Also in the news

[Guest Kopfkino]

Disgusting speech from Biden. The callousness and lack of compassion might have been expected from his predecessor and would have been met by a rage that this largely seems to have escaped. His predecessor may have started the mess and he obviously wants to be as distant as possible from it but tospeak of Afghans as he did, despite the fact they lost more Afghan soldiers in a year than Americans in the entire 20 years, was grim.

I imagine most US allies listening will worry that it proves America’s Back is complete bullshit. Europe can rely on America no more than it could under Trump.

 

The withdrawal didn’t have to be such a mess, they didn’t have to just up and leave one day without telling the Afghan government and therefore making it impossible for the locals to fight, they didn’t have to spend years lying about what was actually going on, the US didn’t have to install a president nobody wanted. Biden was part of Obama’s administration that decided it could salvage something in Afghanistan after Iraq, yet they couldn’t build anything that could stand for longer than a month.

 

A bit of humility really wouldn’t have gone amiss.

[Finnegan]

15 minutes ago, bovril said:

It's very different from other violent groups like Islamic extremists who have often grown up around extreme violence

 

That works when your jihadist terrorist is from Afghanistan or Syria, what about the ones recruited in Bolton, Oldham, New York, Berlin, etc? 

 

Is the profile not the same? Lonely, introverted, disenfranchised and often sexually frustrated young males? I appreciate its a stereotype to an extent but regardless, recruitment promising a hareem of nubile, young virgins in the afterlife? Sounds like exactly the sort of thing you'd promise an incel and if you're brave enough to scratch the surface of an incel community out of any morbid curiosity you'll find appreciation for conservative Islam and its views on women. 

 

I guarantee there's a lot more crossover in the profile of a suicide bomber and a school shooter than you'd appreciate. Because in both cases the real problem isn't the ideology that's imposed on these kids, it's the lonely state they're in before that stage when they're lost and impressionable. 

 

I don't agree with urban.spaceman on many things but he's not wrong on this and I've written about this before, as the 21st century becomes increasingly shallow, vain, impersonal and narcissistic, incels and similar movements are going to be increasingly a problem. 

 

And believing their views are intolerable and reprehensible isn't mutually exclusive with wanting to find a way to help them. I don't particularly know what the answer is in that sense but I do think it's an issue that needs a lot more public awareness and open minded understanding or it will get worse. 

[The People's Hero]

3 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

That works when your jihadist terrorist is from Afghanistan or Syria, what about the ones recruited in Bolton, Oldham, New York, Berlin, etc? 

 

Is the profile not the same? Lonely, introverted, disenfranchised and often sexually frustrated young males? I appreciate its a stereotype to an extent but regardless, recruitment promising a hareem of nubile, young virgins in the afterlife? Sounds like exactly the sort of thing you'd promise an incel and if you're brave enough to scratch the surface of an incel community out of any morbid curiosity you'll find appreciation for conservative Islam and its views on women. 

 

I guarantee there's a lot more crossover in the profile of a suicide bomber and a school shooter than you'd appreciate. Because in both cases the real problem isn't the ideology that's imposed on these kids, it's the lonely state they're in before that stage when they're lost and impressionable. 

 

I don't agree with urban.spaceman on many things but he's not wrong on this and I've written about this before, as the 21st century becomes increasingly shallow, vain, impersonal and narcissistic, incels and similar movements are going to be increasingly a problem. 

 

And believing their views are intolerable and reprehensible isn't mutually exclusive with wanting to find a way to help them. I don't particularly know what the answer is in that sense but I do think it's an issue that needs a lot more public awareness and open minded understanding or it will get worse. 

Correct; there is always a subset of any society which is vulnerable, feels 'wronged' and is ripe for radicalisation.

 

Personally, whenever I want to listen to nonsense ideas and talk to virgins, I just log on to foxestalk.

[bovril]

7 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

That works when your jihadist terrorist is from Afghanistan or Syria, what about the ones recruited in Bolton, Oldham, New York, Berlin, etc? 

 

Is the profile not the same? Lonely, introverted, disenfranchised and often sexually frustrated young males? I appreciate its a stereotype to an extent but regardless, recruitment promising a hareem of nubile, young virgins in the afterlife? Sounds like exactly the sort of thing you'd promise an incel and if you're brave enough to scratch the surface of an incel community out of any morbid curiosity you'll find appreciation for conservative Islam and its views on women. 

 

I guarantee there's a lot more crossover in the profile of a suicide bomber and a school shooter than you'd appreciate. Because in both cases the real problem isn't the ideology that's imposed on these kids, it's the lonely state they're in before that stage when they're lost and impressionable. 

 

I don't agree with urban.spaceman on many things but he's not wrong on this and I've written about this before, as the 21st century becomes increasingly shallow, vain, impersonal and narcissistic, incels and similar movements are going to be increasingly a problem. 

 

And believing their views are intolerable and reprehensible isn't mutually exclusive with wanting to find a way to help them. I don't particularly know what the answer is in that sense but I do think it's an issue that needs a lot more public awareness and open minded understanding or it will get worse. 

I have no which is more potent - that initial lonely state or the ideology. Definitely you need both. But Islamic extremists seem to have much more of a cause. Sure they might be born in Oldham but they could identify first as a Muslim, or a Pakistani-Brit, and be radicalised by what they see happening in their countries. And then come into contact with people who are trying to recruit men to their cause. The incel movement just seems so... vapid? 

 

So clearly there are lots of similarities between the groups but I still see them as quite separate phenomenon. Like I said though I am far from an expert.

[Carl the Llama]

1 hour ago, urban.spaceman said:

Controversial opinion time: They're actually vulnerable little boys who need real help, and sneering at them/treating them with contempt will only fuel their sense of disenfranchisement and victimhood. Not to sympathise with their ideology in any way of course. I just feel like there's a way to prevent these sorts of atrocities and it starts with helping them at the very beginning of the dark path they get led down. 

Been wanting to say something along these lines in this thread.  Lonely young men with little to no social skills nor local support are so easily misled by unsavoury online communities.  I view it fairly equivalent to the disproportionate amount of anorexia in young women.  In both cases a large part of the problem is unrealistic depictions of the 'ideal' man/woman saturating their popular media and building these mental blocks against being happy in one's own skin, which leads to further confidence issues and the vicious cycle spirals down until they're harming themselves or others.  Big difference is anorexia is a widely accepted health issue whereas a man with mental health issues is often portrayed as having 'chosen' to be that way and it makes it so hard to bridge the divide.

[MPH]

30 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

Disgusting speech from Biden. The callousness and lack of compassion might have been expected from his predecessor and would have been met by a rage that this largely seems to have escaped. His predecessor may have started the mess and he obviously wants to be as distant as possible from it but tospeak of Afghans as he did, despite the fact they lost more Afghan soldiers in a year than Americans in the entire 20 years, was grim.

I imagine most US allies listening will worry that it proves America’s Back is complete bullshit. Europe can rely on America no more than it could under Trump.

 

The withdrawal didn’t have to be such a mess, they didn’t have to just up and leave one day without telling the Afghan government and therefore making it impossible for the locals to fight, they didn’t have to spend years lying about what was actually going on, the US didn’t have to install a president nobody wanted. Biden was part of Obama’s administration that decided it could salvage something in Afghanistan after Iraq, yet they couldn’t build anything that could stand for longer than a month.

 

A bit of humility really wouldn’t have gone amiss.

 

 This is going to be a thorn in Biden’s side and trump is going to be licking his lips in the run up to the next election, he was looking for a ticket back into things and  he will use this and he will shamelessly exploit this over the next couple of years..

 

 

BUT

 

Trump has got to be fooling us if he thinks it could have gone any other way under his charge and at any other time.. this isn’t about how great of a pull out the U.S could have done, and I don’t think it’s about how militarily prepared the Afghan army was.  He can’t even complain that Biden hasn’t ‘prepared’  them properly- Biden had 1 year .. where was the preparing for the 4 years trump was in charge?

 

 

The trouble is, we can all point the finger at what has gone wrong, but we are all kidding ourselves if we think we have the answers as to how it could have been done better because any answer really includes a lot of idealisms and naivety and what if’s.

 

 

 

[Finnegan]

1 minute ago, bovril said:

The incel movement just seems so... vapid? 

 

But this is sort of my point, surely the root causes are just as basic. You dismiss the incel's needs as trivial or superficial but ultimately you're talking about belonging, which is massively important to all of us. 

 

We're hugely social creatures, our mental health is largely dependent on social contact which has an evolutionary, biological basis. Lone humans, historically, die. Our brains are hardwired to reward social behaviour with positive chemical response because, if you'll pardon the silly reference, apes together strong. 

 

But we've built a society in 2021 that substitutes artificial bonding in for actual social interaction and it isn't as rewarding, we're also creating a world that's increasingly shallow. Whilst things like body positivity have crept in to our consciousness for some young women, there's not really an equivelant idea for young boys, the impact of mass media on whose self esteem is a widely unnoticed phenomena in the public eye. 

 

If you minimalise the incel psychology to just "they're pissed off they can't get laid" and you maximise Islamist ideology to "a world wide crusade for the glory of their god!" then, sure, you can make one seem extremely superficial and one seem immensely dramatic. But the real overlap here is that the most easily recruitable and impressionable people in both instances are cripplingly lonely, disconnected and isolated and have had their self esteem and social needs hit an absolute breaking point leaving them hugely vulnerable to any and all positive social contact.

 

That's enormously powerful. 

[bovril]

26 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

But this is sort of my point, surely the root causes are just as basic. You dismiss the incel's needs as trivial or superficial but ultimately you're talking about belonging, which is massively important to all of us. 

 

We're hugely social creatures, our mental health is largely dependent on social contact which has an evolutionary, biological basis. Lone humans, historically, die. Our brains are hardwired to reward social behaviour with positive chemical response because, if you'll pardon the silly reference, apes together strong. 

 

But we've built a society in 2021 that substitutes artificial bonding in for actual social interaction and it isn't as rewarding, we're also creating a world that's increasingly shallow. Whilst things like body positivity have crept in to our consciousness for some young women, there's not really an equivelant idea for young boys, the impact of mass media on whose self esteem is a widely unnoticed phenomena in the public eye. 

 

If you minimalise the incel psychology to just "they're pissed off they can't get laid" and you maximise Islamist ideology to "a world wide crusade for the glory of their god!" then, sure, you can make one seem extremely superficial and one seem immensely dramatic. But the real overlap here is that the most easily recruitable and impressionable people in both instances are cripplingly lonely, disconnected and isolated and have had their self esteem and social needs hit an absolute breaking point leaving them hugely vulnerable to any and all positive social contact.

 

That's enormously powerful. 

I'm saying I think there are big differences between the two, not denying or dismissing that there are some similarities. Also tbf I am interested in the Muslim world and have read a lot about it. I know barely anything about the incel movement. So it seems more incomprehensible.

 

I don't think Islamist ideology is "a worldwide crusade for the glory of God". Some (I stress some) violent groups, not only Muslim, have legitimate grievances and aims, so it's not totally analogous to incels. What are these guys trying to achieve? Perhaps because they seem normal to us - they look like us, went through the same education, live in the same towns - we feel some more sympathy? 

 

And maybe I'm just subtly trying to say I couldn't imagine being incel 

 

 

Edited 17 August 2021 by bovril

[The People's Hero]

3 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

 

But this is sort of my point, surely the root causes are just as basic. You dismiss the incel's needs as trivial or superficial but ultimately you're talking about belonging, which is massively important to all of us. 

 

We're hugely social creatures, our mental health is largely dependent on social contact which has an evolutionary, biological basis. Lone humans, historically, die. Our brains are hardwired to reward social behaviour with positive chemical response because, if you'll pardon the silly reference, apes together strong. 

 

But we've built a society in 2021 that substitutes artificial bonding in for actual social interaction and it isn't as rewarding, we're also creating a world that's increasingly shallow. Whilst things like body positivity have crept in to our consciousness for some young women, there's not really an equivelant idea for young boys, the impact of mass media on whose self esteem is a widely unnoticed phenomena in the public eye. 

 

If you minimalise the incel psychology to just "they're pissed off they can't get laid" and you maximise Islamist ideology to "a world wide crusade for the glory of their god!" then, sure, you can make one seem extremely superficial and one seem immensely dramatic. But the real overlap here is that the most easily recruitable and impressionable people in both instances are cripplingly lonely, disconnected and isolated and have had their self esteem and social needs hit an absolute breaking point leaving them hugely vulnerable to any and all positive social contact.

 

That's enormously powerful. 

You're spot on as always mate.

 

I would also imagine that lockdown and the resulting increased feelings of isolation and loneliness for some could have fostered increased bitterness, restlessness and deep dissatisfaction.

 

It doesn't take much to end up diving deeper in to an incel echo chamber or becoming subtly radicalised online by some of the more enterprising fundamentalist religious factions.

 

 

[FoxesDeb]

1 hour ago, bovril said:

Fair enough.

 

I'm way out of my depth on this topic. It's very different from other violent groups like Islamic extremists who have often grown up around extreme violence and whose grievances and sense of victimhood seems to come from what they see as persecution of their nation or religion or sometimes specifically their families. The incels' complaints seem so superficial at times it's crazy to think they end up murdering people. 

I wouldn't worry, you're still far more knowledgeable and coherent than most posters on our match threads, and that is supposedly our collective specialised subject 

[urban.spaceman]

Meanwhile, Chris Morris has dropped some exclusive deleted scenes from Four Lions:

 

 

 

[leicsmac]

Incidentally, seeing as there are ideological similarities between "incels" and some more well known exponents of killing, I wonder when some of the "preachers" of this ideology (Carl Benjamin, for instance), might be held accountable civilly or criminally?

[Carl the Llama]

14 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Incidentally, seeing as there are ideological similarities between "incels" and some more well known exponents of killing, I wonder when some of the "preachers" of this ideology (Carl Benjamin, for instance), might be held accountable civilly or criminally?

How would you suggest we address people like Sargon without feeding them ammunition for their cause?  When a person's entire identity is victimhood and the evils done to you by society, it's incredibly tough to negate such a toxic view without appearing to confirm it.

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

How would you suggest we address people like Sargon without feeding them ammunition for their cause?  When a person's entire identity is victimhood and the evils done to you by society, it's incredibly tough to negate such a toxic view without appearing to confirm it.

Yep, a problem again seen very clearly in the rise of other forms of extremism.

 

However, that doesn't seem to stop efforts by the powers that be to combat that extremism in direct fashion.

 

That all aside, the answer is as been discussed above rather than targetting the "leaders" directly.

[Carl the Llama]

5 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Yep, a problem again seen very clearly in the rise of other forms of extremism.

 

However, that doesn't seem to stop efforts by the powers that be to combat that extremism in direct fashion.

 

That all aside, the answer is as been discussed above rather than targetting the "leaders" directly.

Well they're hardly going to carpet bomb Plymouth  

[Buce]

21 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Well they're hardly going to carpet bomb Plymouth  

 

Hmmm.

 

Let's not be hasty.        

[Alf Bentley]

1 hour ago, Finnegan said:

 

But this is sort of my point, surely the root causes are just as basic. You dismiss the incel's needs as trivial or superficial but ultimately you're talking about belonging, which is massively important to all of us. 

 

We're hugely social creatures, our mental health is largely dependent on social contact which has an evolutionary, biological basis. Lone humans, historically, die. Our brains are hardwired to reward social behaviour with positive chemical response because, if you'll pardon the silly reference, apes together strong. 

 

But we've built a society in 2021 that substitutes artificial bonding in for actual social interaction and it isn't as rewarding, we're also creating a world that's increasingly shallow. Whilst things like body positivity have crept in to our consciousness for some young women, there's not really an equivelant idea for young boys, the impact of mass media on whose self esteem is a widely unnoticed phenomena in the public eye. 

 

If you minimalise the incel psychology to just "they're pissed off they can't get laid" and you maximise Islamist ideology to "a world wide crusade for the glory of their god!" then, sure, you can make one seem extremely superficial and one seem immensely dramatic. But the real overlap here is that the most easily recruitable and impressionable people in both instances are cripplingly lonely, disconnected and isolated and have had their self esteem and social needs hit an absolute breaking point leaving them hugely vulnerable to any and all positive social contact.

 

That's enormously powerful. 

 

You're drawing highly relevant parallels, I think.

 

A lack of respected personal status within wider society seems to motivate many in both categories who commit atrocities.

 

The backgrounds of the perpetrators of Islamist terror attacks in Europe in recent years back this up. They have mostly been young men with a very shallow connection to Islam until exploited by ideologues.

They've mainly been single blokes, unemployed or in low-status jobs, with a background in petty crime, drugs and often a prison record...blokes with a low status who can acquire a sense of belonging and status from acting for extremist causes.

There are exceptions: two of the four 7/7 bombers were married with kids & one was a teaching assistant, as I recall. But most in recent years have been "low status" types from an irreligious background.

 

I wonder if a lot of this stems from the heightened importance now given to individual status within society?

 

It was always the case that many young people had crap jobs, no particular talent and were (at least temporarily) unsuccessful with sex or relationships. Yet people didn't seem to feel that to be a life-defining, unacceptable personal failure.

Maybe it was because people socialised more so there was more sense of status and contentment through belonging - a feeling that you were an accepted, even valued member of a wider group, even if your job was crap and you couldn't get laid?

 

I suppose that, as well as lots of good stuff, the Internet age has brought more personal isolation, greater awareness of super-successful people (often the minority) and ready exposure to extremists ready to feed on personal discontent by telling people: "you're entitled to get laid and are worthless otherwise" or "you can be someone of esteem if you become an Islamist extremist, a white supremacist or whatever"?

 

There are clearly a lot of complexities, doubtless being well researched - though whether those ideas ever feed through to policy or social change, I'm not so sure. But I'm sure you're onto something here.

 

[Wymsey]

You can hardly call it a holiday, 'mate'..

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/student-who-claims-travelled-afghanistan-5799056

[Sly]

9 minutes ago, Wymsey said:

You can hardly call it a holiday, 'mate'..

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/student-who-claims-travelled-afghanistan-5799056

A bit more to it than that. 
 

It was pre planned and he changed his name to “Lord” from what I’ve read. Therefore, if he got captured whilst doing this for social media fame, the Taliban would think he was okay to ransom. 

[Collymore]

17 minutes ago, Wymsey said:

You can hardly call it a holiday, 'mate'..

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/student-who-claims-travelled-afghanistan-5799056

What an idiot. 

[bovril]

1 hour ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

You're drawing highly relevant parallels, I think.

 

A lack of respected personal status within wider society seems to motivate many in both categories who commit atrocities.

 

The backgrounds of the perpetrators of Islamist terror attacks in Europe in recent years back this up. They have mostly been young men with a very shallow connection to Islam until exploited by ideologues.

They've mainly been single blokes, unemployed or in low-status jobs, with a background in petty crime, drugs and often a prison record...blokes with a low status who can acquire a sense of belonging and status from acting for extremist causes.

There are exceptions: two of the four 7/7 bombers were married with kids & one was a teaching assistant, as I recall. But most in recent years have been "low status" types from an irreligious background.

 

I wonder if a lot of this stems from the heightened importance now given to individual status within society?

 

It was always the case that many young people had crap jobs, no particular talent and were (at least temporarily) unsuccessful with sex or relationships. Yet people didn't seem to feel that to be a life-defining, unacceptable personal failure.

Maybe it was because people socialised more so there was more sense of status and contentment through belonging - a feeling that you were an accepted, even valued member of a wider group, even if your job was crap and you couldn't get laid?

 

I suppose that, as well as lots of good stuff, the Internet age has brought more personal isolation, greater awareness of super-successful people (often the minority) and ready exposure to extremists ready to feed on personal discontent by telling people: "you're entitled to get laid and are worthless otherwise" or "you can be someone of esteem if you become an Islamist extremist, a white supremacist or whatever"?

 

 

I realise I look like I'm beating the drum here but it is striking how differently some people are reacting to the incels compared to the Islamic extremists. Unconscious bias, I guess they call it these days. 

And yes I'm generalising based on what I've seen on social media over the last few days. 

[Finnegan]

5 minutes ago, bovril said:

I realise I look like I'm beating the drum here but it is striking how differently some people are reacting to the incels compared to the Islamic extremists. Unconscious bias, I guess they call it these days. 

And yes I'm generalising based on what I've seen on social media over the last few days. 

 

On 05/03/2019 at 10:43, Finnegan said:

 

Why though? 

 

She's a British citizen, she's born and raised here, she's from Beffnul Green, she's as British as eels, pie and mash. 

 

If she was disillusioned by life here, that's partly on us. If she was radicalised here, that's partly on us. She's our problem, our responsibility. We should absolutely take her back and deal with the consequences. 

 

Doesn't mean she should be walking the streets, spitting on war memorials, booing veterans, claiming a full basket of benefits and sponging off the state as per every Daily Mail reader's disproportionately silly fears. 

 

She should be detained on her return and duly prosecuted and incarcerated in the UK for membership of a banned terrorist organisation. Revoking her citizenship is just revoking ourselves of any responsibility, we helped create the mess in the middle East, we should at very least do our part by picking up our rubbish.

 

If Donald Trump has only said one sensible thing in the last year, its that ourselves, Germany, etc should take back our ISIS fighters and deal with them accordingly. 

 

But it would be a ****ing crying shame if we chucked her in a cell and abandoned her to rot and grow increasingly bitter, mind. We should make every attempt to de-radicalise her. She's a bloody child. 

 

She was a minor when she was seduced by a religious cult, married off to some dirty ****, subjected to statutory rape and squeezed out a couple of kids for the cause. 

 

If this was a pretty, little, well spoken  white girl (with a tidy publicist) instead of a slightly thick, unfortunate looking brown girl from the world's most easily targeted ethnic group then social media would be up in arms trying to #SaveBegum. 

 

Instead, social media is in hysterics turning her in to the next Bin Laden. How is it not ****ing tragically sad that this little girl has been brainwashed? 

 

I mean, aye, maybe she's a complete and total psychopath and there's no way back for her, maybe we'd be best dumping her in a prison for life and forgetting about her, maybe that's how it'd eventually end up but should we not at least try first? 

 

I said it before, I think in another thread, but I really fail to see how abandoning all hope of reclaiming Shamima Begum actually helps us in the war on terror at all. 

 

Nobody is saying you have to like her and only an idiot would want you to let her off the hook and walk free but the feverent mob wanting her to be lost forever because of decisions she made at 15? Get in the bin. 

 

I appreciate Shamima Begum's not exactly a suicide bomber but it was the closest example I could remember having commented on in the past. 

 

And I want to make it abundantly clear here, I'm not expressing sympathy for or championing the cause of far-right, white nationalist domestic terrorists just because they couldn't get a girlfriend. I share your frustration with watching both social and mainstream media act like anything brown is a demonic terrorist and anything white is a sad, poor misunderstood little boy. But I'm not sure that devalues the points made in this thread about incels and young far right trolls.

 

I just think think that finding their current belief system reprehensive and wanting to help them aren't mutually exclusive. 

[bovril]

Just now, Finnegan said:

 

 

I appreciate Shamima Begum's not exactly a suicide bomber but it was the closest example I could remember having commented on in the past. 

 

And I want to make it abundantly clear here, I'm not expressing sympathy for or championing the cause of far-right, white nationalist domestic terrorists just because they couldn't get a girlfriend. I share your frustration with watching both social and mainstream media act like anything brown is a demonic terrorist and anything white is a sad, poor misunderstood little boy. But I'm not sure that devalues the points made in this thread about incels and young far right trolls.

 

I just think think that finding their current belief system reprehensive and wanting to help them aren't mutually exclusive. 

I wasn't talking talking about anybody on this forum. It is galling though to see some of the hypocrisy on the wider internet which I assume is reflected in a large % of the UK population. 

[Claridge]

19 minutes ago, bovril said:

I realise I look like I'm beating the drum here but it is striking how differently some people are reacting to the incels compared to the Islamic extremists. Unconscious bias, I guess they call it these days. 

And yes I'm generalising based on what I've seen on social media over the last few days. 

Both nuts

[Dr The Singh]

Not to be controversial, the Taliban have said women's right according to Islam will be met and no nation will be allowed to use it as it base.

 

Considering Islam is from 800 AD, those conditions that were applied to women will be adopted.

 

This is the will of the land, what right do we have to say Islamic rule is wrong.