People really seem to struggle to realise how different they are. Hamas is not ISIS, that should be obvious to anyone with cursory knowledge on the history of the region. Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansar’Allah are not going to, nor have the capacity to, gut gay people and women who don’t wear a niqab or hijab. They are not Salafists, for the love of Christ.
The only reason people compare these wildly different groups, is because they all (at least claim to) adhere to Islamic principles. If you think for even a second, you’d realise how ridiculous this is. It’s like comparing the CDU to the KKK or even the Spanish Falange because they’re all Christian, in some way or another.
It’s plain ridiculous, though the liberal (and conservative) types never seem to get it.
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I would argue that you yourself are doing the same by lumping the Taliban with ISIS. Say what you will about the Taliban, but they represent a faction that sincerely carried out a national liberation struggle which culminated in the expulsion of Burgerlanders from their country and the liberation of Kabul. Meanwhile, ISIS is just another arm of US imperialism. Much like HTS, who also collaborate with the Zionist entity by not even pretending to fight against the IOF, ISIS has not fired a single bullet against the Zionist entity and has even been caught having their wounded combatants treated in Zionist hospitals. The Taliban at least say their willing to send troops to liberate Palestine when ISIS/HTS can’t even do that.
I think we should make a distinction between the Taliban in the 90s who were engaging in sectarian masacres. And the Taliban now, who don’t do that. The Taliban now is also significantly better than the previous comprador regime in many ways, the most noticable was the control of the opium trade and production
how to make people not be racist as shit?
yeah but how tho?
the rich racists need to be humbled, the poor racists need to be educated
however this only works half the time, the other half of the time they just get more racist
The only reason people compare these wildly different groups, is because they all (at least claim to) adhere to Islamic principles.
counterpoint: white Americans lump these groups together because of chauvinism and white supremacy
when Arabs have wars it`s because of their religions.
When whites have 2 world wars, well that just nationalism
When white people have wars it’s just the beautiful tragedy of human nature or something
or that we need to understand their reasoning before condemning
I emphasize the coalition nature of the Palestinian Resistance, and compare them to the “Viet Cong”. I kind of frame it as “knowing what you know about Vietnam, that it was a genocidal war that sucked, who would you rather root for?”
This only works on people who are already kind of cool though
You could invite them to read the political charters of these organizations, and read/listen to any of the vast amount of material these organizations put out describing thier ideology, thier goals, thier actions, etc.
If they actually did this, they’d understand. But they probabably won’t, lol. If they were the kinda person who’d actually investigate things like this, they wouldn’t be like this in the first place
It’s a very uphill battle. Chauvinism is completely pervasive and consumes the mind of the vast majority of Westerners, who still consider themselves to be in the vanguard of antiracism when, in actuality, they’re very ignorant. I’d at least show them this statement from Hamas after the death of Pope Francis, I found it very empathetic and comforting.
The Islamic Resistance Movement extends its deepest condolences and sincere sympathy to the Catholic Church worldwide and to all Christians on the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis, Pope of the Vatican, who passed away after a distinguished career in the service of human and religious values.
The late Pope Francis was a noted advocate of interfaith dialogue, calling for understanding and peace among peoples, and rejecting hatred and racism. On more than one occasion, he expressed his rejection of aggression and wars in the world, and was one of the prominent religious voices to condemn the war crimes and genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
While we, in the Islamic Resistance Movement movement, value his moral and humanitarian stances, we emphasize the importance of continuing the joint efforts between the bearers of divine messages and people of living consciences to confront injustice and colonialism, and to support the causes of justice, freedom, and the rights of oppressed peoples.
Pope Francis did nearly nothing to clean his own house of the kiddie diddlers.
Yeah, that’s largely true. Don’t see how that’s relevant, though, and as far as cleaning house of child molesters go you’d hardly find a guiltier institution than the state of Israel.
Without a detailed graph of all of the policies, actions and history of each organization so you can compare and contrast them all, and the willingness for each person to study that graph, there is no way to get people to know the difference.
Most people don’t know the difference between the United Kingdom, the British Isles, England, Great Britain, Ireland and the Crown Dependencies are, or what all of the different subdenominations of Christianity are, as you mentioned. Without a large degree of interest in learning what the differences are, or a high level of pertinence to someone’s life, educating them to the differences and similarities would be next to impossible.
The best you could probably do is have a one-sentence summary of what each group is all about, and hope that your audience doesn’t immediately discount it based on what they think they know about that group. For example, “Hamas: Their unifying tenet is armed resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestine”. If the general sentiment towards Hamas by the West is anything to go by, your audience would probably question even that. If it was easy, it would have been done already.
It’s an uphill battle.
doesn`t matter really, because when all the groups mentioned such as Islamic State getting liquidated by Hamas in the stripe some years ago, they’ll go back to ‘‘Arabs are too barbaric and they like to fight each other, hence why we need to put a leash on them’’
This is a losing game because like “freedom” in the West for normal people “feminism” is in practice a treat-based ideology. Now you can heap Islamophobia on top of that.
Hezbollah is the best out of all these groups to women. They allow women to participate in all parts of society. They have women-led politcal steering committees setting political positions based on Islamic feminism. Hezbollah has a unique risk because their primary benefactor Iran has a much more conservative political position on the issue.
However Islamic feminism is a tenuous balancing act. Like any other religion it Islam is not coherent or consistent in its texts and oral traditions. Coherence and consistency is made based on social views on choosing what passages to elevate and what passages to deprecate. As such Islamic feminism often has very rough edges and looks different based on different political contexts.
Hamas is lower than Hezbollah here but still not comparable to the Taliban or ISIS. The status of women in Hamas and by its governing principles are not equivalent to Hezbollah or the PLO. Hamas has been changing slowly by allowing more women into leadership and changing some of its views since 2021.
You are absolutely wrong about Ansar’Allah. Ansar’Allah is not as organized as the Taliban but ultimately has the similar views and worse practices. Ansar’Allah does gendered child soldiers. Boys as young as 7 become soldiers. Girls as young as 13 become liaisons in the gendered traditional militaristic sense they do “women’s work”. They do intelligence, logistics, support, and involuntary sex work. Like female military liaisons in other traditionalist armies including in the West they are extremely vulnerable to abuse and are effectively prizes and play things for the officer class. Ansar’Allah has some women’s units but there is actually disagreement about militarization of women both official (as soldiers) and unofficial (as liaisons) within Ansar’Allah on “social cohesion” grounds. The Zainabiyyat batallion (women’s battalion) also sources the must vulnerable women in Yemeni society so the poor or groups like the Muhamasheen. The Zainabiyyat batallion’s general is a man and it’s not really a fighting force, it’s a policing / occupation / intelligence force. Zainabinyyat has been accused of being given the duty to create the intelligence networks as a compromise and preventative measure but I haven’t seen strong confirmation of that, nor have I seen any strong evidence that if it’s happening that outcomes are changing for women and girls forced into these networks.
“feminism” is in practice a treat-based ideology.
What does this mean, exactly?
It’s this.
The most hollowed out form of liberal feminism. Not even corpo feminism. Not even white corpo feminism. A feminism that is itself as a vehicle for marketing and driving consumption.
I’d be specific in your phrasing on this topic since feminism in general has plenty to offer when it integrates elements of intersectionality/Marxism/class analysis. Obviously we agree that Katy’s liberalism is bringing none of that to the table and can be dismissed.
I was not trying to denigrate feminism. The West’s mainstream feminism is extremely syncretic now that it’s not even liberal / bourgeoisie feminism anymore. There’s no real word for it. Naomi Wolf is a perfect example. In ideology the Naomi Wolf who wrote The Beauty Myth is not the Naomi Wolf who polices women’s vocal fry. Both Naomi Wolfs are synthesized within the Western mainstream feminism in 2025. It’s only practical effect on the world is reflected in things like Space Katy Perry, which are re-emergent forms of mid-century advertisement patriarchy.
We have gone from Mad Men controlling economic machinery to convince women they need to buy things to enforce a fake beauty standard. To the 90’s and 2000’s where women took on the roles of men in that system. To a systemic patriarchy (e.g. a social structure where patriarchy can exist without patriarchal attitudes) that sells things to women in a Schrodinger’s feminism. Every idea is held in a superposition until society observes it, and society does not categorize it in a logical or consistent way. Society simply collapse the wave function and whether the idea ends up as “pro-women” or “anti-woman” is not deterministic based on the ideas of any specific strain of feminism or even the basic idea of equality between genders.
To explain it in complicated philosophy instead of complicated physics, mainstream feminism is a signifier without the signified or as Lacan put it a pure signifier. I hesitate to say this, but in layman’s terms a pure signifier is “a label that doesn’t mean anything”. I hesitate to use that phrase because it is used in causal conversation that is meant to be simplistic and dismissive. Mainstream feminism isn’t inherently meaningless, it’s part of a dialectical process that has hollowed it of meaning. It’s real meaning should be the history of how it became meaningless. Mainstream feminism is great example of the real social processes that govern how our world works.
To offer an analogy, the last name Carpenter has the same problem as mainstream feminism. Last names were given to people based on certain social meanings. There would be various systems like a literal lineage name like Johnson e.g. Son of John. Occupational names are also a thing like Smith, Miller, Carpenter would literally denote the person’s trade. John Smith would be the guy in your town that makes nails, Tim Miller would be the guy in your town that makes flour, etc. You wouldn’t even think to ask Sabrina Carpenter to make you kitchen cabinets because Carpenter has through dialectic social processes become just a label. So in effect “Sabrina Carpenter” sings, “John Carpenter” makes horror movies, and “mainstream feminism” sells things – all of these labels have been imbued and dispossessed of significance from the same dialectic process of meaning making.
in layman’s terms a pure signifier is “a label that doesn’t mean anything”.
this runs through my head every time someone claims they are politically a “progressive” unless they are a time traveler from the early 1900s
Oh I disagree with this one anyone who says “I’m a progressive” means “I’m a good person”. That one has been dispossessed of its original meaning and re-imbued with a very clear new one.
It’s epithet context used by conservatives means “we don’t think you’re fascist enough”.
“I’m a good person”
great post (I think, maybe someone is going to come problematize those philosophical arguments in 4 hours and make me feel like a caveman)
maybe someone is going to come problematize those philosophical arguments in 4 hours
Wdym? In the history of the internet nobody has ever had posting wars about fuzzy concepts. Nobody has ever had posting wars about the concept of fuzzy concepts.
jesus fucking christ
(that still image, I haven’t seen the girlboss spaceflight video before)
i read that as bourgeois white feminism
Girlboss feminism, Raytheon at the pride parade, etc. Obviously it’s wrong to generalize all feminism as being treat based, but it’s true of bourgeois feminism and we know that the ideas of the ruling class are, in all epochs, the ideas of the working class.
That makes sense, yeah.
It’s like comparing the CDU to the KKK or even the Spanish Falange because they’re all Christian, in some way or another.
No, don’t, we just had this struggle session
No clue. People just tune you out or try and change the subject when you point out their bigotry.
IDF KKK ICE KKKOPS, they are all the same
If you can get them to relate lack of due process to oppression, and connect that to only mutual defense can protect against this, then these groups suddenly start to take on a different place in their understanding … hopefully
So far I have not really seen anyone within the lib mindset really make this leap on their own, they kinda sheepishly approach it, but they need a strong push to face the reality of it
aggressively misgender their christianity
So, different flavors of religious nonsense, with variant relative degrees of fundamentalism and wingnuttery.
I know that Hezbollah is not the same thing as ISIS; but religion and politics is never a good combo, and it never has been (it’s a tool wielded by politicians to influence people, and we’d all be better off without it).
For example, the Palestinian / Israeli conflict is one that needs to be resolved, and Palestinians have a right to exist in prosperity and peace with their neighbors, as do Jews.
The conversation about how Israel and Palestine can coexist peacefully, and what to do about land, and all that, is not served by debates about whether or not The Prophet ascended to Heaven on a winged horse at the site of Al Aqsa / The Temple Mount, and whether or not rebuilding the Temple Mount will bring about the Eschaton / the Return of Christ / Armageddon, and whether or not The Madhi will be there too, and so on. That hocus pocus bullshit just severely muddies the waters for everybody.
As a life long atheist, trying to reduce the genocide of Palestinians to just “different sky daddies” is Reddit cringe.
If you were in Gaza right now, would you feel that the Al-Qassam brigades who were actively fighting off the IDF invasion, literally the only people between your family and obliteration, are “fundamentalism and wingnuttery”? If you were in southern Lebanon, after each generation of your family being devastated by losing siblings and children to Israel “mowing the lawn” every couple of years, would you think that Hezbollah is only there to control you even as they successfully fend off the 2024 invasion?
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I still maintain that a large root cause of Middle East conflict is not entirely caused by, but largely informed by, religion. Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and their sects, all add fuel to the fire.
Then explain why OG Zionists like Herzl as well as influential Israeli politicians like Meir and Ben-Gurion were atheist Jews who don’t even believe in God. They obviously didn’t need to believe in God before stealing land from the Palestinians and justifying their theft from a God they don’t even believe in.
It’s still not wrong to say that religion forms the majority of the basis in popular media for the “legitimacy” of the existence of Israel, and also a part in the “legitimacy” of the Palestinian cause.
Huh, I didn’t know that.
But just because the Israeli’s religious doctrine is supported by a dominating military, whereas the Palestinian religious doctrine is embraced by people who are being oppressed, doesn’t make either religious doctrine more or less helpful or correct.
I mean, Israeli settlers believe that they’re entitled to the land because God promised it to Abraham and his progeny
This is a mischaracterization of the conflict. Israel is hardly backed by religious logic. There are mixed views among the Haredim who live within occupied Palestine, most of whom actually oppose the existence of the Zionist state.
Christians believe that if they can shuffle all the world’s Jews into Palestine and get that Temple rebuilt, Jesus will come back and rule paradise on Earth.
You’re talking with a Catholic who believes the complete opposite of whatever this is. There is no such thing as a monolithic view among Christians as to ethnic relocations or the creation of ethnostates (although if you ask me, I’d say ethnic cleansing is wrong
)The road to Middle East peace starts when we all stop believing nonsense.
Profoundly anti-materialist reading of the world. Read Marx and Engels, please. I’d start with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Can liberals stop doing the
atheist “If they just stopped believing in a freaking sky wizard, the whole conflict would end 
” condescending garbage? Religion isn’t the cause.It wouldn’t resolve all conflict. Sociopaths would continue to exist, as would material conflicts and ethnic tensions and so on.
But it would remove one large confounding variable. It would make a difference. How much exact difference, I’m not sure, but a non-zero difference.
Religious / cult-captured minds are the most difficult to appeal to. And by the way, not all cults are spiritual or metaphysical in nature (as I’ve learned by talking with my MAGA neighbors), but again, one less impediment. Half of my MAGA neighbors’ “reasoning” stems from fucking religion (the other half from a personality cult plus identity politics).
The religious/ideological conflicts that you’re talking about are only the superstructural manifestations of contradictions that exist within the material base. Israeli settles aren’t joining the IDF because they read it on the Talmud. Gazan youngsters aren’t joining the resistance because they read it on the Quran. They are engaging in a struggle that is a part of the global imperialist system, founded on material conditions of colonialist violence and the displacement of indigenous people across the globe. This struggle takes place across multiple dimensions of identity, including religion, ethnicity, gender, and other such factors, but you must understand that these dimensions are not the primary contradiction across which we are to understand the conflict, but across class. It is the class character of the settlers and the resistance that actually informs the struggle and helps us understand how a resolution could take place. The utopian fantasy of a world where “everyone just stops believing in nonsense” is completely useless liberal claptrap.
That’s a good response.
I don’t know. I do know that the MAGA world in which I live (the southern US) is inundated with religion, like fish are inundated with water, and it’s religion that is used by the elites to influence regular folks.
(Btw, I may be a right-wing shitlib relative to you guys, but out here where I live I’m basically a commie. It’s relative.)
So yeah, maybe all this is colored by my own experiences. I’m not a Middle East expert by any stretch. But I do have an axe to grind. I admit that.
Every discussion with MAGA eventually invokes religion in some way, explicitly or implicitly. And it is severely frustrating and exhausting. If I talk about “material conditions” (as best I can, I’m not brilliant about these things either), e.g., collective bargaining, taxing wealth instead of labor, how spreading health care coverage risk across the entire population and detangling insurance from employment actually frees people to start small businesses, and so on, they’ll nod along with me, and say things like they “actually like Bernie,” but eventually the conversation gets turned to some culture war issue informed by religion. I have to keep Bible quotes in my memory just to talk with these people and rebut their culture war bullshit.
I fucking hate it, man. The churches, mosques, and synagogues, how I hate them. 🔥🔥🔥
Maybe I didn’t belong in this thread. I’ve never been to the Middle East.
There’s a part of me that would like to see all priests, mullahs, and rabbis strung up and hanged, and every church, mosque, and synagogue set ablaze. I guess that’s not very Liberal or Progressive of me (or Socialist or Social Democratic either, for that matter, even though I don’t label myself that way, especially around here), and I should work on that. Maybe it’s not healthy or helpful, and writing things helped me examine it a bit more closely.
(Btw, I may be a right-wing shitlib relative to you guys, but out here where I live I’m basically a commie. It’s relative.)
I can empathize. I don’t live in the US, but where I am, we are ruled by a right wing comprador colonial government that also uses religion to justify itself.
I think you’re doing good work by trying to focus on material conditions when talking with the people around you. That’s the most important thing. If they focus on culture war issues, I think it often is the best approach to try to circumvent direct engagement with those topics (still unequivocally say that trans rights are human rights, gay people deserve marriage and not recognizing their marriage is a slippery slope to invalidating all other kinds of marriage that aren’t between two aryans in a Lebensraum homestead, etc) and to try to steer the conversation into the actual nature of power and authority. At the end of the day, you aren’t gonna achieve anything by convincing them to agree with the Democratic agenda, and even voting for Bernie is largely useless. The goal is to bring them into the fold in a socialist movement through mutual aid programs, direct action, agitation, education, and whatever other arenas of struggle are available to advance the cause. Getting them to be perfect is not a necessary part of that process.
The conversation about how Israel and Palestine can coexist peacefully, and what to do about land, and all that, is not served by debates about whether or not The Prophet ascended to Heaven on a winged horse at the site of Al Aqsa / The Temple Mount, and whether or not rebuilding the Temple Mount will bring about the Eschaton / the Return of Christ / Armageddon, and whether or not The Madhi will be there too, and so on. That hocus pocus bullshit just severely muddies the waters for everybody.
Newsflash buddy, you agree with Hamas.
Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
The Jews should go back to Germany. That’s the solution, it’s not about religion, it’s about a bunch of Germans invading another country.
That’s not true!
Many of them were Poles.
