The War ISIS Wants • Hacker News Board

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#71

Post by seiji » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:01 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #14

The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund…

There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren't that stupid.

Startups seem to be pretty good at convincing a never-ending stream of youth to surrender 500% productivity now in exchange for (usually lies about) riches in the future.

"Yeah, it's linkedfacebox, you know, a super cool startup and everybody there just works through the night because we're all so dedicated to the cause. Gotta keep crushing it so the founders can get a few billion dollars richer otherwise they won't let me cash out my 0.0001% for $3 million."

humans have limited psychological reactions to things. The "believe in a cause" bucket uses the same manipulation tools no matter if you're a startup, a cult, a thousand year old religion, or a radicalized intentional hate group with a persecution complex. You set up an enemy ("the others" / "the adversary", "disruption"), you rally your troops to beat the enemy at all costs (sacrifice yourself/your time/your health for the greater good and you will be rewarded), then perpetuate cycles of wins/losses to reinforce belief and dedication to externalized, and personally abdicated, leadership.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#72

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:02 PM UTC

Spearchucker wrote: post #59

littletimmy wrote: post #57

Have you read George Orwell's review of Mein Kampf? I think it gets to the heart of why ISIS is so popular. "Also [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain... Hitler, because in his joyless mind he feels it with…

The missing context of Orwell's review is what Hitler had on offer isn't what he sold. Hitler sold the promise of a better life for a then-struggling, repressed Germany. There is irony in that.

[deleted]

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#73

Post by bresc » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:05 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #14

The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund…

Radical Islam is not solely a response to western influence. It sure is also that, but it is also due to the ideology of the islam itself and the failure to modernise it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_war | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_modernity

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#74

Post by return0 » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:06 PM UTC

carlob wrote: post #16

My girlfriend taught in the Parisian banlieue for a year. In her experience most of what is said in this article is very much true. In this areas (which would correspond pretty much to inner cities in the US) the draw of radical Islam is very strong, starting with high school kids. After all what else is there to do? Deal drugs? On the other hand I would like to see this study that shows that increase in the level of…

What numbers are we talking about here? It seems that an extremely tiny percentage are radicalized, and they don't seem to come from a specific social class. In other words, is it not a gathering of nutjobs?

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#75

Post by return0 » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:07 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #69

return0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"of all creeds" As you quoted yourself, this is among all creeds, not among muslims. France has larger muslim population than germany or GB that were in the same survey, yet this still does not explain the huge difference in youths actually supporting daesh. So, its fair to say that french youth in general is disillusioned. Also note that this was before charlie hebdo and the recent attack, not sure how the non-musli…

> So, its fair to say that french youth in general is disillusioned. The French economy is moribund, growth is nil, youth unemployment rates are over 25%, and lots of them are sitting around unemployed or in dead-end jobs - while their parents hold much cushier jobs with some of the world's best labor protections (or most-notorious, depending on your perspective). It's not shocking.

General disillusionment is a characteristic of the entire European south (or EE) in general. I don't think it has more to do with islamic radicalization than other kinds of radicalization though.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#76

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:08 PM UTC

nightspirit wrote: post #22

blfr wrote: post #3

The fact that the EU’s replacement rate is 1.59 children per couple and the continent needs substantial levels of immigration to maintain a productive workforce The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Beyond the complete lack of humanity in the outlook that we are like barrels of brent, it's simply wrong. If this was the case, the entire worl…

> The fact that the EU’s replacement rate is 1.59 children per couple and the continent needs substantial levels of immigration to maintain a productive workforce > The idea here is that all people are the same, and all you need to do is shoehorn enough to keep the economy going. Maybe it's time to start thinking why people who end up living in the West are unwilling to reproduce, despite having the highest standard…

> Maybe it's time to start thinking why people who end up living in the West are unwilling to reproduce, despite having the highest standard of living ever available to humans.

We know why, it's just an inconvenient truth. More women are choosing careers over having more children.

To maintain a stable population, each woman has to have an average of two children. But that's the average; many will be infertile or homosexual or never find a mate or choose to never have children or only have one. So a great many would have to have more than two children to balance the average; many of our parents had five, six, seven, eight siblings because their mother's entire life consisted of raising children.

It's not easy for a family to raise five or more children while both parents work full time, so hardly anybody does that and the average falls below the population replacement rate. That's the why.

How to fix that without going back to the Old Ways is not a trivial problem.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#77

Post by Borogravia » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #30

... and they hope that this war results in the outcome they envision - which is some utopia that the Muslim world unites against the crusading threat and a caliphate is established? But they are human and they are perfectly fallible. And maybe force is necessary. In an ideal world, this is when a multi-national force under the UN banner is actually warranted. By the way this is the exact situation that American after…

>That one is on Obama

Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place.

Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish.

The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#78

Post by vezzy-fnord » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:12 PM UTC

hedgew wrote: post #10

kefka wrote: post #4

So, it seems that the only way to fight this was is to change their minds by asking assistance from the peaceful Muslim groups. We can discriminate Daesh and Muslims, and that only shows the monsters they say we are. We can bomb Daesh, which only encourages more to join their cause. Worst case, we can nuke the whole area of Iraq and Syria where Daesh has power, and that would only show every Muslim in the world that…

I disagree. The last time we tried that went horribly wrong; we watched and negotiated and "waged the war of ideology" too patiently while Hitler grew in power, until ultimately the Nazis had to be fought and slaughtered and condemned without mercy. If history repeated itself, we would be wise to intervene faster instead of twiddling our thumbs on the sidelines. And we'd know that waging any kind of ideological war w…

Putting NSDAP and ISIS in the same boat is nothing but a historical equivocation. One isn't even a state at all.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#79

Post by seren » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #71

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #14

The article is a nuanced view of the present situation, but doesn't go into the historical perspective. Contemporary radical Islam is a response to Western modernity and perceived decadence and has been brewing for decades if not centuries. It is an outgrowth of Salafi Islam, a severely literal interpretation of the Koran that has become widespread over the past 70 years thanks to trillions of petrodollars that fund…

There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren't that stupid. Startups seem to be pretty good at convincing a never-ending stream of youth to surrender 500% productivity now in exchange for (usually lies about) riches in the future. "Yeah, it's linkedfacebox, you know, a…

Last night, I was reflecting on the common point between people flocking to SV or to Syria to support Isis.

I know this is pretty far fetched, but at the end, I feel both have the same kind of appeal :

Stay where you are and remain an anonymous cog in the machine, or move to a place, where you will endure hardship, but where in the end you can change the world and you will create a legacy.

And in both case, the reality is less rosy. This is a kind of an archetypal "Call to Adventure", but it might have another name.

Re: The War ISIS Wants

#80

Post by kbart » Tue, Nov 17, 2015, 2:14 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #64

kbart wrote: post #35

"A July 2014 poll by ICM Research suggested that more than one in four French youth of all creeds between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four have a favorable or very favorable opinion of ISIS . Even if these estimates are high, in our own interviews with young people in the vast and soulless housing projects of the Paris banlieues we found surprisingly wide tolerance or support for ISIS among young people " Despite…

Some 50% of Russians have favorable opinions about Stalin. Such statistics are not in of themselves worrying, unless you have reason to believe they can't compartmentalize.

For Russian neighbors (I live in one of them) such statistics, along with actions in Ukraine is very much worrying and we do everything we can to prepare for possible (even likely) Russian aggression -- increased military spending, re-introduction of conscription, lobbying for NATO high alert forces and stationary units.