The Anti-Muslim Attack In San Diego

Below is something I submitted to the daily Camera a week ago about the 5/18 attack on a San Diego mosque. It probably won't be published at this point. You should read a CNN.COM article here. It basically says that an effort was made to deny mosques DHS funding for security about a year ago.

 

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For decades I have been worried about anti-Muslim bigotry in this country, especially since 9/11. I’m not sure how often I have done something really significant about it- unless expressing support for the Palestinians counts, in which case I have done a lot (including at least one very visible effort). I think that yesterday’s attack in San Diego might be the first fatal attack on a mosque here. There have been many other manifestations of anti-Muslim bigotry in America, including some deadly violence. Trump has done a lot to fuel that bigotry here, especially with his first-term Muslim travel ban and his second-term suggestions that it would be appropriate to get Palestinians to leave Gaza permanently and that it would be appropriate to destroy, as in commit genocide against, the Iranian nation-state. And there’s been tons of smaller stuff as well.

I’ll be honest, in the same spirit of saying that all white people are at least a tiny bit racist, as a Christian I have had occasional anti-Muslim thoughts. It’s so minor it’s barely worth mentioning, but since I am writing this, I should say that I think that in recent years I may have slightly or significantly discounted the progress made in the Muslim world when it comes to how women are treated by men and male-dominated institutions. In the last few years I have been pleasantly surprised by how many news articles quote Gaza women (for example)- to be honest, I DID think they would be discouraged by men and other women from speaking to the media. People who are much worse than flawed Christian allies of America’s Muslim population should consider that Sharia has been mentioned enough already.

I’m embarrassed by that oversight of mine for at least a few reasons and one of them is that I have read, at least once, the argument that anti-Muslim bigotry in America today resembles the anti-Catholic bigotry that occasionally surged and retreated in this country over the decades until about the 1940s (I think it has surged a little bit since then in terms of left-wing ignorance about Catholic politics). I used to be Catholic (I’ve sort of started converting to the Episcopalian Church) and I experienced anti-Catholic bigotry in this country at least two or three times (I also kind of experienced it in Northern Ireland twice).

I could be better equipped to do this- although I set out to read the Koran about 6 and 1/2 years ago, I only read about 5% of it and then the pandemic distracted me. The part I read didn’t contain anything I found offensive. I get the impression there’s a fair amount of politically good stuff in that book, just like there is in the Bible. We need to remember a handful of facts- Muslims believe that Christ was an important prophet and the Angel Gabriel appears in both books. Many people use the term “Abrahamic” to refer to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and I believe strongly that we all pray to the same God.

Would I say that non-Muslims should never criticize certain tendencies (sexism and homophobia) in the Muslim world in order to avoid encouraging religious bigotry? No. But we should blend critical statements about them with positive ones about Islam and the Muslim community. We should make more efforts to build bridges in every sphere of life with Muslims. We should understand that the Palestinians have very legitimate national grievances and aspirations and reject the Israel lobby’s demonization of them. We should ask the US military if they would act the way they did in Iraq 2003-2008 if they found themselves policing a rocky Peace Process in N. Ireland.

We need to stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters at this time and in general and whenever hatred for them raises it’s ugly head.

Star Trek: SNW Reviews B

I am now starting to do “reviews” of episodes of the new Star Trek series “Strange New Worlds.” Unlike earlier ST review posts this time I’ll be doing, at least MOST of the time, one relatively long essay for a single episode that merits some significant commentary (I wouldn’t be surprised if out of a final total of 46 episodes I’ll do one or two posts that are very brief). I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on the political aspects of the episodes but will usually not comment on the pervasive multiculturalism and gender equality of ST. 

 

“Children of the Comet” Episode Two, Season One. See this for a plot summary.

Although I’m not going to comment on the dialogue, etc. much, this episode contains a lot of stuff about being open-minded about other faiths. I AM going to say a few things about how in general I believe in taking a very open-minded and/or inclusive approach to religion.

I should first explain a few things about me. I was Catholic since either baptism or not many years after that and now, at the age of 50, I am early in the process of converting to a Protestant Church (the Episcopalian Church). I am doing that primarily because of the situation with the role of women in the Catholic Church (they can’t be priests) and to a lesser degree because of the abortion issue, my belief that homosexuality is not a sin, and my anger about the sex abuse scandal. If it were just 1-2 of those four, I probably would have stayed in the Catholic Church as my late mother would probably prefer. But I have to leave. I did briefly consider leaving Christianity but I have no reason to stop believing that Christ was the Son of God. My fiancé identifies partly as Jewish and largely as Buddhist.

I should be more familiar with Buddhism but I am not and I believe there is some debate about whether or not it is a religion like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism, etc. are religions. So I will not be including it in this essay.

So, one aspect of this issue of religious ecumenism is something I have thought of recently. I wrote in July of this year, in an email to another Protestant Church:

“I probably should study the Bible more before I say this, but I believe that the God I believe in is the same as the God that theist Jewish people believe in and is the same as the God that Muslims believe in. I’m not sure how to alter that statement in favor of inclusion for all the other religions, but if it’s possible to believe that we all see some of our faith in other faiths, or something like that, I’d like to say that.”

(When I write about religion and it’s relevant I often forget to mention that the Druze- a Middle-Eastern religion that incorporates some of Judaism, some of islam, and some of Christianity- are Abrahamic (a term that refers collectively to the religions I refer to in that quote))

I was saying something perhaps better than a similar statement I used to make earlier- that I’d like to add, for example, Hinduism and American Indian faith, to that first sentence if possible. What I may have figured out as I was typing that in July is that wanting to say that I pray to the same God as non-Abrahamic religions is probably a flawed approach in general and I think worse or much worse than that when it comes to the two examples I mention above. Hinduism is polytheistic while Judaism, Christianity and Islam are monotheistic and I simply need to accept that and find some other way of establishing some kind of religious fellowship as a Christian with Hindus. They probably feel just as passionately about their religion as Christians do and it is mathematically impossible for me to believe in the same God(/Gods???######%% as they do (if I make the statement “I believe in the same God that Hindus do” that doesn’t work, and neither does “I believe in the same Gods that Hindus do” and I was thinking of a computer trying to square that circle and smoke coming out of it). It might be even worse when it comes to the American Indian faith. First, I think I’m a lot less familiar with that than I am with Hinduism. And considering that what White Americans have done to Natives is MUCH worse than what Americans have done to Hindus (a big part of my BA is Native American Studies, and I know that we have not, for example, bombed India, or forced them to accept heroin, or something really imperialistic like that), I think it might be even more inappropriate (than what I said about trying to embrace Hinduism) for White American Christians like me to express a desire to put our hands on American Indian faith as if part of it is partly ours (true, I would be doing that in the spirit of it going both ways, but I think American Indians have been asked and “asked” to believe in Christianity enough times already).

As far as the second sentence in the quoted statement above, I have less to say. I am not as familiar with Christianity as I would have to be if I wanted to write a lot about that and I am of course much less familiar with other religions, ESPECIALLY those that aren’t Abrahamic. I’m also not sure which religions I would include besides Hinduism and American Indian faith. I imagine that if I took a shallow but still deeper look at Hinduism and American Indian faith I would find some common themes with Christianity- about “brotherhood” or peace for example (I put “brotherhood” in quotes because I and many people take that concept and make it broader when we apply our religious documents to the real world). It might make sense to say that Christian Churches very committed to environmentalism would find some commonality with aspects of American Indian faith, although that approach, counting a POLITICAL division of Christianity as if it’s a theological division, might be flawed.

There is one more non-Abrahamic religion I’d like to briefly mention. The Yazidis are a religious community in northern Iraq and although I just read a Google AI fact-sheet about them, I’m going to kind of ignore that because I don’t consider it a good source. The thing is, some religious people, including extremists, have labelled them devil-worshippers. They have historically experienced persecution and in 2014 the Islamist group based in Syria ISIS (also known as Islamic State) attacked the Yazidis in Iraq in a way that was (to one degree or another) genocidal, killing hundreds of thousands, enslaving thousands of women and girls, and driving off more. I am a little concerned about the devil-worship accusations, but A) that has never stopped me from being horrified by what happened in 2014, and B) I am open-minded that the spirit of inclusion should be extended to them even IF they are devil-worshippers. And by “spirit of inclusion” I don’t mean just opposing their persecution and being horrified by the genocide. I mean inviting them as friends to religiously ecumenical conferences, etc.; celebrating intermarriage, etc.

The episode that triggered this is largely about atheists accepting the legitimacy of other beliefs about a deity (StarFleet was, at that point early in Federation history probably more human than it was later on and probably more atheist since it didn’t include a lot of aliens with religions that the various creators of ST allowed them to have (i.e. the Bajorans)). I am, to one large degree or another, fine with atheists in general. I have a problem with the New Atheists but I should say that I doubt that many of the various creators of ST are or were New Atheists- as I say, they don’t totally eradicate religion among characters you’re supposed to like (i.e. the second-in-command of the space station on Deep Space Nine (main character!), Kira Nerys, who was a devout follower of the Bajoran faith). I did write an essay about New Atheists about 4 years ago here.                          
               

Besides the last item below this, that is it for this review. I believe that as much as possible, religious people should be ecumenical and interact with each other in a open-minded, curious and respectful spirit. Some times that might not work (possibly with the Yazidis and possibly in some other situations) but even in those situations, the goal should be a campaign of non-compulsory conversion that is as respectful as possible (i.e. don’t go anywhere near eradicating all traces of the unsuccessful religion, which would be a lot more than slightly genocidal and might make things even more traumatic for those who do convert).

At the end of the episode, Captain Pike looks up (on the computer) a small group of future StarFleet officers who are special to him (he has seen his future and they are involved). One of the five names is Muliq Al Alcazar, a Muslim name (that’s the subtitled version- I get the impression from Google that it’s not a common spelling, but I also get the impression from Google that it is a Muslim name). It’s not the first time we’ve had the appearance of Islam on ST- the Muslim world made a much bigger splash with Julian Bashir (almost definitely an atheist with Muslim ancestors (his parents briefly appear, but as far as we know they are also devout atheists with Muslim ancestors)), a main character on Deep Space Nine. It’s true that we don’t know for sure that his heritage was Muslim, but the vast majority of Arabs are Muslims, so it’s reasonable to assume that his ancestors were and although the show says nothing about that, that could be because the human characters are all atheists- a lot of viewers of the show, including those whose opinion of Muslims was improved by the show, very likely assumed that his ancestors were Muslims) (Wired magazine ranked him 25th from the top out of 100 important ST characters). On The Next Generation, Picard makes a brief comment that is respectful of Islam. I’m sure there’s about 5-10 other examples as minor as what Picard said that I can’t remember and probably 1-2 more recurring characters that I can’t remember. But in the last 10-24 years we have had more or much more islamaphobia in this country than we had in the 1990s and I believe that this sort of thing that ST does can help address that, in a small way.

How I Became A Socialist

 In High School I was, as I put it, transitioning towards being a socialist. In Jr. High, if I was political at all I think that I was probably pretty close to being a neoconservative (I’m not sure if Tom Clancy was a neocon or not, but I think he may have been close to one and in Jr. High probably 25% of the political material I read (fiction and non-fiction) were books by him; I also was, without doing any research, vaguely zionistic). The Summer after 12th grade I went to a protest rally against the “Promise Keepers,” a conservative Christian thing. One of the groups listed as a sponsor of the rally was the (local) Democratic Socialists of America. That might be why, when I saw flyers on the CU-Boulder campus (where I went to school starting in the Fall of 1994) for the campus chapter, I got involved.

About two months later the National Director of DSA visited Boulder (or at the very least the CU-Boulder DSA, but maybe the local one as well) and at a small gathering in a classroom we went around the table and briefly described how we each became a socialist. Probably about 1/4 of what I said was about reading novels by Clancy and people like him- Stephen Coonts, Frederick Forsyth, Larry Bond, Nelson DeMille, Payne Harrison, and Harold Coyle (I’m not sure when I started reading these authors, but I include them in what I call either the national security genre or the Tom Clancy genre). I am pretty sure I gave people the wrong idea, although it is a little mixed. I believe that what I was trying to do by referring to those authors was describe how I became INTERESTED IN POLITICS. On the other hand, some of those books DID make me a little curious about socialism (in HS one day I briefly checked DAS KAPITAL by Marx out of the school library but read almost none of it) and some of them actually said a few left-wing things here and there (see this).                           

This essay is kind of meant to undo any damage to my reputation that earlier conversation did (I DO realize that probably not a single person remembers that conversation, but I wanted to do this essay for a lot of other reasons as well).

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I grew up at least kind of if not VERY middle-class. I am also white, a cisgendered male, a heterosexual, and some kind of Christian (I am just starting something kind of formal where I might convert from being a Catholic to being a Protestant). For various reasons that I don’t think should be held against me, I have spent practically all of my life in Boulder and until college I did not interact much with people of color or with poor people. My parents were more or less liberal but not progressive or very politically active- I wasn’t exposed to liberal Democratic politics as a child.

The first thing that got me thinking like a socialist was when I read, around the age of 11, the Children’s Bible THREE TIMES. I can’t remember much and I have never read the entire Bible (the regular one). But I know that there was at least some material about poverty and wealth, about loving your brothers and sisters, etc. I believe that is why, when I was about 12 or 13 I remember telling a kid I was briefly friends with that I thought everyone should just automatically get all the food they need.

I don’t think I made any left-ward progress in Jr. High. I DID start listening to rap music in Jr. High- it was “soft-core” non-political stuff by The Beastie Boys, RUN DMC and The Fresh Prince. I have no idea how I started listening to rap in Jr. High, but I think that is why I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T at the beginning of 10th grade. Below is a section of this essay about the role that MUSIC played in my High School transition to being a socialist. It’s copied and pasted, with a little editing, from a post here.                         

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The High School Years: Becoming A Socialist

So, a focus on music and my political development.

One aspect of this that I think about is, why did I come to focus more on racism than other symptoms of capitalism and get an Ethnic Studies degree instead of a Women’s Studies degree? I have no idea how I found myself listening to rap music in Jr. High. I wasn’t watching MTV and my parents were no more than moderately anti-racist. I didn’t have older siblings who listened to rap (actually, I might have been watching a LITTLE MTV because I have memories of watching 1-2 music videos by The Fresh Prince). On one hand, as far as I can remember, the rap I was listening to in Jr. High was non-political but It probably contributed to how I started listening to Public Enemy and Ice-T in late 1991.

I think that listening to that “Hard Core” rap is a huge part of why I did my first political act (and that may have been AFTER the Ice-T/Body Count concert I went to). In the Spring semester of 10th grade, in early 1992, I walked out of my 4th period class (I think it was 4th period) and joined about 50 of my peers walking around Boulder protesting the not-guilty verdict in a California trial of the racist white police officers who beat Rodney King a year earlier. That night I went to a march and rally for the community in general and/or the CU-Boulder campus and I was actually on the front page of the paper the next day (next to me was someone who later was the first or second person to get an Ethnic Studies degree at CU-Boulder, and there was someone wearing a Primus shirt and one person wearing a Body Count shirt).

This is a little embarrassing because I have heard things here and there indicating they’re not progressive, but I think some political stuff by Megadeth and Metallica nudged me towards the left in High School. Those songs are:

Metallica
“Fight Fire With Fire” is about the need to avoid nuclear war.
“Ride the Lightning” is in opposition to the death penalty.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” could almost be mistaken for an anti-fascist song because it is indirectly inspired by an anti-fascist novel by Ernest Hemingway. The thing is, the MOVIE based on that book retained the anti-war message but not the ANTI-FASCIST message of the book.
“Disposal Heroes” is anti-war.
“Blackened” is about nuclear war.
“…And Justice for All” is basically about politics and power in this country, but I am very unsure about what EXACTLY is it saying. This one may have had no affect on me becoming a socialist.
“One” is anti-war.

Megadeth
“Set The World Afire” is about nuclear war.
“Holy Wars…. The Punishment Due.” The first half I’ve heard might be about international conflicts like Israel and the Palestinians and/or (possibly more specifically) Northern Ireland. Beyond that I’m not sure what to say about it.
“Take No Prisoners” is anti-war.
“Rust in Peace” is about nuclear war.
“Symphony of Destruction” is about politics but I can’t figure out what they’re trying to say.
“Architecture of Aggression” is sort of the same- it probably IS anti-war, but I am less certain than I am when it comes to “Take no Prisoners.” Megadeth just wasn’t consistently and explicitly progressive.
“Foreclosure of a Dream” is I BELIEVE about US federal farm policy in the 1980s. I am just not familiar with farm policy. I DO like the license plates in Colorado that say “No Farms, No Food” but I just don’t know anywhere near enough to comment on this song.

I think that is a pretty complete list of the relevant Megadeth and Metallica songs I listened to in High School that may have nudged me towards the left.

The hard-core rap I listened to, including three Ice-T albums, and 3-4 Public Enemy albums probably had a better effect on me than the Metallica and Megadeth stuff I just referred to. And then there was the (hardcore punk) Dead Kennedys stuff- some of their songs might not inspire progressive politics but about half of them do. And there was at least a couple that were about economic injustice- “Let’s Lynch the Landlord,” and “Kill the Poor.” There were several other political DK songs whose lyrics I’m too lazy to confirm- with the exceptions of “Police Truck” (police brutality), “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” and “We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now” (about Ronald Reagan), which I definitely remember (I believe that in High School I listened to 3/4 or 4/4 of the Jello Biafra DK studio albums).

There were a handful of songs by Suicidal Tendencies that contributed to me becoming   progressive:

“Two Sided Politics” is basically contrasting the life of a rich person with that of a working-class person, and there’s some anti-Reagan stuff, etc. One thing I think is noteworthy is that there’s one line that says “I’m not anti-government, government is anti-me.” I like to think that might be in part an anti-anarchist statement.
“Fascist Pig” could be a little more political (that is, deeper) but Mexican-Americans criticizing the police may have pushed me a bit to the left.
“I Want More” is about the class conflict with some references to the minimum wage.
“Give It Revolution” was a little vague but probably nudged me in the right direction.

There were a handful of songs by a thrash-metal band called Nuclear Assault that pushed me to the left in High School. Although I have listened to their other stuff in recent years, in HS pretty much the only album I listened to was “Handle with Care.”
“New Song” which was a fairly good anti-racist song.
“Critical Mass” is a pretty good environmentalist song.
“Inherited Hell” is also like that.
“When Freedom Dies” Although I’m not sure what it’s saying about US foreign policy during the Cold War, it IS saying that freedom and civil liberties, etc. shouldn’t be weakened in the name of national security.
“Search and Seizure” is sort of similar, but basically about law enforcement harassing metal-heads (I’m not sure whether or how the lyrics-writer would generalize that statement to include punks, hippies, etc.)

Another band that influenced me in High School was a “cross-over” hard-core punk/thrash-metal band called DRI (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). In HS I saw them play live twice and listened to three of their albums.

First there was the album “Definition” which included the following songs:
“Acid Rain” was about the environment.
“The Application” is about multiple forms of employment discrimination and DOES include a line about racism and a line about homophobia, and one about religion and one that is probably about being HIV+.

The album “Thrash Zone” has several political songs.
“Labelled Incurable” might be about AIDS (as far as I can tell DRI were probably anti-homophobic).
“Kill the Words” is sort of generally about censorship and dictatorship but seems to be at least partly if not totally about that sort of thing in the Muslim world; I have no idea if they’re anti-Muslim or just consistently opposing fundamentalism, censorship, and dictatorship (there IS another song where they condemn religious discrimination in employment, so they probably aren’t anti-Muslim)
“Worker Bee” although it’s not written as a socialist song, I think it’s basically about economic justice and is by a band that I’m pretty sure is in favor of social justice as well (I’m suspicious of bands, people, etc. who are economically progressive but not socially liberal).

There was one Soundgarden song about the environment called “Hands All Over.” Although I don’t feel like looking at the lyrics, I believe that there were at least a few L7 songs I liked politically (one example is “Pretend We’re Dead”).

This will require at least one paragraph. Although I’m not real familiar with this, I have gotten the impression that Rage Against The Machine were a bit to my left politically. One social-dem critic told me that the political forces RATM admired either would have told RATM to fuck off, or alternately, should be killed (I think that may have been a reference to the Peruvian leftist army/terror organization called Shining Path). I sort of stumbled onto RATM a little earlier than most of their fans. Somehow I knew that their performance at a small club in Boulder around late 1992 or early 1993 would inspire moshing, so I showed up. I don’t remember thinking about it much but I guess I liked the music enough and the general vibe and bought their album shortly after the show. At some point at least a couple months later they came to Denver with House of Pain and it was great listening and moshing KNOWING that they were promoting dissent in this country. At that concert I learned about Leonard Peltier, and generally drifted towards the Left. (Right before House of Pain came on stage they played the music sans vocals of a song I mention below called “Just Look Around” by Sick of it All). Yes, RATM was alternately politically vague and/or leaning towards the hard-left. But they contributed to me becoming a dissident of some sort and it’s slightly possible that wouldn’t have happened if not for them. And musically they were pretty cool.

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Probably the main thing that contributed to me drifting towards the left is material that I learned in 11th grade when I took Advanced Placement US History. On one hand, I remember saying something inconsistent with what I’m saying here- in one debate I took some kind of bizarre LIBERTARIAN stance and criticized one of my peers because they were pro-government for some things but anti-government for other things. I also made one or another mistake with the two research papers we were assigned during the year. On the other hand, I got a 5 out 5 score on the final Exam, and I was pushed further to the left when I learned something about the Great Depression, something that might not have been covered in a regular 11th grade History class. At the very beginning of that period the (Republican) administration tried to fix things by lowering taxes on the rich and corporations which they thought would stimulate expansion (building new factories, etc.). The thing is, there was no increase in stimulus spending by corporate America and the Depression got worse. I got the strong impression that the New Deal alleviated a lot of suffering and empowered workers and probably kept the nation from sliding into such a deep socio-economic/political abyss that we wouldn’t be able to climb out of it when WWII started.

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As I mentioned above there were some novels that played one or another role in my voyage to the left.

The main one is a book called “Vortex” which had some serious progressive elements as I explain here.                                

“Fire Lance” is summarized here.

I think it was in High School that I first read a book by Harold Coyle called “Trial By Fire.” It’s about two things. First, a pilot program in the US Army involving four female Lieutenants (I know there are two kinds of Lieutenants in Army, but I can’t remember which one leads a platoon) leading ground combat units (platoons and in the case the story focuses on, a Mechanized Infantry platoon). I am, to one moderate degree or another hostile to the US military, but in this paragraph I need to explain that as long as we HAVE an institution, it should involve equity for women. Part of why I say this is that I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a large chunk of the male American population who get the wrong idea about equity for women when they see that the US military doesn’t HAVE EQUITY FOR WOMEN. The book is simultaneously also about a conflict between Mexico and the US. I haven’t read this novel for about 5-10 years now but I could swear that I remember Coyle making the pro-war people look stupid- it might even be progressive. I think I will read it again soon and I might publish an essay about it on this blog.

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There was one TV show I should mention. I think that in Jr. High and High School I watched about 75% of all the episodes of Roseanne (see this). As you may know, poverty and/or the working-class was a pervasive theme and from a relatively (or in some cases VERY) left-wing perspective. It was overall fairly if not very anti-racist and even more so, feminist. 

1-3 different TV shows that should be here but aren't. Although I LOVE watching almost anything Star Trek (and that started 27 years ago), I didn't start watching the TV shows until 1998. So, I missed The Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine (which is probably the most left-wing of all Star Trek series). On the other hand, I am  sort of working on something about how progressives in America could use ST to advance their agenda, and if I come up with some ideas that are worth your time, I'll publish them here and/or email them to some political friends of mine.

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That is about it as far as what changed my thinking. On a related note, I am proud of the fact that I was kind of politically active in High School. Below is a list of political stuff I did:

The very first political action I took was in early 1992 when I walked out of 4th period (Spanish) and joined about 50 peers marching around Boulder to protest the acquittal in California of some racist LAPD cops who savagely beat a black man (Rodney King) a year earlier. We even went up to the CU-Boulder campus to show them how it’s done : ).That night I went to a community/CU-Boulder march and rally about the same problem.

In 11th grade my best friend James (of Oregon) and I did a “‘Zine” (a small and unprofessionally written and edited magaZINE). James’ stuff was definitely more creative than mine, and may have been almost as political as my stuff. I did one article (in this case I tried to be as unbiased as possible) about an incident of job discrimination against a gay man in Boulder. IN THE SAME ISSUE I wrote an editorial criticizing Amendment Two (in 1992’s election in Colorado a ballot issue was approved by voters that outlawed gay rights anti-discrimination measures in CO).

In one issue, I did something that was far from creative and maybe even illegal, but I published the lyrics for an an incredibly anti-racist song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers called “The Power of Equality” (it’s close to the only RHCP song I listen to, but it’s AMAZING).

That’s pretty much all the relevant stuff I remember writing in the ‘zine.

I also was transitioning towards being pro-choice, and I wrote a Letter to the local paper (the Daily Camera) in which I expressed some degree of support for a woman’s right to choose.

I joined the Rocky Mountain Peace (and Justice) Center when I was 16 and wrote a letter to the Camera that was sort of pro-Persian Gulf War, but was also critical of the sanctions that had been applied to Iraq. Although that letter was not totally progressive, in response to it the Peace Center invited me to join them at a meeting with the Congressperson for that part of Colorado.

I probably had about 5-10 t-shirts of music groups I liked that were also political. I had a Body Count shirt, a Fishbone shirt that said “FUCK RACISM” (It’s possible it was “RACISM SUCKS” or maybe I had both??), at least one Rage Against The Machine t-shirt, a Public Enemy shirt and probably 1-2 Dead Kennedys shirts.

I think that’s about it. I might type up something about my thoughts about socialism- no, it won’t be very philosophical.

Some Thoughts About New Atheists

I came across an article in Salon about how the New Atheists merged with the far-right. I have read it and read it and read it some more, probably 10 times total (it was the first thing I read in YEARS about New Atheists, so as I was typing this essay, I read about 10 other long articles about the New Atheists (links to those articles are at the bottom of this)). The author of the article (Emile P. Torres) has done a great service for liberal-progressive religious people and some other groups in our society (like atheist women). They seem to be a very solid atheist and might not like helping the former group, but they're also very intellectually honest and when they realized what kind of people the leading New Atheists are, they contributed to publicly exposing them as the scum that they are.

(I discuss what I mean by liberal here (my brief non-philosophical definition is someone to the left of Bill Clinton and to the right of Senator Elizabeth Warren))

(You might want to read part of my post about things Catholic. Read the stuff towards the bottom starting with “Some of this is repetitive but I’ll describe the politics of Catholics,” and ending with the asterisks above the very last section).

I’m going to offer some thoughts about the New Atheists in general, thoughts inspired by reading the Salon article. I’m sure Torres will disagree with some of it, but it is not meant as an attack on them. I encourage you to read their article first and then read this essay.

I believe that the New Atheists cross the line in terms of their hostility to religious people. I will also describe how I am both religious and secular. I will explain that I believe New Atheists were clearly more right-wing than left-wing many years ago.

(I’m going to assume that there are rank and file members of the New Atheist community who are liberal or progressive like Torres)

New Atheism crosses the line

I am fine with atheists in general. I’m close or very close to at least a few if not several. As I’ll explain below, I am very secular. But I believe that the hostility New Atheists have for religious people is so extreme that it is close to bigotry. I would say that even if they were completely even-handed in their hostility to religion, but they’re not. They are much more hostile to Muslims than they are to Jews. I’ll say more about that below.

New Atheists are hostile to religious people because they have a different belief about God (atheists don’t KNOW that God doesn’t exist anymore than theists KNOW that God does exist).They act as if great harm is done by believing in, for example, the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Great harm is done by the right-wing POLITICAL beliefs of many or most religious people (there is nothing right-wing, left-wing or centrist about the Holy Trinity (for example)) but no harm is done by believing, for example, that Christ was the Son of God. In all honesty and fairness there are some miscellaneous non-political ways that religion can harm, such as Catholic priests abusing altar boys, but that miscellaneous stuff isn’t much compared to the political work of right-wing religious people- they are the main problem with religion, and as I explain below, can be dealt with in ways that don’t put down all religious people.

New Atheism wants to make everyone an atheist. One problem with that is that if it were attempted through some kind of coercion (such as treating religious faith like alcoholism) a successful effort would be akin to genocide. And there are many things about religion that bleed into culture and history and philosophy that would also be lost if everything religious was eradicated.

They believe that religion poisons everything and that getting rid of religion would make the world a better place. First, a better place for whom? Based partly on Torres’ article and some other articles I’ve found, the New Atheists are more right-wing than left-wing. Also, the connection between being liberal or progressive and being an atheist isn’t as strong as they think. Same with the connection between being conservative or right-wing and being a theist. There are plenty of exceptions on both sides of that- plenty of liberal or leftist theists and plenty of conservative or fascist atheists. And the idea that attacking the religious beliefs of most conservatives and right-wingers is a short-cut to making them re-consider their noxious political beliefs is likely flawed. I have no idea why it would be easier to change someone’s religious beliefs than it would be to change their political beliefs. And focusing on their religious beliefs makes it easier for them to claim that it’s the liberals and leftists who have crossed the line by attacking their religious beliefs. I say, ignore the religious dimension of the religious right as much as you can and simply oppose, for example, their homophobia as if they’re NOT referring to the Bible.

What’s Good About Religion?

There are other reasons why the New Atheist agenda of eradicating religion is bad. Here’s a list of a few good things about religion.

1) To whatever degree you need to believe in God to believe in Heaven, religion provides a theory for what, if anything, happens when we die. For many people, including myself, this helps with dealing with loss of a loved one.


2) Reading the children’s Bible 3 times around the age of 11 planted the seeds that blossomed into my socialist beliefs about 7 years later (there were other factors, like the music I listened to in High School).
3) There’s a strong sense of community. Although the fairly partisan socialist in me sees that as a bad thing when it’s a conservative community, when it’s a liberal-progressive one it’s great.
4) I’m tempted to say that without the Black church in America, we’d still have segregation. In all fairness it’s likely that if that church had not developed, something secular would have played a similar role in overthrowing segregation, but the fact is, the Black church was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s not an exhaustive list at all, but there are a lot of good things about religion that would be thrown out with the bigotry, etc. if (the more liberal or progressive) New Atheists had their way (the others (the ones Torres describes) don’t seem interested in getting rid of the injustice and inequality in our society).

I’m both religious and secular

I have been religious almost all of the time since I was about 5 or 10. But I have also been secular in many ways. When I used to wear a “medal” (like a cross but a little different) I wore it under my shirt. I wasn’t embarrassed or anything like that, but I wasn’t interested in promoting religion, it was just something to remind me of my relationship with God.

When I went to confirmation class at my church in 12th grade, I may have been more interested in the material than most of the other students, but I chose not to get confirmed at the end of it. Although I kind of regret that decision, I felt that I didn’t need the ultra-official sanction of the Church to be a Catholic. And I didn’t need it. I continued getting communion after I declined to be confirmed.

Although the Bible was part of what made me a socialist and I have no problem with religious socialists, I don’t identify as one myself. I’m not sure exactly why, but just in general I am very secular outwardly and fairly religious and spiritual inwardly.

I don’t believe in trying to convert people and I believe that religions should be fairly passive in trying to get new adherents.

I believe in Intelligent Design, the idea that Evolution was guided by God.

On foreign policy New Atheists are mostly right-wing

In addition to being universally and incredibly hostile to Islam, New Atheist leaders have MOSTLY also sided with Israel in the Middle-East conflict and, years ago, (mostly) with the US administration of George W. Bush in the War on Terror and specifically the Iraq War 2003-2008. As others have more or less pointed out, the Palestinian struggle was dominated by secular forces for decades before Hamas won an election in 2006- and although they haven’t lost an election since then they also haven’t won one either- there’s reason to believe that a majority of Palestinians don’t share all of Hamas’ beliefs. There were a lot of complaints among Palestinians about the PLO that had nothing to do with it being secular. I’m not sure to what degree this is true in Gaza since 2006, but in the West Bank the Christian minority of Palestinians is treated just fine by the Muslims. It’s the Israeli state that’s tough on minorities. Christians and Muslims are not considered full members of the Israeli nation. And although there are a lot of atheists in Israel’s Jewish population, the Jewish identity of the State is partly about religion- but many New Atheists are so anti-muslim and pro-American imperialism that they support Israel anyway.

(I offer evidence for calling Israeli policy towards the Palestinians “Israeli Apartheid” here and discuss Zionism here) (UPDATE 7/13/21 most of my thoughts about the War on Terror are here)

Are atheists in America oppressed?

American atheists in general don’t have much to complain about. Based on various answers given on wikipedia, I believe that the percentage of the US population that is atheist is somewhere around 15 to 20. And I doubt that more than 1-2% of the US Congress is atheist, so they have a legitimate complaint there. I’m sure most atheists in America have experienced at least a little harassment because of their belief about God, and I take that pretty seriously.  They sometimes have to fight efforts by government to blur the boundary between church and state, a fight I join them in.

Does hostility towards Atheists result in the kind of job discrimination that creates disproportionate poverty? Apparently not. According to Pew 30% of atheist households earn $100,000 or more and only 24% earn less than $30,000 (in that graph I just linked to, they’re the 5th richest religious group in America, out of about 25-30). I have not heard of anti-atheist police brutality, or mass incarceration, or a low rate of graduation from college, etc..

In general, American atheists don’t have much to complain about.

Religion and The Troubles

For the most part I suggest you start with reading some of my posts here, here, and here. If you want more than that, I recommend the books “Northern Ireland: The Orange State” by Michael Farrell and “McCann: War and Peace in Northern Ireland” by Eamonn McCann.

Although religion is a big thing for most of the anti-Catholic bigots, A) there is also nationality, and B) from what I have heard there are some anti-Catholic bigots who are atheists- not many at all, but some. On the Catholic side there is very little anti-Protestant bigotry and very little religious motivation. When Catholics experience bigotry they don’t quote those parts of the Bible that make it clear they’re Christians. They don’t even use the Bible the way Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did- when they refer to America in their quest for equality, they sometimes focus on the secular actions of this country’s black population and in general they say little if anything about the Bible which inspired the civil rights movement here.

The British introduced sectarianism to the population of Ireland as a way to (on one hand) divide the settlers and the indigenous people and (on the other hand) keep the Catholics down (which helped with the former goal). They maintained a colonial presence in N. Ireland for several reasons and religious solidarity with the Protestants was only one of them. It was basically because of imperialism.

The white male class privilege of the New Atheists
 

Torres accuses the New Atheists of worrying about the erosion of their white male privilege. I think there’s something else as well as that. They decided that advancing an atheist agenda was incredibly important. They clearly weren’t concerned about economic justice or social justice. I say that partly because you need to build coalitions for those things and you aren’t going to organize a coalition for economic or racial justice if at the same time you’re putting down everyone religious. And I need to say that I’m sure those theists who would be attracted to a coalition for social, and/or economic, and/or racial justice are unlikely to be the kind that would try to start a fight with atheists in the coalition.

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Articles I read to refresh and add to my understanding of New Atheism:

Atheism and the Class Problem
Gaza Has New Atheists Split Over Which Religion is more wrong
When It Comes To Islam, New Atheists Sound A Lot Like Christian Fundamentalists
Why Are There So Few Atheists In Israel?
American New Atheism and Israel
Sam Harris, the New Atheists, and anti-Muslim Animus
Why the “New Atheists” are Right-wing on Foreign Policy
The Trouble with the New Atheists: Part II

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The posts on my blog that are partly or entirely about religion are here.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews K

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Real Fake News” Season 18. Wikipedia summary is: “The SVU squad is asked by a US Representative (James Waterston) to debunk sexual assault rumors currently against him, but it takes a surprising twist when they are led to something much more deplorable. Things eventually become extremely personal when Benson and Rollins are targeted by a news website of questionable validity, with pictures of them and their children spreading false rumors about the nature of their families. Both detectives become infuriated and upset, vowing to stop the website and the man running it.”

This is inspired by the popular right-wing conspiracy theory “Pizzagate” which alleges that Democratic Party officials are connected to an underage teenage sex ring. The episode illustrates how ridiculous a theory it is as the detectives investigate the restaurant and find nothing incriminating. The person pushing the theory is without ethics or integrity. It ends with a US Congressperson being killed by a follower of the theory.

“Conversion” Season 18. Wikipedia summary is: “A church group from Indiana visits New York and reports to the Special Victims Unit that one of their members was sexually assaulted by another member. When the rapist (Casey Cott) is found, he claims it was curative intercourse to cure the girl of her homosexuality and that he was saving her soul. The detectives investigate and must decide whether the rapist is sincere in his beliefs or if something else happened to cause him to attack the victim. They end up finding out that the rapist is hiding a secret.”

 

Homophobia

This is a very anti-homophobic episode. The rapist hides behind his religion as a defense and the detectives say that that doesn’t matter, that it’s still rape. Which reminds me of something I’ve been wanting to say for years. A lot of people who oppose homophobia tie the bigotry of their opponents to the religion of the homophobes. This is flawed because A) there are religious people who oppose homophobia and B) there are homophobic atheists. I think the approach should be to say something like: “your religion doesn’t matter, your bigotry is the problem” and then explain what I just said in the previous sentence. I also think it would be easier to convince someone to abandon their bigotry than it would be to convince them to abandon their religion. And for many people, religion is a good thing. It makes it easier for me to deal with my mom’s death.

This next review is of a two-parter. The first part is called “American Dream” and the second is called “Sanctuary.” The wikipedia summaries are:

“An extremely brutal hate crime is committed against a Muslim family who owns a restaurant, resulting in two deaths. The detectives investigate, but things become extremely complicated when a crucial witness is suddenly and unexpectedly deported back to his own country. This forces Barba to drop the charges, causing extreme tension, anger, and violence between communities on opposing sides of the case.”

and

“The Special Victims Unit continues to investigate the hate crime against the Muslim family who were viciously assaulted in their restaurant. When their main suspect in the crime is released from custody, Benson and Barba become caught between the Muslim family and the suspect's family, both seeking justice for their loved ones. Protests in the streets start to turn extremely violent and Benson is faced with a tough decision that she has never had to make before in her entire career in order to make an arrest and get justice.”

Bigotry and immigration are the main themes here.

1. An inter-racial couple are witnesses. I know that’s more common and more widely accepted than it was 20 years ago, but it’s still worth noting.
2. At one point a suspect suggests that Donald Trump is right about Mexican immigrants and rape.
3. A suspect’s wife complains that nobody cares about straight white people who aren’t transgendered.
4. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid a pro-immigrant protest. That’s pretty lame. It’s like police raiding a protest against police brutality.
5. A crucial witness is a gay Syrian who is in the country illegally. First, it’s significant that he’s a gay muslim- you don’t hear about them very often. Second, he is certain that if he’s deported back to Syria or a refugee camp he’ll be killed because he’s gay (that’s another thing you don’t hear much about, homophobia among Muslims). Shortly after he’s picked up by ICE at the pro-immigrant protest he’s deported. Not only does SVU lose a crucial witness thanks to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, it’s as damning of our immigration system as the execution of an innocent person would be damning of the death penalty.

“No Good Reason” season 19. Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit is called in to investigate the sudden disappearance of a high school student (Brighton Sharbino). They soon discover that she was the victim of a nasty cyberbullying attack from her fellow peers and best friend (Madison Pettis). When she is finally found, she claims that she was raped by three boys from her school at a party, one being one of her best friends. The case goes well until the victim becomes reluctant to testify due to hatred and bullying from her peers and Benson must convince her to be brave. Meanwhile, Sheila Porter attempts to challenge Benson's parenting skills as a mother, which infuriates Benson.”

The survivor tells SVU that there was underage marijuana smoking and SVU says they don’t care- either much or at all (I can’t remember for sure and I’m not going to watch the episode again now, but in at least one other episode they ignore illegal marijuana use by survivors).

In Memory of JFK

I know that, according to Noam Chomsky, JFK may have been more into escalating the low intensity conflict in Vietnam (it wasn’t much of a war until after he was killed) than Oliver Stone would have us believe. And he was more of a capitalist than FDR was, and he was a Cold Warrior (I don’t know if Stone was right about his attitude towards anti-Castro Cubans). But I still think that he was one of our better Presidents. Although I’m not real familiar with his civil-rights record, a LOT of Black people and Chicana/os and Latina/os greatly admire(d) him (what he was about). He was a mainstream Dem back before the party shifted towards the center, and back when the rich and corporations were taxed more than they have been in the last 45 years, and when privatization was a bad word.

And he was the only Catholic President we have had. And until about the time he was elected, there was a massive history of anti-Catholic bigotry in this country. I’ll get back to that soon.

This post is about the Catholic population of the US (and to some extent elsewhere), the Catholic Church, anti-Catholic bigotry of the sort we find in America, MY relationship to Catholicism, and to a very small degree, Catholicism (although I won’t get theological or philosophical). It might not be incredibly well integrated, so please read the entire post.

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I’d been thinking of doing this post for about 2-4 years. What convinced me to do it recently is that I have become more sensitive to the existence of anti-Catholic bigotry in this country, I think because I have become even more sensitive to anti-Semitism than I used to be (it’s come up frequently on my blog in the last 4 months, and between when Trump revealed his “peace” plan for Israel and the Palestinians and early March I read an average of 5 articles a day in the Times of Israel (before COVID-19 it looked like that conflict was going to explode and I wanted to be very informed, and TTI is only slightly pro-Israel)). The most immediate cause of me typing this now instead of two months from now is a joke in a movie I generally like. It’s called “Five Feet Apart” and it’s the perfect combination of comedy, tragedy, and romance. At one point one of the characters says that his life-time to-do list includes having sex in the Vatican. The Vatican is much more religious than political- the Vatican barely counts as a State. I know people will try to wiggle out of this by pointing to differences in hierarchy, but what if he said “in a mosque” or “in a synagogue?” What about the Dalai Lama’s residence? I know people will say that Tibetan Buddhism isn’t as offensive as the Catholic Church, but overall that’s only sort of true, and it doesn’t matter. I know people will point to the differences in hierarchy, but if you identify the politics of the average Muslim, and compare that to either the official positions of the Vatican and/or the politics of the average Catholic, I find the Muslim population more politically offensive (before you get the wrong idea, A) wait till I describe the Catholic part of that comparison, and B) see this and C) see this). And like I said, what if it were a Mosque? I would find that just as offensive.

I have experienced anti-Catholic bigotry 2-3 times.

1. A woman who is clearly more right-wing than left-wing said something in my presence that was anti-Catholic. It was about 5 years ago and I can’t remember what it was but it was not a reasonable criticism of the Church or a reasonable theological disagreement. I am not giving her name, and if I have to, the next time I see her I’ll casually ask her how she feels about Catholics and will be able to provide more solid evidence that she’s anti-Catholic.

2. After a Northern Ireland event I organized, a fairly prominent, progressive local activist came up to me and said that it was weird to think of Catholics as the good guys (she only showed up because a prof. she really likes was supposed to speak). Now, in all fairness, she also said that, as someone who's half Jewish and supports the Palestinians, she considers Jews to be the bad guys, too (that is, she's an equal opportunity idiot). And to a large degree her comment indicated some degree of concern for the Catholic population in the North. But it does indicate a problem.

3. I'm not sure this really counts as anti-Catholicism, in fact this person was fairly interested in     Northern Ireland and fairly concerned about the Nationalist (Catholic) community in N. Ireland. In all fairness, when she said this I don't think I knew anything about what she raised that I know now. But she indicated she wasn't real enthusiastic about a United Ireland because Protestant women would be disadvantaged in terms of access to abortion. The thing is, while abortion is something like 99% illegal in the Republic, it was about 95% illegal in the North. That conversation was in the late 1990s and only very recently has the Abortion Act has been extended to N. Ireland. And it was done over the objections of a majority in N. Ireland. And in fact, the Protestant population is a little bit more pro-life than the Catholic population (at a political level as evidenced by statements made during an Assembly debate on the subject in 2000).

The thing is, she was making this assumption about Catholic and Protestant attitudes on abortion that is evidence of anti-Catholicism on the Left. Her statement ignored all the CATHOLIC women who would like access to abortion. (she also suggested that the abortion issue for Protestant women is more important than all the issues that argue in favor of uniting Ireland)

Here are some other things that convince me there is anti-Catholic bigotry on the Left.

1) In 2003 there was a survey done of American non-Catholics which found that some significant minority (I'm almost certain it was 30%) believe that Catholics go along with whatever the Vatican says. Although I'm going to keep this fairly brief, that's ridiculous. There's plenty of dissent. For example, Spain is a leader in gay rights. As I describe here, Catholics in Ireland support gay rights, and in 2015 same-sex marriage was legalized (by a Constitutional Amendment, so it would be difficult to reverse (there wasn’t anything in their Constitution about “a man and a woman”)). As far as I can tell, about 1/3-1/2 of European Catholic majority countries are pro-choice (outside of Europe, it's not as good, overall it's probably some small minority of majority Catholic countries). According to polls by the Pew Research Center, in America in 2013, 76% of Catholics believed the Church should permit birth control, 54% supported same-sex marriage and only 33% believed that homosexual behavior is a sin . As far as I can tell, overwhelmingly the worst the clergy do is inconsistently harass pro-choice Catholic politicians.

The thing is, the liberal positions of the Church (the death penalty, national oppression, war, economic justice) are not nearly as well known as the conservative positions (abortion and homosexuality). Odds are a significant percentage (maybe 30%) of the Left (and liberals, too) assume that all Catholics are conservative, and I've found evidence of that.

2) I've heard at least one comment from a leftist that they're surprised to learn that on most issues, most American Catholics are liberal.

3) This one will take some time. I'll explain shortly why this should have been condemned. First though, as far as I can tell, the Left failed to condemn the Dec. 11th 1989 disruption of a Catholic Mass in New York City by AIDS, pro-choice, and gay rights activists. Now, the Cathedral targeted was ridiculously bad on those issues. But it should have been condemned as a violation of the right to religious freedom, and that doesn't just refer to the Cardinal, but all the parishioners. If Palestinians and their supporters had identified a very anti-Palestinian synagogue and did the same thing, the left would have mostly condemned that. The differences in the situations facing Catholic Americans and Jewish Americans are not big enough to justify that double standard.

If anyone has heard that the Mass was only disrupted by one demonstrator, that's not true.

I have heard nothing to indicate that the Left condemned this protest. All I have heard from the Left is good stuff about the group most associated with the protest- ACT-UP.

4) According the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in 1996 "by a margin of 44% to 33% the public thinks that Protestants should have less rather than more political power. Somewhat greater margins want to see Roman Catholics (53% to 27%), evangelicals (51% to 27%) and Jews (49% to 27%) have less power." Odds are about half those people saying that Catholics should have less power (and that figure is greater than it is for any of the other main religious groups mentioned) are to the left of center, and the figure for people on that side of the political spectrum is probably 53%. I'm going to keep this brief, but most or all of these people probably under-estimate what percentage of Protestants (Protestants are almost three times more numerous than Catholics are in America) are pro-life and certainly must be exaggerating the percentage of Catholics who are pro-life- one Pew poll found it was a minority. Catholics are probably no more than a large minority of pro-lifers in America. When it comes to gay rights, Catholics look even better-  the homophobic ones are a small minority of homophobes in America (a 2008 Pew poll found that 45% of American Catholics support gay marriage, and I'd estimate there's probably a bloc of 10-20% who oppose gay marriage but nonetheless are difficult to call homophobic). These leftists I'm referring to probably look at conservative Supreme Court Justices and think Catholics having power is a greater threat to liberal goals than Protestants having power is. But look at, for example, conservative Presidents of the US and you'll see just Protestants. The Bible Belt is Protestant. And in general I'm not a fan of talking about this religious group or that religious group being the problem, I'm simply trying to point out how wrong these leftists and liberals are about Catholics being the problem.



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There is also the question of equality for Catholics in America. As I explain in another post, NO I DON’T THINK CATHOLICS IN AMERICA ARE OPPRESSED. But overall there is a small degree of inequality for Catholics here.

In an average Presidential election year here, Catholics were about 15% of the population. IF, in some bizarre hypothetical political system that I DO NOT ADVOCATE FOR, Presidential election victories were distributed based on figures for religion and population, there should have been about 9 elections won by a Catholic. Instead we have had one election where a Catholic won. Also, we have only had two elections where a Catholic running for Vice President won.

On the other hand, on the Supreme Court, Catholics have a surplus of power. I am not going to re-do the math I did 1-2 years ago, especially because there are different time periods to look at, but if we look at the last 20 years, about 40-60% of the Supreme Court has been Catholic. Some would point to this as evidence that I am greatly exaggerating anti-Catholic bigotry in this country. But, bearing in mind that the vast majority of such Justices in the last 20 years are conservative and the Dems have a better history (in the last 100 years) of nominating Catholics for President or VP and electing them and admiring them, I think it's similar to anti-Semitic Christian Zionists putting Jews in the spotlight- it's harder for supporters of the Palestinians to attack Jewish supporters of Israel and it's easier for conservative Catholics than it is for conservative WASPs to counter-attack when liberals and leftists call them bigots.

I don’t seriously believe this is because of anti-Catholic bigotry (it’s because a massive chunk of American Catholics are Chicana/o or Latina/o), but it’s not irrelevant that (according to the Pew Research Center) in 2016 only 19% of Catholic households earned $100,000 or more. The following groups were ahead of Catholics- Muslims, Mormons, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Unitarian Universalist, Presbyterian Church in America, United Method Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Orthodox Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, Hindu, Jewish (and ALL US ADULTS (I think that means that Catholics are below average)). (I mention this partly because it says something about how much ECONOMIC power Catholics in America have)

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Although this may not qualify as anti-Catholic bigotry, I’m going to say it anyway.

Elsewhere on my blog I offered this description of the Irish “Famine.”

During the Famine, 10-15% of the population died and 10-15% of the population would have died if they hadn’t emigrated. This was concentrated in the South and West of Ireland where there very few settlers- if you ignore the settlers and their descendants, it was probably closer to 15-20% and 15-20% of the population. Why did a potato blight result in something close to genocide? First, the indigenous Catholic population was still recovering from about 1.5 centuries of political and legal disempowerment that occurred because of the Penal Laws which denied them most of the rights enjoyed by most or all Protestants (it varied from right to right). “Catholic Emancipation” was only made about 90% complete about 15 years earlier. Because of this and general poverty, the indigenous population was largely dependent on land owned by land lords and the potato crop. For about 45 years before the Famine and during the Famine, Ireland didn’t have a devolved parliament, they were completely ruled from London. Crucially, during the Famine, MASSIVE amounts of food were being shipped from Ireland to Britain, something that involved seventy-five British Army regiments. …  the deaths only stopped when the blight stopped. … The British were more or less racist towards the Irish at that point in Anglo-Irish history and were more concerned about practicing Laissez-faire economics and feeding the British population than they were concerned about mass starvation among the Irish

Tony Blair was the first British Prime Minister to apologize for British policy during the Famine.

Consider this. Although it’s true that America, in terms of immigration policy, opened its door to the Irish during the Famine, there was incredible nativism and anti-Catholic bigotry at the same time. And, although the UK may have been much less than a fully fledged democracy (today, the monarchy, as far as I’m concerned has got so little power in practice that it almost doesn’t matter, but I think that during the Famine, the monarchy may have been more powerful than it is today, and I’m pretty sure that the un-elected and elitist House of Lords had more power than it does today) and was an imperialist power and was occupying a foreign nation where it’s policies were resulting in something close to genocide, no country in the world militarily took on the UK. America took on Nazi Germany, but not the UK during the Famine. Back then the US was, admittedly, perhaps not as strong militarily as the UK, but they could have assembled a coalition with some European nations, probably some of the Catholic ones, and landed troops in Ireland to kick the British out and stop the shipment of food out of Ireland. (Some would say it was a different USA back then, but has any American President ever apologized for the failure of the US to do something? In some bizarre alternate history where the US sat out WWII and Nazi Germany was defeated anyway and there were a whole bunch of Holocaust survivors, the US would have at some point between then and now apologized for their inaction)

Catholics in N. Ireland went through a nightmare 1969 to 1998 or 2005 (for more information than I provide in this post, you should read all of this).

The Catholic community in N. Ireland experienced high levels of inequality in the first 50 years of NI ’s existence (for more on this see this (describes the undemocratic and sectarian creation of N. Ireland, the inequality Catholics experienced, and how the Troubles began)). Around 1970 the situation transformed. Although there were fewer laws that could be compared to Jim Crow, job discrimination continued or got worse (in 1971 Catholics were twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants and in 1988 they were TWO AND A HALF times more likely to be unemployed as Protestants) repression got worse, and violence against the Catholic population skyrocketed like you wouldn’t believe. During the Troubles (roughly 1969-2005) they went through a nightmare. 856+ Catholic civilians were killed in the years 1969 to 2005 by either loyalist paramilitaries or the security forces (a comparable scenario in America would have meant around 67,000 unarmed people of color killed by cops or Nazi skinheads (etc.) in the same time period). (A: based on what I’ll describe in the very last section, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000; B: I'm not saying the racist system in this country wasn't, ideologically or programmatically, capable of killing 67,000 people of color in those years if the "rebellion" among people of color here had been as militaristic as the one among Catholics in N. Ireland; but the reality is that as bad as it was for people of color here in those years, it was, in terms of deaths, MUCH worse for Catholics in N. Ireland). Between 1975 and 1998, with practically zero influence on law and policy beyond local government, they were ruled by a state they quite reasonably saw as both foreign and hostile.

And here are my thoughts about US foreign policy on N. Ireland:

The government most responsible for that nightmare (see this) is the most important ally of the US government in the entire world (in addition to some other relevant info, that post exposes the fact that the British were no more concerned by the sectarian slaughter of Catholic civilians (by organizations that did little else) than they were concerned by IRA attacks that almost never resulted in civilian death). I realize that we are not propping them up like we do with Israel, but who helped us patrol the “No Fly” zones over Iraq 1991-2003?; who contributed something like 20% of the military forces for the invasion of Iraq? And who made a similar contribution during the occupation of Iraq? I believe that the British have a problem- an Ireland problem, or an imperialism problem or whatever you would call it. They need an intervention and you get friends, not enemies or strangers for interventions. The US needs to convince the British to begin, ASAP, a decades-long process of getting out of Ireland.

Ways in which Washington DC was bad on N. Ireland:

1) It seems that D.C. never privately put firm pressure on the British to dramatically change its policy in N. Ireland and/or create a significant role for the South in the affairs of the North (or even, better, begin a process of withdrawal). If they did this privately, it didn't work, and they should have done it publicly (it's possible that to some degree it was done privately between Clinton and Blair, and had some small effect on the GFA, but the GFA could have been much better, and then there's the ultimate goal of a British withdrawal).
2) At some point, possibly for a long period of time, an American company was selling the UK the plastic bullets they were using in N. Ireland.
3) Although at some point in the 1970s the President or Vice President of SF did speak at a committee hearing of the US Congress, from 1983 until 1994 the President of SF was Gerry Adams (he continued in that role until a few years ago, but was first allowed into the U.S. in 1994), and he was not allowed into the US. During this time SF was getting 40% of the Nationalist vote and probably about 60% of the vote from the poorest half of the Nationalist community (go here and type "SDLP" and "Ireland" in the first field and "middle-class" in the second field) (remember what I wrote about unemployment, and see this).
4) During the entire conflict, something like 20 former republican Volunteers went through either extradition or deportation proceedings. I think all the extradited were sent back to the UK, I think most of the deportation cases were deported. I know of at least one deportation, and this was probably the case with all of them, where the issue was that he said on the immigration paperwork that he was never convicted of a crime, and the U.S. government said that he in fact had been. The thing is, republican Volunteers don't consider themselves criminals, and even the British government, to some degree, has recognized this by treating them as prisoners of war during most of the conflict. But the U.S. Government disagrees. There's evidence that some very large majority of the nationalist community more or less supported the hunger-strikers of 1981 whose struggle convinced the British to extend status as prisoners of war (or political status, basically the same thing), which makes me think that some very large majority of the nationalist community was more or less unhappy about the extraditions and deportations (see this and the middle third of this).
5) About 17 years ago Bush was putting so much pressure on SF over policing and decommissioning that Blair told him to ease up.
6) Bush's Immigration had Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey deported, claiming she was a "threat" to the U.S. Devlin-McAliskey has little connection to violence, and half of that connection (the Battle of the Bogside) was widely considered completely justified; the other half, there's less widespread agreement about how justified it was, but she was only associated with the Irish National Liberation Army for something between a few months and about a year in the mid-1970s. Although she has no chance of getting elected to parliament, she's still very popular among the Nationalist population.

It’s not like the US didn't have a relationship with the British, they were best friends. I doubt that anti-Catholic bigotry was more than a very small part of it, and Clinton (in contrast to Reagan of the Reagan and Thatcher friendship) played a slightly positive role in the Peace Process, but still…

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After explaining why politically conscious Americans should have seen N. Ireland as an important issue (and I think largely of progressives when I think about this), I should say that very little was done. That’s based partly on America’s policy decisions regarding N. Ireland and the fact that there was never a “million-mick march” and my own experience with the issue. On a liberal-progressive campus in a liberal-progressive city (University of Colorado at Boulder), my activism on the North was about 1/7 as successful as my non-NI activism on a range of leftist issues. On average about 25 people were at the NI events, about 175 people were at the other events (that's between 1994 and 2004; between 94 and 01 it was 30 for NI, 75 for everything else). Also in Boulder, CO, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center has been a very well-respected and successful progressive organization for decades. They often have some representation among the speakers at the official Martin Luther King Jr. day rally in Boulder. Carolyn Bninski, one of the two main staff people in the last 15-20 years wrote me in an email: “We may have anywhere from 5 to 100 people at an event.” In 2005 RMPJC organized three events about the North of Ireland. On average each one had 2 people in the audience. In 2008 they organized another event which attracted about 5 people. (RMPJC has been involved with at least two earlier events about the North, but in this paragraph I’m only looking at the ones where they were the only sponsor). The point of mentioning attendance at RMPJC events is that among the rank and file of the broad progressive movement there is almost no interest in the subject.

On one hand, very few Catholics, outside about 25% of the Irish-American population  and about 10% of the Chicana/o population, cared about the North. But I believe that what I wrote above about anti-Catholic bigotry and what I write in the next section explains why there was so little interest.

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A lot of Religious Right Evangelical people in America complain about anti-Christian persecution in other countries. I am more or less okay with them being concerned about that, although I think they tend to target countries that they don’t like for other reasons and I wouldn’t be surprised if they sometimes exaggerate the degree of persecution. The main problem though, is that they were silent during decades of Catholics being, to one degree or another, oppressed in Northern Ireland. There WERE other factors that determined how Catholics were treated (anti-Irish bigotry) and some Catholics were Unionists (supported N. Ireland remaining in the UK) but anti-Catholic bigotry was a big factor in how Catholics were treated. Read this and this (the first of those two links is the more relevant one).

The Pope has never visited N. Ireland and there’s a reason for that. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair didn’t convert to Catholicism until AFTER he resigned and there’s a reason for that. And until recently the Monarch of the UK couldn’t be a Catholic or MARRIED to a Catholic (that second part has been changed, but not the first part).

(I’m not saying that Catholics are prevented from practicing their faith, but if you read the first of those posts, you’ll see there were a lot of ways where the government, at every level, was anti-Catholic (bear in mind that the Army was controlled by London and almost the entire time during The Troubles, the police were also controlled by London))

They were also silent during Indonesia’s genocidal occupation of East Timor. The East Timorese are Catholic and the Indonesians are Muslim. When I listened to a recording of Noam Chomsky talking about East Timor, he was introduced by a graduate student who had researched East Timor and who said that it had become a religious conflict (I can’t remember to what degree it had become a religious conflict according to him). But, because the leader of Indonesia was anti-Communist, the US supported Indonesia.


(And these Evangelical people hate Muslims and love talking about Muslims hating Christians, but weren't at all alarmed about Catholics being oppressed by Muslims- they must really be unconcerned about Catholics (see below) (if you're getting the wrong idea, see this))

I did a search and looked at several results and as far as I can tell, a lot of Evangelicals don’t believe that Catholics are Christians.

Here are my thoughts on the idea that Catholics aren’t Christians.

A: With the exception of a tiny minority (about 1% if not less) called “Radical, Traditionalist Catholics,” who I believe have been told by the Vatican to fuck off, we recognize Protestants as Christians.

B: It’s simply sectarian.

C: We believe that Christ was the Son of God.

D: As far as I can tell, these Evangelicals who don’t believe Catholics are Christians recognize other Protestants as Protestant even though they have some different ideas about Protestantism and Christianity in general.

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Some of this is repetitive but I’ll describe the politics of Catholics. We’re all fascist scum.

Seriously, though, overall, looking at the Vatican, the Catholic population (I’m most familiar with their politics in America and Ireland, but have some sort of idea of where the others are politically) and looking at all the issues, if we were to attach numerical values to different positions and find the average, the center of the Catholic world would be significantly to the left of center, somewhere around Barack Obama, if that's not too vague.

Abortion.

The Church is certainly pro-life. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure to what degree it’s flexible in terms of less harshly condemning abortion in the following cases: rape, incest, when the woman’s mental or physical health is in danger, or when the physical health of the fetus is in serious doubt (i.e. a fatal fetal abnormality). I’m not sure if they believe that women who have abortions should be criminalized. As I’ll mention below, they’re pretty good on economic justice issues and they probably support free or subsidized child care and other financial measures that address the financial motivation that is often part of why in some cases women have an abortion. In Ireland, there is a minority of Catholics who are more or less pro-choice (as I mentioned above, a majority of American Catholics are pro-choice).

Homosexuality.

The Church considers homosexuality a sin but there is a concept that I think most homophobic Catholics (and there aren’t many left) believe in. That is, and these are not my words: “hate the sin and love the sinner.” Ireland has had gay marriage since 2015 and the last few years the Prime Minister has been an openly gay man. UPDATE 10/21/20 The Pope recently came out in support of same-sex unions, according to this.

Economic Justice

The church is only intermittently bad about this sort of thing. In 1995 when I asked my church to take up a labor struggle, they declined and said they had done that sort of thing not long before I asked. When a grocery store strike in the greater Denver, CO area was either in effect or on the horizon, I read that there were concerns that the area’s Catholic Church might (abnormally) not support it because the owner of the chain had donated a lot of money to the Church. During the 2016 American Presidential primaries, the Vatican had Bernie Sanders take part in a conference it had organized about economic justice but didn’t extend an invitation to Hilary Clinton. There’s also the actions that El Salvador’s martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero took in support of the poor.

War

The Vatican intermittently takes the wrong position on this, in my opinion, but that includes their condemnation of the IRA. They did, correctly, oppose the invasion of Iraq.

The Death Penalty

The Church is very much against it. In America I’m not sure how many of them are partly motivated by the fact that the death penalty here is racist, but the Church opposes it.

National Oppression

In general the church is very good about this, although I’m not sure how consistently white clergy in America oppose racism, but the non-white clergy do. The Vatican has expressed a lot of support for the Palestinians, and as far as I can tell very few if any Palestinian are Catholic. The Church in East Timor was, starting 1-3 decades before their arrested achievement of independence, in favor of independence and during the Indonesian occupation I think the Vatican was fairly concerned about the East Timorese.

Anti-Semitism

Although I can’t remember the details, during the Nazi era in Germany there were two popes, first one and then the other and one was more or or less pro-Nazi. I read recently that the archives of his tenure as Pope are being opened to researchers and soon we’ll know more about his attitude towards Jews. No, 1920s Munich wasn’t Catholic. Okay, yes it was.

I recently came across an article here about the current Pope’s positive opinion of things Jewish.

 

UPDATE 10/31/20 Fratelli Tutti: The Pope released a new Encyclical a month ago called Fratelli Tutti. It touches on a lot of issues and is a good example of the progressive tendencies at the Vatican. There's a good opinion column about it here by EJ Dionne in the Washington Post or if you don't want to pay the Post to read it, read this.

The Mary-Knoll Sisters

They are a Catholic Congregation that is greatly concerned about injustice. They take a very multi-cultural and inter-faith approach to their work. I’m not real familiar with them but I know that in the 1990s a LOT of their work was against The School of The Americas (a training center the US Military provided for officers from various Latin American countries and that had a reputation for graduating people who either committed massive human rights violations before they attended the school or after they graduated).

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When I was around the age of 11, I read the children’s Bible three times. I’ve never read the whole normal version, although I’ve certainly been exposed to it in other ways. There are a lot of things in the New Testament (and maybe some in the Old Testament) that sowed the seeds which 5-7 years later became my belief in socialism. On the other hand I have never identified as a religious socialist, which is a branch or caucus of the broad socialist movement that bring their religion into it quite a bit. In general, outwardly I’m a pretty secular person and I don’t make religious arguments about politics.

I have not been to a regular Mass since my Mom’s funeral in 2000. A few weeks later I went on a retreat at a monastery in southern Colorado that had been very important to my mom (it's part of the Carmelite Order or a branch of that order that brings Brothers and Sisters together (last I heard that branch had a place in the South of Ireland) (when I briefly browsed their library I found a copy of Michael Harrington’s socialist anti-poverty book “The Other America”)). A year later, I spent a few days around the anniversary of her death at the monastery again. But besides the two retreats I have not been to Mass in 20 years.

When I was 18 I went to Confirmation class, which is one of the things Catholics do like Baptism or Communion. I was faithful and probably one of the more interested students- I think some of the others were doing it just because their parents made them. One of the volunteer lay teachers told us that he was shortly going to get a Masters in Social Work. I decided to not get confirmed. Rightly or wrongly, and I kind of regret that decision, I felt like I didn’t need the ultra-official stamp of approval by the church to be a Catholic and I wasn’t told to stop receiving communion of anything like that, I kept going to Mass (although I almost never went to Mass on my own initiative, I went with my family almost every Sunday until I left for college and after that I went on my own a few times and occasionally with my Mom).

Recently I had two thoughts that developed at roughly the same time: A) going to Mass again and B) converting. I started to wonder if I was even still considered a Catholic since I wasn’t confirmed and hadn’t been to Church in a long time. I spoke with a senior lay staff person at my old Church and he said that I was still a Catholic, but, because of the 18 years of not going to Mass I was technically a bad Catholic. We had a good talk. I was thinking that if I DID go to Mass on a regular basis, I might even get involved beyond that somehow. I have not made much progress on going to Mass- my life has been interrupted here and there since then and I have kind of dragged my feet as far as making a decision and right now, for multiple reasons, is not a good time.

(I have decided that in some ways I was a good Catholic while not going to Mass. In the last 8-10 years I have volunteered an average of 4-6 hours a week at a food-bank and I believe that my political activity on the subject of Northern Ireland also erodes the idea that I’m a bad Catholic)

Why have I considered converting? There are four things I don’t like about the Catholic Church and the fourth one is just too much because I don’t think a lot of Catholics are mad about it.

1. Abortion. I’m pro-choice for the following reasons: I don’t know whether or not the fetus is alive but I am sure that A) women should control their own bodies, B) without the right to choose they can’t have full equality, and C) if men could also get pregnant there would be a massive pro-choice majority in this country. There are of course tons of pro-choice Catholics so this isn’t a big deal as far as me continuing to identify as Catholic.

2. Homosexuality. Again, there are plenty of Catholics who don’t believe it's a sin, so I can feel at home in the Catholic Church on this issue.

3. The sex abuse scandal. First, although the Church really screwed up by moving pedophile priests around instead of turning them into the police, it’s not like the Church approved of what these priests were doing. And I think that practically all Catholics are pissed off about it and I haven’t heard of a massive number of the victims leaving the Church. So I’m not really thinking of leaving for that reason.

4. The fact that women can’t become priests. This really pisses me off and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of Catholics who agree with me. The volunteer lay teacher of the Confirmation class told us that he and some others would wear black arm-bands to Mass as a protest on this issue, but I don’t think I have EVER SEEN someone doing that at Mass. And a few years ago, after defeating a bunch of Nuns in a intra-church conflict, the Vatican announced there would be no change in this policy.

So, at some point in the next 1-2 years I might either go back to Mass on a regular basis or convert. If I convert it’ll be to a progressive Protestant Church. I think I know which one but I can’t remember the name, but I will look into the whole idea of converting and identify two Protestant churches and take a close look at them and talk with them.

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UPDATE 5/5/21 There's a great article about Catholic politics here.

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What makes me confident about my statement “probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000”?

1. Between 1996 and 2005 according to the FBI there were 38 racist murders. I have read that the Department of Justice officially estimates that for every hate crime reported to the FBI there might be 20-30 that aren’t reported because not all local law enforcement agencies report such crimes to the FBI. So I came up with 1,140 for those years.
2. I heard (from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest) that in a 12 month period during a 2014 (apparent) surge in police murders of black people including those of Eric Garner in NY, Tamir Rice in OH, and Michael Brown in MO among other highly publicized such cases, that around 200 black people armed or unarmed, had been killed by cops in America. Although I’m very open-minded about accusations that cops plant guns, this country also has a ridiculous number of guns.
3. Bear in mind that decades ago the number of people of color and the number of cops in this country were both smaller or much smaller than they are today.
4. If it’s worth much, about 10 years ago I read a huge amount of what the Southern Poverty Law Center put on their web-site in the previous 10-15 years. I also got an Ethnic Studies degree if that’s worth much.
5. There was little or no talk about “Brown Lives Matter” so I get the impression that very few Latinos/Latinas/Chicanos/Chicanas have been killed by cops in recent years (as far as I know, even Arpaio’s sheriff’s department in AZ didn’t kill a single such person) and that might reflect the situation in earlier decades. I have practically never heard of Asian-Americans being killed by cops. And if Native Americans were being killed at a high rate in the 80s and 90s I would have heard (a massive chunk of my major was Native American Studies).

UPDATE 6/9/21 I just found a Democracy Now! story relevant to this. It's about the last 20 years, but there's a small overlap between that and the period I was looking at Catholics and people of color (1969-2005), and it's possible that what I said about this comparison is off a little. Bear in mind that the figure I refer to in item #2 above came from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest.