacked from the outside. Since each Representative would have a physical key and a matching physical terminal, it would not be possible (as it is in California) for any Representative to cast a different Representative's vote.

With 700,000 people per Representative on average, and 435 Representatives total, the balance of power is shifted strongly away from the people and towards both lobbyists and the establishment parties. It is far easier to control 435 people than it is to control 4,465 people. On the other side of the equation, it is far easier for one person to have any influence when he is one out of 70,000 instead of one out of 700,000.

Those who believe in government power will describe the feasibility as the reason to oppose this, but the real reason this would be opposed is because of how it shifts power away from the government. It would be far easier for the constituents to control their Representative with that representation ratio. Lobbyists will need to expand their budget by a factor of ten in order to buy as much influence as they can currently buy on their existing budget. With ten times as many races to monitor, it will be much harder for the national party, or even the state parties, to control the Representatives and give more power to the local parties. These local parties would also have to be smaller and more local to adequately serve the Representatives.

As counter-intuitive as it might seem at first, increasing this one component of the Federal Government grants much more power to the local communities and the people, and it doesn’t require amending the constitution or any action that might wind up being overturned by a judge on constitutional grounds.

Minors Tried as Adults

The various governments within the United States have a very unclear view of when a person is an adult. The right to vote, sign contracts, and enlist in the military (or be drafted in to the military) are all granted at the age of eighteen. The age at which one can get a driver’s license varies state by state but generally hovers around sixteen, with various additional restrictions in place at first. However, the age to rent a car is as low as twenty one and as high as twenty five.

The age of consent also varies by state between sixteen and eighteen. The age of marriage is more consistent being eighteen in most states, nineteen in Nebraska, and twenty one in Mississippi, but with earlier marriages being available in most states given special situations. The age to purchase tobacco varies between eighteen and twenty one, while the age to purchase alcohol is consistently twenty one.

Then there are times when legal adults are included in statistics that appear to be about minors when they should not be. A nineteen year old woman, married and a high school graduate, would be included in statistics about teenage pregnancy. A nineteen year old man involved in a gang fight and killed by a firearm will be included in statistics about teens being killed by firearms.

Then there is the age of majority at which a person can be tried as an adult in a court of law. This is where the inconsistency becomes severely detrimental. Although the laws about the age of majority are inconsistent to the point where it is nearly impossible to say when someone is actually fully an adult with all the rights and privileges therein, there are laws that say minors should be tried in juvenile court and adults should be tried in criminal court. These laws restrict the activities of government, and so it should never be the government that decides when these laws should be waived.

A canny defense lawyer should, upon hearing that the prosecutor wants to try a minor as an adult, request that if the defendant is found not guilty then the defendant should get all the other rights and privileges of being an adult. The alternative is that the individual is made to bear the responsibilities but not the rights, when the theory of separating minors from adults is that minors lack the rights but gain the benefits of the responsibilities, while adults bear the responsibilities but also have the rights.

In a more ideal world, it would be easy to determine when an individual is an adult and can therefore bear the rights and responsibilities thereof. The government cannot operate on that standard, though, and a distinct and objective standard, such as age, must be a substitute. Once the government sets such a standard, the government must never violate said standard. If the standard itself is wrong, then it should be changed. The one agency that must never be allowed to pick and choose the rules it operates under is government itself.

All the Right People Lost

The election of Donald Trump, while not necessarily good in itself from a libertarian point of view, has certainly had effects that are very good. The best part of his victory is who lost when he won.

The election was supposed to be a boring contest between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, with Hillary Clinton eventually winning on the platform of being the first woman president. Even if Donald Trump changes nothing, he succeeded in forcing all the right people out of the office they sought. He ended the Bush dynasty and the Clinton dynasty.

Some suspect that his cabinet choices are deliberately crafted to place people into positions where they can destroy the agencies they are in charge of, or at least bring ridicule upon said agencies. Although a good theory that is currently supported by the initial evidence, it is perhaps too early to determine the validity of this theory and more data will be needed before a conclusion can be drawn.

The insulated establishment political class, although still in power, lost through the election of Donald Trump. Also the secondary media class that has been telling the people that Hillary Clinton was going to won, that daily campaigned against Donald Trump while claiming that it was simply reporting the news, saw that all their efforts failed to steer the election.

Those who engage in identity politics also lost. Donald Trump's win is often described as due to racism. Although David Duke didn't actually endorse Donald Trump, he gave an impression that he had a favorable opinion of him. The same can be said of William Quigg and his statements regarding Hillary Clinton. The Southern Poverty and Law Center estimates that there are at most about 7,000 members of the KKK in the United States. They have a vested interest in estimating as high a number as possible, and that is the number they came up with. Assuming all 7,000 broke for the same candidate instead of being split like the leadership was (an unreasonable assumption) that still constute less than 0.01% of the total vote for the candidate they supported. Instead it has been shown in exit polling that Donald Trump did better than Mitt Romney among minorities, and Hillary Clinton did worse than Barack Obama. Minorities who voted for Donald Trump are being accused of betraying the group they are told they belong to, showing that identity politics lost.

Another group that lost were the NeoConservatives. They are not as fixated on supporting a particular party, they can be flexible with partisanship as long as they get their desired outcomes. They did not have a particular problem with Barack Obama, and would have been hapy had any standard Republican won or had Hillary Clinton won, because they would have been able to further their agenda of military domination of the Middle East. The last time a candidate actually opposed that from the inside, and did so with any degree of effect, was Ron Paul and his staunch anti-war agenda. Donald Trump has already indicated that, perhaps not nearly as in favor of peace as a libertarian would be, he is by no means the hawk that is Hillary. He will actually have the nerve to talk to the Russians, a move being ridiculed as being a puppet of the Russians.

Although it may very well happen that Donald Trump will not bring any major changes, the fact that he was elected has had the benefit of all the right people losing. Even if he brings no real changes, the futures of both major parties are shaken by his victory.