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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27312 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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New Year, Same Old Culture War

At least 10 killed in New Orleans after driver ‘intentionally’ rams into crowd on Bourbon Street (CNN)

Apparently, "FBI Special Agent Aletha Duncan said the Bourbon Street attack is 'not a terrorist attack' in comments delivered after the mayor spoke." But then, later:

New Orleans mayor declares 'terrorist attack' on Bourbon Street, FBI confirms investigation (Fox)

Coulter's Law appears to be in force. As a reminder:

The longer we go without being told the race of the shooters, the less likely it is to be white men.

And indeed, this was a shooter, who died in a gunfight with cops... but so far it appears the ten deaths and dozens of injuries were vehicular, not firearm-related. Over on 8chankun (warning: images of death) it's claimed that "FBI Director Kash Patel states killer was 'Middle Eastern Descent'" but I don't see a link to direct evidence of that. I will be interested to learn whether it is a disinformation thing, or whether 8chankun is just better at reporting news than multiple multi-million dollar corporate news media outlets. Can a failed shooting preceded by successful vehicular homicide be used as ammunition (hah) in Second Amendment debates? Probably! Apparently at least one "explosive device" was also found?

There is something to be said for "wait and see," and indeed I expect to hear much more about this attack in the near future (unless, of course, we simply don't). Though clearly Special Agent Aletha Duncan did not seem to think there was any reason to "wait and see" when declaring, contra the mayor, that this was not a terrorist attack.

In unrelated news, Stocks just did something they haven’t done in nearly three decades--and in case you are unimpressed with CNN's clickbait headline,

back-to-back gains of over 20% is the best performance for the benchmark index since 1997 and 1998

Everything old is new again.

I went into the shop this morning and rolled my eyes when the front page of the Irish Independent referred to the perpetrator as a "Texas man". But later in the sub-heading he was mentioned by name. The online version of the article even refers to him as an "Islamic State-inspired killer". Perhaps, in Irish journalism, nature is healing?

I guess, to be fair, he really is a Texas man rather than someone from Saudi Arabia with thin ties to Texas. Details are still emerging, but this is an African-American born in Beaumont that served in the US military and was later converted to Islamist ideology. He is probably also a literal crazy guy. I'm as quick to blame Islam as just about anyone and I'll certainly do so again here, but it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

it isn't misleading to refer to him as a Texas man as long as you also include the ISIS information alongside it.

Exactly what I was getting at. The average Irish person, upon hearing "Texas man", thinks "white, God-fearing GOP voter, probably living on a ranch which contains a small arsenal of firearms". Upon hearing "Texas man commits terrorist attack", the average Irish person would probably assume that such a person committed a Dylann Roof or Timothy McVeigh copycat crime. Mentioning him by name later in the sub-heading immediately disambiguates this (I'm not saying it's impossible that a white man might convert to Islam and change his name to "Shamsud-Din Jabbar", but such a sequence of events certainly sounds unlikely), and emphasising that his attack was inspired by ISIS disambiguates it further still.

Such honesty and forthrightness is to be commended from the Independent, considering that they published an entire article about the stabbing in Dublin in November 2023 without once naming the assailant or mentioning anything about his ethnic background.

I wonder if there's some kind of geographic component to Coulter's law: maybe Irish journalists are willing to specify the ethnicities of criminals who commit crimes in far away countries, but are reluctant to do so when it happens at home (or in neighbouring nations). Or perhaps not: the New York Times is no less cagey when reporting on the Dublin riots, refusing to name the perpetrator and continually referring to "unconfirmed" reports that he's Algerian (by which they mean "unconfirmed at the time the riots unfolded" - by the time this article went to press it had been conclusively established that the perpetrator was Algerian).

Uh, does the tendency for African Americans to convert to Islam, is that widely known in Ireland? Like the phrase ‘Texas born shamsud Al-din’ makes me think of a local black convert, very possibly having spent time in prison, almost certainly with ties to antisemitic black nationalism. Does an Irishmen get the same impression?

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man. Trying to put myself in the shoes of an Irishman less terminally online than me, I imagine such a person, upon hearing his name, would assume he was a first- or second-generation immigrant from the middle East or North Africa, and would probably not assume he was a black convert. I've had to explain the concept of "Yakub" several times in the past year, and without exception, no Irish person I've encountered was familiar with it or the Nation of Islam. (Funnily enough, I did once find a discarded Black Hebrew Israelite flyer on the largest street in Dublin.)

I find it very hard to imagine an Irish person hearing the name "Shamsud-Din Jabbar" and picturing a white man.

Arabs are white. Not politically, but physiologically. Both 19th century scientific racists and modern scientists with access to DNA tests will acknowledge this, at least in the middle of long academic monographs.

Way to miss the point, Arabs are not "white", Arabs are Arabs. Physio-capitalism, Bio-leninism, or whatever the queer autists on on X are calling it this weekend is completely irrelevant.

Moderns Arabs have material sub-Saharan African admixture. They also exhibit substantial inbreeding, so their psychological and behavioral characteristics are likely "worse" than one would expect.

Some Arabs are pale enough they could pass as southern Europeans, sure, but the average one doesn't look caucasian to me.

Actually as far as I’m aware, citizens of most Gulf Arab countries have a non-negligible amount of African admixture from the days of harem slavery. African female slaves were not made infertile the way African male slaves were. I think in places like Yemen in particular the African admixture is particularly significant.

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