ISIS and the AFA

What do ISIS and the AFA have in common?

Fear.  I do not mean they inspire it.  Far from it.  I was a professional soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces and understand far better than either one of these groups the reality of force projection, and the complex application of every aspect of military power, from data-space to battle-space, from logistics to lethal force far better than groups whose fundamental unifying characteristics is that they are terrified of a world too complex to be comfortable.

At the root, the AFA and ISIS are groups driven largely by men who don’t understand the world they live in, and wish to drag everyone back, kicking and screaming, to the fantasy they cherish of a simple time when men of their particular belief system ruled as benevolent dictators over a society that existed to serve their will, and praise them as they feel they deserve to be praised, for their patriarchal virtues.

The myth of the benevolent dictator is the one of the most persistent and damaging in human history, and has lead to the cult of personality that we see exemplified today in Trump and Putin.  The desire for a strong father figure to force the world to make sense is one that is common for humanity, and very dangerous.  Let us be honest about the reality of why the peddlers of these dangerous fantasies are so often successful in the court of public opinion when their promised solutions tend to prove to be failures more often than not.

Fear is real.  Fear of change.  Fear that the world may indeed be more complex than people want to understand.  They want things to be simple.  They don’t want to hear that some things they don’t agree with are necessary, and that some of what they are deeply offended by is in fact in the public interest.

ISIS seeks to impose its own harsh version of Sharia Law over the world, remove the voice from women altogether, and make all knowledge that is not contained in their scrolls to be stripped from mankind forever, so the one “truth” that remains is one that they can accept.  Not necessarily understand, they have scholars who can understand for them, but they can accept that all remaining knowledge fits neatly into the world view they are comfortable with.  There is an order to the universe, and they understand everyone’s place in it.

That their vision is a third world crap-hole that now encompasses the whole of the earth, where men live in poverty, ignorance and fear, yet are far better off than women, does not seem to bother them, because it is a world at least they understand.

The AFA seeks to “return” to a vision of a “before times” that was created by romantics in the 1920-30’s of a glorious Germanic tribal past where strong Nordic demigod men ruled over homes filled with adoring blond wives and dozens of small tow headed children of chiseled features right out of a painting of Wagnerian Opera.  Gender roles clearly defined, power vested in only the “right sort” of racially pure, doctrinaly pure, conservative men united in the purpose of keeping their world free of confusing thoughts or ideas that threaten the perfect fantasy that all is not only understandable, but controllable.

This mythological “before time” never existed, and the world was never as simple as they need it to be.  Our ancestors had no time for this dogma of ideological or racial purity as they were driven very much by the survival imperative to always get better, to seek better ways of doing everything, because each generation buried too many of their young paying the price of “the way things always were” to accept that.  Each generation of the ancestors the AFA seeks to venerate strove hard to CHANGE, to adapt and overcome.  Rather than a perfect unchanging world, our ancestors inherited a world that was trying hard to kill them, and sought each and every possible ally and advantage into making it better for those who followed after.  Like Odin, they did not come with the knowledge to succeed, but they came with the drive to find it, learn it, even steal it if they had to.

We see the success of fear marketers.  ISIS recruiting among the failures of young Islamic men who look at a world that is complicated, that requires them to learn, to adapt, to struggle, and to accept others who do not think as they do, even WOMEN, as their equals, and frequently workplace superiors.  Such recruits want a world where they do not have to adapt, to understand.  Where everything they don’t agree with can just be made to go away, where everyone who disagrees with them can just be forced to shut up.

We see the AFA and White Supremacist groups recruiting heavily, even as we see Christian Conservatives recruiting heavily across the same demographics, among the white men and women who look at the same complex world they don’t understand, but feel somehow that they have the inherit right to rule, and want things to go back to “the way they were”.  They want simple, they want a world that does not contain ideas they don’t understand or agree with.  They want gender roles they understand enforced on people.  They want those facts that do not fit their belief structure to simply go away, as if objective physical reality can be legislated because their myth says the world ought to be different than it is.

The Sons of Odin recruit from those who couch their denial of diversity in the myth of defending our culture from immigrants.  You know, I really get a kick out of that as a Canadian of European ancestry.  Do you see the “Sons of Raven” out there trying to protect the actual First Nations against us immigrant descendants?  Nope.  It seems in the Sons of Odin mythology, immigrants are non-white people, which would be more defensible if our First Nations people looked Scandinavian rather than Salish.

I am not a Son of Odin.  I am the son of James Thomas Mainer.  Soldier, construction worker, father, world traveler and deep student of human history and politics.

 

Dad taught me that you could not look at questions in isolation, that the “simple” solutions offered by historians in hind sight were usually complete BS.  You had to look at the politics, but the politics were driven by the economics and the history, and the history and economics are driven by the geography.  The “simple solutions” largely exist through the ignoring of facts that don’t fit in the models people wish to use, but reality does not care about how wonderful your model is; reality simply exists.  Deal with it or not, reality will continue, but your success or failure depends on your adapting to it, not how well you adhere to your model of how you think the world ought to work.

You do not succeed in life by ignoring facts that do not fit what you wish to be true.  You succeed in life by discarding those models that don’t fit the facts you can prove, and working towards a better understanding so your decisions are based on the best understanding of reality you can make.

My father understood fear, he just failed to let it rule him.  He taught me to listen to fear, like I listen to pain, or the weather report; as information to factor into my decision making, but not in any way the driving force behind it.

We live in a society that, on both the left and the right wings, has decided it is more important to be pure in doctrine, than grounded in reality.  We are living in a society that is beginning to give in to fear.

Fear of change.  Fear of that which we do not understand.

Listen closely, you can hear the howling of your ancestors that their blood should grow so thin as to fear to face the world as it is.

At no time in human history has so much information been available to us.  At no time in human history have so many been given the freedom to chose in so much of their lives.  No longer is the bulk of humanity little better than farm equipment, no more choices to make than the plow oxen.  Now we have the ability to choose, to succeed or fail in a thousand different fields of endeavor.  Now different genders, and even different levels of physical ability can each see a scope of opportunities to prove themselves and make their mark upon the world as NEVER before.  This is a time of unprecedented opportunity to build worth not only as individuals, but as societies.

Faced with the chance to build worth through choices, to prove yourself through word and deed in the greatest scope of opportunity that mankind has ever known, the voice of fear is whimpering in every corner “take away the choices, make it simple, I don’t want to understand”.

ISIS and the AFA both represent the naked face of fear.  Fear of that which they don’t want to understand.  Fear of change.

They couch themselves in language of power, because they MUST hide the core truth, that their message is weakness, is no less than the absolute and abject surrender to fear.  Fear the world is too much for them.  Fear they are not worthy to face the world that is, they must turn back the clock to a world that is small enough that they may stand and not feel like dwarves.

To the crows with both of them!

I laugh at their fear, and embrace change.  The world is vast, contains many wonders I struggle each day to understand, growing deeper in my love of this world with every new understanding.  When I die, I will still have drank only a sip, as did Odin, of that well of ever brimming knowledge, but until my last day I will be drinking as deep as I may of that knowledge, without fear.

I am not a Son of Odin, I am a follower of Odin.  I am a lover of this world, unafraid of the clash of ideas, proud enough of my own choices not to be terrified if another chose otherwise and is also proud.  I celebrate diversity, not because I am not proud of my own beliefs, my own heritage, but because I believe everyone should be free to be as free to do so as I am.

I am not afraid.  The world is vast, and I am small, but I stand tall as I walk up and down in the world, eyes open, ears open, mind open.  I will fight as hard as I must to make sure my children inherit a world in which they have the chance to eclipse my marks because the world offers for them more choices, not less.  When I look to the past, I realize every one of my ancestors that left stories worth retelling had one thing in common; they were all facing forward, moving forward.  Not one of them was trying to look or move back.

Labels and lasers

Funny title hey?  What is the relation.  You almost have to share my background to see it, but for those of us that wore green in some form (CADPAT, MARPAT whatever your pattern) its hard not to see.  Labels act a lot like lasers from the point of view of those they are used to Target Designate.  You see the one lasing the target is not attacking, they are simply illuminating the target, providing the target point and tracking data the engaging unit will use to guide itself to the target which it will then kill.

We have a Quebec Mosque, a handful of dead, which may or may not grow into a second handful depending on their responses in hospital to their injuries, and we have an angry young college white boy.  Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, of Quebec City, has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder following a shooting at a mosque in Sainte-Foy Sunday night.

(http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/more-questions-than-answers-was-mosque-shooting-an-act-of-terror-1.3264415?autoPlay=true).

This young man fits the profile of an angry poorly socialized loner who drifted from a left wing (NDP) affiliation to a right wing follower of Donald Trump and French politician Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right National Front.  Both leaders have essentially made acceptable to the public the views of the right wing extremists that had previously been condemned and even banned outright as hate speech.  This young man embraced the anti-feminist, anti-immigrant, dogma of the newly re-branded far right wing and chosen to act.

His choice of action was to walk into a Mosque and only his extreme lack of skill is credited for the low death toll of his prolonged shooting spree.  No one is saying Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen told him to do so.  No order was given.  No command spoken.  Only the targeting laser placed on immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants illuminating them as targets, designating them as threats.  The words are used to demonize, to declare as a clear and present danger the individuals in our society that this young man knew could be found in the Mosque, and painted the Mosque itself as a threat.  With the targeting laser shining brightly on the target, the disturbed young man did what disturbed angry young men do when poisoned by such charged rhetoric, and performed like the good little bomb he was and walked into the Mosque, following his targeting laser onto his target to kill.  Now in the Middle East he would have used a bomb vest, but here in the west it is more typical for such disturbed individuals to use a firearm as did Marc Lepin in the Polytecnic massacre targeting women, rather than immigrants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_L%C3%A9pine).

I am Heathen, or Asatru.  My closest and deepest relationship among the holy gods is with Odin, called the Battle-Glad and Victory Father among his many by-names.  Odin is primarily the god not of skill at arms, nor strength of arm.  Odin is defined by the rune Anzus, which means inspiration.  Odin is the god of poetry, wisdom, inspiration, the words that move people.  Odin is the god of rousing passions, and for this he is the primary god of both hospitality and war.  It is the rousing of passions that either brings people together in community building (hospitality) or sets them against each other (war).  Perhaps it takes an Odin’s man to see our situation right now as it is.  We are seeing just what passions are being whipped up, and just what deeds are being inspired.

We look at the failed Muslim states and see what extremism brings.  The threat of Islamic terrorism is real, worse than the terrorism is the Islamic Extremism, its dehumanizing effect on individuals whereby those who embrace it really do not see women as free and equal beings, and really cannot see those who believe differently than them as being human beings with an intrinsic right to live as they choose either.  These beliefs are incompatable with the Rights and Freedoms guaranteed by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-15.html).  This is not rhetoric, this is fact.

These failed states are filled with victims, they are as you would expect Muslim victims whose crime was to be born in the wrong state. Many of these people seek a better future and a better life for themselves and their children.  Those who come to Canada to become Canadian, to embrace the Rights and Freedoms of our nation, who learn to value them as those raised with them from birth cannot ever understand, as they understand how truly precious they are.  There are also predators who are seeking richer territories to continue the tactics that rendered their states failed in the first place.  Not simply those ideological terrorists, but the common criminals who do not see others as real people, but prey they can use and abuse because they are stronger.  These have no place in Canada, there is no right for those who are born elsewhere to be Canadian if they do not feel bound by our laws.  We are not obligated to take them.  For this reason we screen potential immigrants, for this reason those we have let in who prove to be not potential citizens but imminent threats forfeit any chance of becoming citizens.

These failed states show the cost of letting the language of hate be accepted.  Now we see people who have escaped these failed states being murdered in the land of freedom itself by our own failure.  We see the cost of the language of hate being condoned by the leaders of western nations that should know better.  The US and France are embracing the language of hate as we have not seen in generations.  We are seeing a war on women, we are seeing the demonizing of other races by all sides.

Let me be utterly clear about this; racism is being openly preached to cheering crowds by ALL of our lovely ethnic extremists.  We see hate crimes by each group against the other, used then to justify more hate that will lead to more crimes.  You need to leave our country I think and travel the world to see exactly how precious what we have here is.  If you had done so, you would feel the real and compelling need to put a bullet into the head of the next person standing on a podium and preaching hate.  Being civilized and respecting the rule of law, we will not do so, but on a deep and fundamental level I must acknowledge that the best use of a bullet is shooting the person holding the targeting laser, the person designating the targets, turning our fellow citizens into nothing more than targets for hatred and violence.

King Henry of England had issues with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church acting against the Royal interests in political and economic affairs.  The King spoke before his knights and barrons, frequently quoted as saying “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”  Four knights, owing loyalty to the cause of the King rode to Canterbury and cut down Thomas Becket in his church.  They were not ordered to, and indeed the King was free to condemn the extreme action, while pointing out that really the clergy for their disloyalty had brought this upon themselves.  The hypocrisy is pretty much standard practice.

We see in the wake of the shooting of Muslims kneeling in prayer by a white Canadian college student the White Hose press secretary use the killing of unarmed Muslims in a Mosque as justification for Trumps ban against immigrants from Muslim nations.

(http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/white-house-spicer-que-mosque-comments-1.3959338)

Those who use labels for target designators do not care about the facts, nor do they care about their own Constitution, their own laws, the words of their own Founding Fathers. They care only about their political agenda, their own narrow vision of who they want to be part of their own “right thinking” nation.  The language of fascism, the one true faith, one permitted belief, single definition of what is a “Real American” or “Real Canadian”.

Understand when you share the memes slapping those labels on those you don’t like.  When you make free in mockery of them, painting them as either threats or undeserving of respect (and therefore protection), you are creating the soil in which these disturbed young men grow into mass killers.  You are creating the problem.  Your hands will be clean, you are only painting the target, you will be free to express your sympathies to the victims, knowing full well you will rush home to share your smirking little memes about “lets see how they like it” or “they brought it on themselves”.  Pro-life supporters are particularly good at this one.  The assassination of a doctor in the middle of his Sunday church service was absolutely acceptable to them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_George_Tiller).

This is how you either show you deserve the rights and freedoms your ancestors fought for, your service folk risk their lives, and too often die for.  This is where you prove you are either a pillar supporting your state, or a parasite leaching off of it.

You will either take a stand against the hatred and stop treating people as labels, or you will continue to indulge in venting whatever emotional reaction makes you feel good, never once connecting your words to the increasing acceptance of hatred, and the deeds that inevitably follow.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a wonderful document.  It enshrines those rights which when shared by us all make us all free. What it also makes clear is that none of our rights give us the right to strip those rights from others.  That is what the language of hate is all about.  At its base the language of hate is about dehumanizing.  Only by making the enemy sub-human can we accept that those rights we hold to be self evident are obviously not intended for THOSE PEOPLE.

Islamic extremists, White Power extremists, clearly they will have a different definition of THOSE PEOPLE who don’t’ deserve human rights, who aren’t real people.  In all other respects they pretty much march in lockstep.  They are not opposite sides of the same coin, they are the same face of the same coin. The opposite face of any extremist is tolerance, not the opposing extreme.

Tear off the labels.  Treat individuals as just that.  Do not excuse the misdeeds of someone because of their label, nor apply the misdeeds of others to someone because they share a label.  Your label does not give you the right to rape or murder.  Your label does not give others the right to target you for abuse either.

Wake up, NOW, while our state is still strong and whole.  Continue to think that the extremist acts have nothing to do with the language you use in your every day life and your social media and you will remain part of the problem, not part of the solution.  There is no right side for extremism.  There is no just cause for extremism.  Extremism or Freedom, you get to have only one of these, I choose Freedom, and that means I must pay for it by every single day working hard to make sure I do not give in to my emotional desire to lash out at someone and contribute to the growth of acceptance of extremist views.  I ask all of you to decide for yourself if you will do the same.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

There are hundreds dead in targeted attacks by armed extremists against unarmed peaceful folk going about their lives in the city of Paris.  This is an attack not only upon the people of France, but upon the freedom of the western world.  It is up to you to decide whether it will be successful.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.  This is foundation of the French Revolution, an ideal that all men and women should be free and equal, joined in a society where they stood united by a common duty to protect their shared freedom, and work together towards a brighter tomorrow.  There was no room in this vision for divisions of faith, of social class, economic status, or even race.  One people, united in the belief that through their spirited squabbling and debate, through the raised voices of a hundred different opinions, the sound of freedom, and the sound of hope would ring.

Hundreds of people are dead, cut down by those who use the gun, the bomb, and their utter contempt for the lives of human beings as the foundation of their vision for France, and indeed, the world.  They feel there is and can be only one right way to think, to act, to believe.  They do not value any liberty, save liberty to be free to hate as they have always hated, to treat half the human race as nothing more than farm machinery you can have sex with, nothing less than chattels, property, unworthy of the freedoms we deem both men and women to justly inherit with their citizenship.  They do not believe anyone has the right to believe any differently than they do, and they are willing to kill, rather than learning to compromise.

They are not that powerful.  Understand this.  Hundreds died today, men, women and children whose only crime was to be present when someone decided to make a political point with the blood of others.  This will only succeed if we choose to let them.  During the height of the blitz, the UK lost 43 000 civilian dead between September 1940 and May 1941.  This is a stunning total, but it changed nothing, because the people chose to not give in to their fear, they chose to remain British, and protect those values that made that little island unconquerable.

Terrorism is the infliction of death, to sow fear, and create social change.  Weapons, on a strategic scale, are devices to change the enemies mind.  Defeat is created in the mind of the foe through the infliction of damage to his forces or folk.  Realistically, the terrorists cannot actually overcome the security forces of France, nor can they force the French people to convert to their beliefs with such attacks.

Their target is not the bodies of the people of France, for no matter how many of them they kill, they cannot threaten France itself.  Their targets can be destroyed, and will begin to undergo the true attack in the days ahead.  The targets of the terrorists are three:

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

The enemy of the terrorist is not the opposing fanatic, they are in fact important allies.  The enemy of the terrorist is the moderate.  The enemy of terror is freedom, is hands extended in welcome, is the brotherhood that looks upon those whose language and faith is different and seeks not the alien to hate, but a brother or sister to introduce to liberty, to teach to live in equality, and to build a real and iron fraternity.

Tonight rang with blood and fire, let the dawn sound not with the bells of mourning, not with cries for revenge, but with

La Marseillaise.