Murder attempt against Danish Cartoonist

Let's say that over in group A we have a individuals such as our "young man" from Somalia. Although having drawn the attention of police over his ambitions of killing Hillary Clinton for "jihad", he had to settle for chasing a Danish cartoonist into his safe-room with an axe. He got himself shot and arrested. There are scenes like this hundreds of times daily, short backpage mentions in local newspapers about nuts and freaks- unless they involve an angry Muslim, which immediately triggers the psychologically-networked mechanisms of a virulent meme.

In Group B, let's consider the millions of memetic first-responders, who perceive such disturbances as much more than a mere law-enforcement matter. The meme says the attacker was connected with the sinister hydra of a rogue religion. Group B are a very diffuse category of people, now millions of people all around us who are programmed to infer that eradicating such an attacker's contagious madness requires hot pursuit of an accomplice so ponderous, that things become bigger than a "police matter". With a major world religion as accomplice, the response is the mobilization of armies for violent interventions to strike at the perceived enemy without hesitation, with scant regard for the borders of nations and laws. Of course such a pervasive rabble can be channeled for separate strategic agendas, such as in the invasion of Iraq for example.

It's a rather dramatic interaction, and the whole thing can get even more out of hand for as long as any attack attributable to a Muslim falls under category A, and almost anyone with a limited understanding of Islam can stumble right into the middle of Exhibit B.

The interaction works by playing on ignorance, anger, fear, helplessness, and produces an irrational lashing-out in collective violence on a larger scale than the provoking incidents. The interaction then continues in a feedback-loop until after unacceptable levels of carnage and destruction, the participants examine the meme infecting their behavior, and become immune to the strain that was controlling them. Then coexistence makes a laborious recovery, while dormant fragments of old hatestorms continue their insidious mutating inside us. Because the sciences concerned with such phenomena as these are relative latecomers to collective human knowledge, we're still developing effective controls for this disease. Like so many epidemiological risks, this one is existential.

 

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Of course its a matter of competing memes, and certainly we are talking about many meme "to die for' competing against each other, the Muslim fundamentalist Meme, that causes suicidal-homicide is certainly rare, but there is a high propensity to be apathetic, sympathetic and even supportive of this meme amongst the Muslim meme in general. Now is there is competing Christian evangelic meme, certainly, is there a racism instinct at work as well, of course. My argument is not judgmental on whose meme are wrong or right, rather if the Muslim fundamentalist meme and its arguable "support" amongst the Muslim meme becomes a physical threat not only to western memes but to life in general, the response of memeless physical self-preservation will result in mass genocide of Muslims in the same likeness of mass genocide of Germans for their now suppressed/vaccinated nazi meme, of course this requires the Muslim memes get physically far more violent then they are now, muslims would have to start nuking countries (israel, usa, india) before genocidal counter attack would be warranted.

"Pushed them into the sea" is not a meme we hold, its a meme many muslims hold, unless your saying the meme is a lie and that it is construct of western beleif on muslims? If so I can easily quote Muslim propaganda that says that.

Of course the logic is correct, Islam can encourage of discourage violence like any other religion, its just a matter of the present memes amongst muslins that makes for a propensity for specific kinds of violence, certainly you can try to separate and destroy those meme and leave the religion intact. Of course I would prefer wiping out the religious memes in general, rather then their sub-memes, but I only see that effectively happening when the great circuiting begins.

Of course terrorism is not as big a problem as the media makes, the attempted murdering of a cartoonist over a picture is no big deal... what a fucking minute that a huge fucking deal! All of freedom of speech is threaten by Muslims fundamentalist, which hid among Muslims, which are directly or indirectly supported by a far larger percentage of Muslims then the actual tiny percentage the foaming at the mouth suicidal-homicidal infected meme minds of the fundamentalist. Certainly compared to problems like global warming, peak oil, economic stability, Muslim fundamentalist terrorism is pretty low on what we should be worrying about, but its still a problem.

Your confusing memes with survival, the allied powers victory turned out to be a victory for survival for if the germans had won they would a murder off a fair percentage of the human race. Physical survival is not a meme, it is a instinct imbibed in are DNA, the memes we are talking about here our memes worth killing for. It does not matter what memes the allies have, their counter attack was ultimately the product of a hardware ingrained programing, not software computer viruses.

Again Islam is not the source of the problem (religions memes in general are but that a diffrent issue) its rather the memes inside present day islam that are the problems. Again those memes have infact repeated caused muslim nations to mobilize in warfare against infidels, they did, they failed repeatedly, if they had nukes then their might actually cause serious problems.

That a whole different problem, certain an exacerbating problem, but it has nothing to do with the Muslim fundamentalist memes.

Don't take meme logic to far with understand the complexities of the human mind and human interactions. Humans are controlled not just by self-replicating ideas but also by hardwiring like "us-them" thought structures, ingrained spirituality, desired to self-preservation, greed, emotions, etc, meme represent a small part of this equation and can be judge as the primary factors. "Western" memes, science, womens rights, pragmatism, liberalism are killing traditionalist memes, religious conservative memes, and those that hold such memes have a propensity to develop violent defensive memes, due to the instinct of us-them thinking and self-preservation extended to thought-structures.

islamophobic is not a self-replicating idea, it only perpetuate when muslims do things to propagate it.

your trying rather ignorantly to reverse the argument, again we are talking about Muslims fundamentalist causing violence, not about others and their ideas and memes, your incorrectly calling every idea a meme, no it must be self-propagating.

 

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This is a good discussion, but it's a little confined right here by the imperative to stay on thread topic. I want to spin this off into another thread now, with a request that we adjourn thence for any discussions far removed from the attack on Kurt Westergaard.

But first: Any suggestions for the name of that thread?

/cueing Jeopardy game-show music while I think- but I don't have all day...

I'm also searching for a suitable old thread to bump (alternatively)

Baits in Meme-Land

I Meme of Jinni

Viral Islamophobia

 

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Oh? Please cite, say, two examples of attempted murders of cartoonists (or other political authors) by ideologically-driven assailants from other continents, occurring in the last, say, 2 years.

I mean, if this thing happens hundreds of times every single day, you shouldn't have much trouble turning up a couple of them.

 

I only get a 2-years window? That's tough...

Oh, OK (whew!!) I wasn't clear- I meant to make the point that assaults and disturbances are handled thousands of times daily, without much fuss. But when a scuffle (not to mention an attempted bombing) involves a deranged Muslim, then all sorts of interfaces with the press and meme-land kick into high gear. That's all I meant to convey.

 

I ate a cartoonist once.

 

Perhaps these incidents have significance beyond that of your garden variety scuffles, then.

Let's not ignore the fact that the violence in question is ideologically motivated, held by its perpetrators to be part of a global civilizational war, and designed to garner as much media attention as possible. I.e., it is terrorism. This isn't some pub argument that got out of hand.

That's not to say that there aren't forces on the opposing side that want to expliot these events for their own ends, but to suggest that they are imbuing ordinary pedestrian crimes with unwarranted political connotations is foolish: the perpetrators design these actions in exactly those terms in the first place. No invention on anyone else's part is required. When you have FOX News freaking out over Muslim soccer fans getting into a shoving match during a game or something like that, maybe you can try this line again. But reporting on actual terrorism as terrorism doesn't strike me as particularly nefarious.

Would it be better for everyone is out media were less eager to play along with the desires of terrorists to be taken seriously in this way? Possibly, but that doesn't add up to a conspiracy. Calling a spade a spade is simple accuracy, which is supposed to be something we value in the press.

 

I don't mean to suggest any conspiracy by our meme tangent: What is most dangerously short-circuiting our societies is a separate entity from humanity; a parasite mindless to our way of thinking. That it operates simultaneously on the people opposed to one another, or upon people the meme sets upon one another is not a conspiracy between terrorists and the people and nations that take their bait.

I have no reason to claim any special understanding of the motives of Westergaard's would-be attacker. I do not believe that the international press has the basis for assuming this was more than an attack by a deranged person. There is a pattern of psychosis that often appears where disturbed individuals are compelled to attack celebrities. Do such people get mixed up into other narratives when they attack artists and other public figures? I suspect it may happen more often than most of us realize- and I am convinced that that sort of mistake is all the more likely today, if the disturbed individual is a Muslim.

Some friends and associates of my parents were gunned down in Yemen some years ago. In that town, in that hospital, and among all those who know what happened, it was fully understood and identified as an attack by a psychotic individual, in the clearest medical sense. The mourning process proceeded. The work of the hospital began returning to normal. But internationally, it was a Terrorist Attack on US citizens, and an incident that became enough of a media and hence political event, that it brought an end to nearly 40 years of US-origin, and non-proselytizing Christian medical ministry to the people of Yemen.

The Jibla community, the hospital, and the staff were all able to cope with the trauma and pain of the murders. Physicians from the US remained dedicated to keep on with their work there, which was a rare inter-cultural bridge of care and understanding in that part of the world. But their involvement did not survive the poison of the false terrorism meme, which the killer did not happen to bring into that place. The media introduced the meme that burned the bridge, and did far more damage than the killer. In very similar ways, many other bridges of understanding are burning all over the region now, because we can't control our compulsion to feed the meme.

I do see it as irresponsible when police, investigators, and journalists get carried away by the meme before their duties are complete, often allowing hysteria and politics to overtake the more deliberate (but not ego-satisfying and agency-promoting) process of soberly assessing what has transpired and carrying out exactly what the law prescribes.

There are all sorts of situations where "No comment" is the responsible thing for authorities to say in order to allow cops, investigators, prosecutors, courts, etc to do their jobs- and before the war&terror posse is called out on the warpath. The world could learn everything we need to know about the Westergaard case from the courtroom. Prior to a full gathering of the evidence, there is no benefit in announcing the religious orientation of such an assailant.

 

Another in the series of assaults on Danish cartoonists by disturbed Muslims is going to feed the meme with or without official comment - best not to appear to be hiding things, probably.

Meanwhile, the meme you discuss has a mirror form, no? The choice of an obscure cartoonist in a small European country is not explained as a disturbed individual fixating on celebrity. We are not talking John Lennon here, and we were not talking about Lennon in the context of a series of threats and assaults against certain kinds of rock and roll singers by a severality of psychos with specific ideological justifications in common.

 

I haven't been following the case, and I haven't looked into the veracity of any claims and suggestions that Westergaard's attacker was motivated by Islam, or part of some dark international network of inept Islamist axe-ninjas. AFAIK his name hasn't been released. I don't understand why his religion needs to be prominent at such a stage of investigation. Of course the media could speculate about an assailant's motives, but by refraining from participating in public speculation, authorities could not only improve their opportunities for a more thorough investigation- they would also better preserve a more rational approach to violent assaults.

What "John Lennon" meant to his deranged killer at the time was a far cry from what most of the world perceived of Lennon: John Lennon's killer was not sane. For all we know, Kurt Westergaard's assailant may be psychotic, in which case a lot of political and religious implications already being attached to the attempt would not be valid.

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From a quick Google I see no verifiable evidence of the axe-brandisher's state of mind at the time. Yet the media and meme-o-sphere are abuzz with talk of al-Qaeda this and Islamist that, and we don't even know his name. It's not a conspiracy that causes this great leap to conclusions- it's the islamo-terror meme in action.

 

The meme is "Islam". Never Again means attacking the intolerances of the Islam-meme.

 

In the first place, there was a previous conspiracy of jihadist militants to kill Westergaard that was discovered and broken up - that's why he had a panic room installed in his house. That's the background. Further reports indicate that the assailant was observed to shout about "revenge" and "blood" by the police, and that Danish intelligence has discovered close links between him and North/East African jihadist militant organizations. So that's what's known, in the public record. And while it may not be definitive, I don't see any real lack of basis for what's been reported - which is basically the information I just cited.

I would suggest that "an attack by a psychotic individual" is in no way exclusive of "a terrorist attack on US citizens." The whole MO of this sort of terrorism centers on getting troubled people to go on suicide missions. Which leaves the obvious question: if it's simple psychosis, unrelated to any of the various Islamic terror memes, then it's an awfully big coincidence that he ended up targetting exactly the small minority of people that Islamic militants in Yemen had been directing threats at. Rather than, say, any of the millions of other people around there that didn't just happen to be political targets of militants.

That meme was going to be there no matter what the media did - Yemen was already well-known as a hotbed of militant activity, including lots of threats towards and attacks on Western, Christian aid workers. So if a Muslim walks into a Christian aid hospital and starts gunning people down, it's going to reinforce that meme regardless of anything the media does. Likewise for the attack on Westergaard - it's beyond a free media's agency to selectively suppress memes in that way.

And the meme is only false if it wasn't really terrorism - according to Yemeni authorities, this guy admitted to planning the attack in question with another prominent militant who was executed a few days previously. This attack was, apparently, a political retaliation for the Yemeni authorities' supression of his ally's militant activity. Or at least, it's very difficult to believe that it wasn't - why else would he single out those specific targets, out of all the myriad others available to him that lacked resonance with the local terrorist memes?

I'd add that I went and looked up the FOX News reports on the Jibla killings to see if it was really so over-the-top. And I didn't find it to be. He was described as a "suspected militant," and the information that Yemeni authorities had released was repeated.

 

That doesn't follow.

He may very well be psychotic. The idea that he fixated on that cartoonist at random is not plausible.

In the biographical film "A Beautiful Mind", the script evoking John Nash's mental derangements omitted a detail of the life: his paranoid delusions and occasional ravings were strongly anti-Semitic, fixated on Jewish conspiracy. And such anti-Semitic paranoia was and is very common among the mentally ill in some parts of the US - Nash was not unusual in his symptoms.

The social climate of anti-Jewish bigotry of the time - and still in some places - particularly affected the mentally vulnerable such as John Nash. No one would be surprised if the naturally paranoid and mentally unstable of a given culture carried to extremes the common psychology of the more prudent of their culture.

The political and religious implications do not thereby lose all validity.

 

Well, I do. It's abundantly obvious.

Hype, this is absurd.

If the identity of the attacker is irrelevant to the attack, then why couldn't the attacker have just been of any cultural group? Surely Westergaard should have been attacked by an Episcopalian? But he wasn't. You'll note the pattern: Islamic death threat, attack by a Muslim. 'Deranged' as an excuse is meaningless: anyone doing so could be called deranged, or not, if it serves the purposes of some larger confrontation in the eyes of perpetrator. Hitler, too, was deranged, but it didn't make his meme or his motivations irrelevant.

In short: no, the attack cannot be written off as the press pouncing on Islamic crime. (You'll note the great disappointment by several members of the press when the Times Square bomber turned out not to be white; doubly notable since several people on the forum habitually claim racism whenever this issue comes up.) The perpetrator had his motive, and it was not irrelevant to the crime.

 

Hear, hear.

 

In the first place, the fact that you don't understand features of a case that you admit to not following is hardly a basis for argument, or criticism.

And in the second place, it's already been explained to you. This event occurred in a context wherein Islamic militants are targetting this guy for death, various terrorist ideologues the world over are calling for his blood, the cops have already broken up one conspiracy of militants to kill him, he's had to install a panic room in his house, etc. Not to mention that attacks on prominent "enemies of Islam" in the nearby Netherlands. Taken together, it becomes pretty difficult to believe that a Muslim attacking him and screaming about revenge is just a total coincidence.

If you have some instances of the press saying things that are truly unfounded, then by all means present them. But I have a hard time faulting them for noting the obvious presumption that any reasonable, informed person would make in this situation.

Again, that's not necessarily the case - one can be both a religious terrorist and a crazy person. If this were just some random nut with no relevance to political Islam, then it is an extremely big coincidence that he ended up attacking the single most prominent target of international Islamic terrorist rhetoric in Denmark, rather than any of the millions of other Danes that he could just as well have attacked.

Insanity might alter the implication - the guy might be less an ideologue than a fame-seeker or somesuch. But the fact would remain that his choice of target was heavily influenced by the rhetoric of threats directed at Westergaard by international terrorist ideologues, who do so hoping exactly that some troubled soul in Europe will act upon them.

 

I understand that Westergaard is also being brought up on charges relating to the attack.

 

Maybe he was trying to impress Jodie Foster?

 

You must have a lot more information about this case than I, because I'm not ruling anything out.

What? Can you please give me an example of how one "carrie to extremes the common psychology of the more prudent". I don't follow the meaning of that phrasing at all.

Obviously I missed something in that line of reasoning.

Although what very little I know about the attack leads me to suspect that the assailant was not functioning at a very high mental level during his attempt, I think that it's probably best if we just wait and see how the case develops.

I must say, after digging in the internet dirt about this one: Denmark has done a remarkable job keeping a very tight lid on this case, at least ever since the first days after the attack, when sources did feed the media frenzy. Good for them. And at the same time, there are not many rumblings apparent of something rotten in Denmark- not many Danish accusations of a nefarious government cover-up.

I've never been to Denmark, but their refreshing treatment of this case has me interested to learn more- also about how Danish fears of a perceived menace within Islam compare with the fears coursing through society in the USA. Have we any Dane brains to pick here at SciForums?

 

Ice is suggesting that the assailant is a product of his culture: that many Muslims share his views, but are unwilling to go so far as to act on them. It doesn't seem and unreasonable proposition at all: many Muslims seem to have very conservative views on the issue. His expression of violence is, thus, merely a point on the distribution of the willingness of all possible individuals to employ violence, based on their meme or belief system.

And why is it 'good' that Denmark keep a lid on this? Are we not meant to know? Is it similarly a good thing if the American army keeps a lid on human rights violations in Iraq? Certainly, there could be no reason to inform anyone about them: no one wants an unrefreshing media frenzy about wedding parties blown to hell.