Haven’t been checking hexbear much lately but are we gonna get a new round of islamophobia like we did when the Israel cool emoji struggle sesh was happening
Can someone actually tell me what this Israel cool emoji was and why people broke themselves in half over it? I wasn’t around for that, I only saw the aftermath
1·1 hour agoThe emoji instrael used to look like this:
, the Isntrael flag with the Lehi logo. (And israel-cool, 
with Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, who is a good guy)AFAIK, it used to be like this because WhyEssEff (“Self-Appointed Emote Czar”) didn’t want to add a burning star of david originally. She came around on it and posted https://hexbear.net/post/5887493 to change it to what we have today. It became a large struggle session. But now the isntreal emoji is of the actual Israeli flag
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
No because Lyudmila and nakoicji crashed out and left, so there’s no longer a big group of moderators pushing against this sort of stuff
Lyudmila left? I didn’t realize
Her last post was in the slop comm where bemoaned “you won. My attempt at making this a bloomer site has failed, it’s all slop now” and then she left. I assume she wrote a bit more witj the mods.
She did this the day after :israel-cool: was made.
Americans: Iran is a totalitarian state that murders its own people. Now excuse me while I celebrate a civilian being killed by the government because they were blocking a road.
If the Iranian government is being too despotic, then Iranians just need to vote in candidates that will reform the government! I mean, if that’s what they think will work in the West, then it should be good enough for Iran.
“Sorry but democracy only works for white people, thats why we call Cuba a dictatorship despite the fact there are literal elections to pass laws like same-sex marriage”
Direct democracy isn’t democracy!! The only democracy is voting every 4 years to decide the colour of the party that will impose neoliberal austerity on you!!
Western liberals magically understand the value of putting one’s life on the line to fight against state violence when it’s brown people doing it in some far away country.
But when it comes to their own country, this would imply risk to their own lives - so their minds will come up with countless excuses and rationalizations.
That’s part of it, sure. But I also think the Western liberal sees the core of countries like Iran, China, Cuba, etc., as being so rotten that there’s no way to extract the will of democracy out of them and thus revolution is the only path. They’re broken beyond reform.
Whereas in the West, they can get apoplectic about figures like Trump bringing a creeping fascism, but they’ve got too much ideology to ever accept that the core of a Western state is rotten beyond repair. Thus measures like
, reformations, legal challenges are always viable options because they see those as activating the good, democratic core.
of heads of state that post, khamenei is among the best of them
no religion at all would be better
That society was no angel.
Sure that might be ideal but we need to work within our reality of a deeply religious population. What you want must come from within the people of Iran themselves. Outside forces cannot change this.
I wouldn’t call the population of Iran deeply religious. Somewhat religious would be more accurate. More likely to support Islamic government over western despotism for sure. But I would be shocked if most people in Iran even regularly followed the call to prayer or anything like that.
Granted I am no expert on Iran and I know that religious affiliation and actual practice differ but I was under the impression that >90% of Iranians were Muslim. Even in the US, which I consider to be deeply religious despite its religious citizens not closely practicing their proclaimed religion, only about 70% of people claim to be Christian. Yeah, sure, they might not go to church everyday but they still remain a highly influential political force due to their identification with that religion. Would this not be the same in Iran? If not more so?
No, it isn’t the same. Islam functions differently than Christianity there. The understanding of ‘being Muslim’ often transcends theology and encompasses culture, history, and family lineage, rather than just what you do on the weekend. I can easily see how a Muslim person who isn’t religious would still call themselves Muslim even if they practice the same amount of religion as a lapsed Christian who no longer identifies that way. Identity isn’t monolithic there either despite being 90+% Muslim. It is a multi-ethnic state. While the majority are Shia, you have Kurds (who are largely Sunni Shafi’i or Alevi/Yarsan), Baluchis and Turkmen (who are Sunni Hanafi), and Arabs (who are ethnically distinct but largely Shia). Asking “Are you Muslim?” misses the complexity of it all.
The US is a settler colony that was founded on a concept of separation of church and state as described by Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptists and the constitution of the US states there will be no established religion or religious tests for office this creates a “wall of separation” between religion and government. Additionally many non religious people, Muslims, Jewish people, Non-Trinitarian Christians like Mormons and other belief structures have been present since the beginning. This plurality of belief creates a self reinforcing secular culture and civil religion. Americans have a civic identity (the Constitution, the Flag, “Founding Fathers” like “Saint” Jefferson) that creates a unified identity separate from faith. This allows for that “wall of separation” where one can be American without being Christian. In Iran, the state currently fuses religious and national identity so to them being Iranian is tied to being Muslim so people in this current environment would say they’re Muslim when asked because saying no would isolate them from the entire society. There are cracks there though, Persian culture is ancient and distinct, containing deep pre-Islamic traditions (like Nowruz) that some hardliners might consider haram. Because of this, there is a tension between National identity (Persian) and Religious identity (Muslim). If forced to choose, many Iranians in my opinion may prioritize their heritage over their religious label. This is complicated by being under siege by the west though.
I can easily see how a Muslim person who isn’t religious would still call themselves Muslim even if they practice the same amount of religion as a lapsed Christian who no longer identifies that way.
A lot of Christians will also do this, plenty don’t attend church, read the bible, don’t really think about god existing or not and still label themselves as such. They are functionally agnostics/non religious imo
Thanks for taking the time to explain that, I was not aware.
Iran is an explicit theocracy where people are defined as muslims by default and where irreligion/atheism is not a valid category in identification by the government.
Sure, but almost all of Mexico identifies as Catholic but church going is mostly reserved for special occasions like baptisms and the big religious holidays. You’ll see the crucifixes, the Jesus pictures and whatnot but it’s not like they’re on that annoying protestant bullshit.
I wish we had better options between a quasi-religious authoritarian oligarchy, and a pro-zionist fascist failson nepo baby
The fascist zionist would be authoritarian too, FWIW.
Is it even possible to have a non-authoritarian fascist?
Yeah. Social patriotism. People like Bernie sanders. Although it’s incapable of surviving without a violent counterpart.
Because these two depend on each other and we have never had one without the other existing, some theorize they are the same thing.
People like Bernie sanders.
amazing
Evola’s weird take on European pseudo steppe nomad fascists?
There were left options but they were systematically oppressed in favor of the religious right during and after the revolution by imperialists.
authoritarian meaning what?
I don’t think microfiche was advocating regime change.
I don’t think so either but given the circumstances I didn’t see many other options for an areligious authority. Another comrade has made me think it is more possible though
You gotta build the world you want to see out of the world that actually exists. The future can’t exist without being born out of the present.
hand waving
Lmao and “no religion would be better” isn’t hand waving? How did you find your way here from /r/atheism
The hell do you mean hand waving? This is reality and we have to work with what actually exists in order to make things better. How else do you expect things to happen? Magic?
Hegel is cringe, actually
As opposed to just stating that any cultural problem can be solved if the stupid brown people just abandoned religion, which is Not Hand Waving.
Basic materialism
“It would be better if the backwards savages embraced my civilized superior belief system!”
I don’t think your actual point is “opposing religious oppression is racist” so could you clarify?
he’s not talking about religious oppression, he’s talking about not having religions at all, the protestors in Iran are not opposing religious oppression, they’re mossad agents and monarchists. My point is that if your reaction to anything happening in the middle east is “this because of religion” you’re a racist, just like if you said “this is because of judaism” when talking about the zionist entity you’d be an anti-semite.
Funny how this kind of NuAtheism “all religions must be abolished right now” stuff exclusively seems to focus on how Islam as a religion is especially bad and needs to be eradicated. I’m reminded of the liberal “Actually I hate both China and the US, two things can be true at once” thing.
I wanna see Reddit atheists apply “all religions must be abolished right now” to Judaism, an Abrahamic religion that worships the same god as Islam.
Okay yeah that’s fair. Thanks for clarifying!
I have no belief system.
Imagine thinking one sky god is better than another.
I don’t believe you is not a belief system
Agreed, that’s a conclusion someone reaches as a result of their beliefs.
Atheism is just the lack of belief in a higher power i wouldn’t say it’s a belief system in and of itself
As an atheist, I’d personally argue that a lack of belief in certain things constitutes a system of beliefs still, and that there are multiple sects of atheism with differing beliefs. For example, there’s New Atheism, which seems to be what’s on display here, and which I certainly hope I’ve managed to rid myself of.
Trying to connect someone to Richard Dawkins because they espoused a preference against theocracy is embarrassing.
Dawkins is certainly a prominent new atheist but the parallel I see is not with him specifically but the belief that atheism must be evangelized.
I’m not being intentionally difficult or pedantic when I ask this: how can the lack of belief be the same as belief?
Being insufferable isn’t a separate sect of non belief
In a vacuum you’re right, but the dialectical way of analyzing things is the opposite of just evaluating them on face value as if they existed in a vacuum. If you take a country that’s been through hell and back because of colonialism, who has been subject to a western collaborating fascist regime under the Shah, and were brought out of that period of nihilistic, proto-liberal subjugation by the Islamic Revolution, the negation of Islam must necessarily be a historical force that is similarly positive and brings a distinct form. The purely negative aspect of irreligiosity can’t be a force of history by itself, it only becomes one when combined with some other positive agenda in the context of Iranian society.
Now if I had to guess why a lot of us are viscerally skeptical and critical of such a thing is that atheism in West Asia is almost always associated to the West now that communism is much weaker in the region. Arab nationalism (obviously a bit outside of the Iranian context now) can be secular but it is very different from the form of Western-style atheism that sets Islam as its target.
I’m not being intentionally difficult
I’m not taking it that way!
I assume we agree that in general, a belief is defined as “an acceptance that a statement is true” and while on the surface atheism seems to be nearly the opposite - a claim that many statements are false - we can we can easily reword any such claim to instead be an acceptance of truth. I believe that it’s true that there is no higher power and that when I die there is no aspect of my own consciousness which will continue to exist.
There are additional beliefs that some atheists hold which make them insufferable, like the belief that atheism must be evangelized.
I guess you could say these things are unified by their internal oppositions - like some kind of unity of opposites.
I think I agree, but I also feel like you’re saying something that’s going over my head.
You can’t negate something with nothing, something will always replace it.
I don’t understand what you mean, sorry
Any criticism of a belief system that would see it replaced with something else is supporting a belief system, even if that belief system is defined as the absence of one it necessarily entails some positive assertions. I think the reason there’s a conflict unfolding in this thread right now is that some of us think that the people of Iran (and any non-Western nation for that matter) shouldn’t be subject to the schedule set out by westerners about what part of their culture is supposed to be replaced with something else (even if this is purported to be replacement with the absence of a thing).
they don’t believe in zero as a mathematical concept
I’m not talking about replacing someone’s religious beliefs fwiw.
I have no belief system.
Clearly.
This is just not an actionable conclusion. It’s idealist. You think it matters at all that you’ve found the solution for a nation of people that are on a crossroads between maintaining sovereignty or submitting to Western imperialism by asserting that they should simply abandon a major piece of their cultural fabric, without serious study of the conditions present in said society?
Gonna start commenting on every news story of a man killing a woman and/or their children with “imagine believing in gender”
style atheism spotted
Blocked!
Okay
Removed by mod
I notice these lost libs come in and declare everyone here to be idiots, but I’ve never seen them articulate why. It’s almost like they see people with opinions and knowledge that they don’t understand, and rather than taking the time to understand why someone would think different things to them, they just dismiss us so they don’t actually have to consider positions different from their own.
But that would just be incredibly short sighted and smug and ignorant, there’s no way someone would do something like that.
I have a funny story about this emote. I turned it into a sticker and sent it to a uni group chat I was in when some guy who had previously said some lib stuff said chud stuff later. Then another chud started asking, out of genuine curiosity, why I was attacking a fellow liberal. I’m sure it looked a bit confusing from his perspective why I, someone so liberal as to defend Hamas and Stalin, would attack another person for being liberal.
They made a website for it http://reddit.com/
Go to your settings page, click blocks, then enter
lemmy.dbzer0.cominto instances
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
GOOD post
Does this count as suspicious
no.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
Phew
Why do libs always post these kinds of things? Do y’all just want attention on your way out?
Do y’all just want attention on your way out?
It’s this, lol.
Yep, they can’t seem to help themselves.
Gfy?
Hexbear isn’t the lemmy support comm so asking that question in this thread can only be to cause a stir.
lol what is wrong with you
I dunno, I’m angry at the world, poor outlet I guess, don’t mind me
Consider the only viable path to doing something about it: Marxism Leninism
What specifically and how are we responsible? If you haven’t noticed we’re pretty angry at the state of the world too, we just focus that entirely on the nazis and their collaborators
Edit: and hexbear, jfc you people are fucking idiots
Oh, shoot. Gosh darn it. We must’ve really messed up if they edited their post to call us names
It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan.
Okay, what’s the plan?
I’m crashing this plane… with NO surVIVORs
You know what, I get it
You’re supposed to say: “Is being an insufferable eyesore on every corner of the internet part of your plan?”
And I say: “Of course.”
Thanks for at least explaining the mindset, you might win me over yet
Let’s go to the malt shop.
watch me swooce right in
Better than some of the other places I’ve been asked to go, for sure
Just go back to reddit and your problem fixes itself.
“Wahh”
like this?
I can, yes.
using memegenerator instead of frinkiac
Average L*dditor
