Monthly Archives: March 2021

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is sometimes dismissed as a malevolent figure, obsessed with the problem of nihilism and the death of God.

Understandably, these ideas are unsettling: few of us have the courage to confront the possibility our idols may be hollow and life has no inherent meaning.

But Nietzsche sees not only the dangers these ideas pose, but also the positive opportunities they present.

The beauty and severity of Nietzsches texts draw from his vision that we could move through nihilism to develop newly meaningful ways to be human.

For centuries, the Bible gave people a way to value themselves and something to work towards.

We all, declares St. Paul, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The divine and the human meet in this description. Believers felt uplifted because they held Gods attention. God loved us (1 John 4:19) and saw us, down to our sinful foundations (Hebrews 4:13), yet his love persisted. This love enabled us to endure the pain of life. And because he saw us and our faults, we were encouraged to improve ourselves little by little and live up to his image.

For Nietzsche, the son of a Lutheran pastor, the growth of scientific understanding after the Age of Enlightenment had gradually made it impossible to maintain faith in God.

God is dead, Nietzche proclaimed.

Nietzsche saw the danger in this atheist worldview. If we werent suffering to get closer to God, what was the point of life? From whom now would we draw the strength to endure lifes difficulty? God was the origin of truth, justice, beauty, love transcendental ideals we thought of ourselves as heroically defending, leading lives and dying deaths that had meaning and purpose. How could we play the hero to ourselves now?

The consequences of the death of God are horrific, but also freeing. In The Gay Science (first published in German in 1882), Nietzsche has the news of Gods death relayed by a man driven mad through fear at what a godless life might be like. Eventually, he breaks into churches to sing Gods requiem mass.

Without God, we are alone, exposed to a natural universe devoid of the comforting idea of a God-given purpose to things. According to Nietzsche, this state of nihilism the idea that life has no meaning or value cannot be avoided; we must go through it, as frightening and lonely as that will be.

For Nietzsche, nihilism can be a bridge to a new way of being. We are undetermined animals: malleable enough to be refashioned.

Our task now is to transform from the old Christian way of being human, towards what Nietzsche calls the bermensch or Overhuman.

Christianitys problem, in Nietzsches view, is that it slowly but surely destroys itself: ironically, prizing truthfulness as a virtue eventually leads to an intellectual honesty that rejects faith.

Our quest for honesty has given birth to a passion of knowledge. Now the search for answers to lifes hardest questions, and not the worship of God, is our greatest passion. We hunt for the most accurate reasons for our existence and likely find the answers in science rather than religion.

Nietzsche writes for those who are invigorated by questioning. Indeed, knowing and accepting that we are human and fallible no longer charged with trying to reach a divine standard leaves us lighter. As he writes in Daybreak, Gods death removes the threat of divine punishment, leaving us free again both to experiment with different ways to live and to make mistakes along the way. He wants us to seize this opportunity with both hands.

We can be the heroes of our own stories again, once we reclaim from God our creative wills. Nietzsche encourages us to treat our lives like the creation of works of art, learning from artists how to tolerate and even celebrate ourselves by cultivating the art of looking at ourselves from a distance as heroes.

Nietzsche continues to have an immense influence on philosophy and how we see our everyday struggles.

Many today will relate to his belief that we are living through a state of crisis, asking questions about the point of life in an age marked by affluence, image, and the damage wrought by religious fundamentalism.

By contrast, Nietzsche offers us a way toward meaning and purpose without the gruesome consequences of those who impose their religion on others, regardless of the cost.

Read this article:

Explainer: Nietzsche, nihilism and reasons to be cheerful

February 21, 1965. 21 gunshots brought about the death of a man whose name would receive every reaction conceivable. It was the end of the story of a fierce advocate of agency, power and civil rights, nothing short of mythical: Malcolm X.

Malcolm X, whose Muslim name is el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was a martyr. He had become a shaheed one of the highest honours a Muslim can ever possess. While his rise with the authoritarian Nation of Islam became his ironic downfall, he knew very well the death that awaited him, which added an almost prophetic quality to his epic, heroic tale.

His experiences mirrored his communitys movement from rural peasantry, to industrial proletariat, to post-industrial redundancy. Allied to this is his spiritual redemption and movement away from nihilism. Factor in his yearning for knowledge, how can one not be inspired by the Malcolm who educated himself in the midst of a jail sentence?

He moved away from the dogmatic, exclusionary Nation of Islam to the pluralistic, inclusive Sunni Islam which transcended racial and cultural creed. Much like the literary and Abrahamic prophets of old, there was a struggle, a calling to faith and the building of a world built on the tenants of radical liberation. We have much to learn from an almost messianic tale that embodied activism, redemption, and love.

Indeed, prophetic and messianic are immense forms of praise. Followers and admirers of Malcolm X understand this. So did his enemies. In a memo to the offices of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stressed the need to nullify Malcolm Xs influence to prevent the rise of a Messiah who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement. Hoover also enunciated a final goal of preventing the growth of militant organisations and rhetoric amongst young people.

But these were forlorn plans. The prophetic model of Malcolm, so beautifully detailed in Malcolms and Alex Haleys The Autobiography of Malcolm X, inspired thousands of young adults: Afro nationalists, Communists, Marxists, Muslims. Decades later, his work has become part of the canon of many university courses.

Both Muslim and non-Muslim youth, with a sharp criticality and sophistication, became readers of Malcolms philosophies. I am the former, a young Muslim, struggling with his identity and the capacity to find Muslim heroes who changed the world as I knew it a Western world plagued by racism, the ravaging devastation of colonialism and a painful shortage of agency.

As a Levantine Arab, I cannot entirely, and without some degree of friction, claim the Malcolm who reinvigorated the resistance of African American communities as my own. I can only respect, admire, learn, and express my utmost solidarity and support for such a struggle. However, I can genuinely claim Malcolm the Muslim, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, who I believe can be of much guidance to those to those with a deep commitment to societal and personal transformation.

After his trips to the Islamic worlds of Africa and the Middle East, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz linked African American liberation to global liberation of those who suffered the brunt of US imperialism. This was a Malcolm who began to vehemently oppose the global machinations of American power and propaganda that had subjugated not only Africans but Arabs. Malcolm had begun to dedicate himself to the umma, the collective body of all believers united in faith and inseparable by any material means.

As a Muslim of Palestinian heritage, to me Malcolm X had not only become a hero I could only admire and respect from afar, but a hero I could call my own as he criticised Israeli injustices against my own people. Malcolm had stressed the necessity of claiming justice for all; that justice for some would not be a cause worth pursuing. As poverty, racism, sexism, colonialism and war continue to plague the world we find ourselves in, we would do well to follow Malcolms model: recognise the universality of a struggle, tied in with all causes against that which is inhibitive, repulsive and shameful.

Redemption should be at the core of such a struggle, which is the very thing that Malcolm exemplified. His conversion from crime, hatred and nihilism to that of the Islamic faith, and his reconsideration of his own racial illusions regarding whiteness is mythical. Malcolm was willing to question his once held convictions. After his iconic pilgrimage to Hajj, he wrote:

There are Muslims of all colours and ranks here in Mecca from all parts of this earth. During the past seven days of this holy pilgrimage, while undergoing the rituals of the hajj [pilgrimage], I have eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same Godnot only with some of this earths most powerful kings, cabinet members, potentates and other forms of political and religious rulers but also with fellowMuslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blondyet it was the first time in my life that I didnt see them as white men. I could look into their faces and see that these didnt regard themselves as white.

This redemptive open-mindedness was further shown in Malcolms discussion of Islam with Tariq Ali at Oxford University. As Ali rebuked faith with a scorn, Malcolm listened respectfully and attentively and replied, its good to hear you talk like thatIm beginning to ask myself many of the same questions.

There was a humility to Malcolm that accompanied his conviction in faith and political activism. This humility and redemption should be cause for hope: people are capable of change. Hatred would not be a weapon against injustice. Malcolm recognised that and began to engage with something more radical: love.

Cornel West affirmed that justice and love were inseparable. Malcolms faith; my faith; was one that affirmed that one cannot truly believe until we love others as we love ourselves. Malcolm took up that mantle of Islam and revolutionary love. One only has to consider and appreciate this prayer he once opined to understand:

I pray that God will bless you in everything that you do. I pray that you will grow intellectually, so that you can understand the problems of the world and where you fit into, in that world picture. And I pray that all of the fear that has ever been in your heart will be taken out.

Grow intellectually. Remove fear. Thats what Malcolm prayed for. Find a way to claim some part of his almost prophetic, Messianic tale as I have claimed him; while Malcolm died on February 21, 1965, his cause and ideals did not. Find a way to express and harness the radicality of activism, redemption, and love. The world needs that triune of progress that my Malcom, the Muslim Malcolm, came to embody so well.

Read more here:

Malcolm X: The prophetic radicality of activism, redemption, and love - Honi Soit

Emily Feng Mar. 22, 2021

BEIJING When China acknowledged this year that four of its soldiers had died fighting Indian forces on the two countries' disputed mountain border eight months prior, the irreverent blogger Little Spicy Pen Ball had questions.

"If the four [Chinese] soldiers died trying to rescue their fellow soldiers, then there must have been those who were not successfully rescued," he wrote on Feb. 19 to his 2.5 million followers on Weibo, a Chinese social media site. "This means the fatalities could not have just been four."

The day after, Qiu Ziming, the 38-year-old former newspaper journalist behind the blog, was detained and criminally charged. If convicted, he faces a sentence of up to three years.

"Little Spicy Pen Ball maliciously slandered and degraded the heroes defending our country and the border," according to the annual work report published by the country's chief prosecutor office this month.

A contrite Qiu, sitting behind bars, called his actions "an obliteration of conscience" in a taped statement aired on the state broadcaster's prime-time news show on March 1.

Qiu's is the first case to be tried under a sweeping new criminal law that took effect March 1. The new law penalizes "infringing on the reputation and honor of revolutionary heroes." At least six other people have been detained or charged with defaming "martyrs." The government uses the terms "revolutionary heroes" and "martyrs" for anyone it memorializes for their sacrifice for the Communist Party.

The detentions typify the stricter controls over online speech under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which have deterred nearly all open dissent in the country. The new law even seeks to criminalize speech made outside China.

Such is the case of Wang Jingyu, 19, who lives in the United States and is now a wanted man in his hometown of Chongqing, China. The authorities accuse him of slandering dead Chinese soldiers after Weibo reported him for a comment questioning the number of border fight casualties.

"This is killing a monkey to scare the chickens," Wang says. "The Chinese state wants to show others that if anyone wants to be like me or relay the truth, then you will be pursued."

A 2018 law allows police to investigate speech defaming martyrs. Several people have been detained as a result, according to an online spreadsheet kept by a free speech activist, but such behavior did not carry a jail sentence until now.

"Cyberspace is not outside the law," the Chongqing public security bureau said in an online notice after it declared Wang would be "pursued online" for his comments. "Public security organs will crack down on acts that openly insult the deeds and spirit of heroes and martyrs in accordance with the law."

It's unclear how authorities plan to apprehend Wang. A police officer who contacted Wang, asking him to turn himself in, did not answer calls and texts from NPR.

China's ruling Communist Party is hyper-sensitive to challenges of its rule. One of the newer threats it has identified is "historical nihilism" that is, rejecting the party's official version of history and its pantheon of revolutionary heroes and martyrs.

The four Chinese soldiers who died during the border clash last June are the newest members of this canon. They were killed high up in the Himalayas, where hundreds of Chinese and Indian soldiers armed with nothing but stones and batons beat each other bloody, with each side accusing the other of alleged encroachments over an unmarked border line. Days after the incident, India said 20 of its troops died in the brawl.

China refused to confirm fatalities on its side until this February, when it released the names of four soldiers killed and a fifth who was critically injured in the disputed Galwan Valley area. State media ran extensive footage of their service and the last hours of their lives.

The sudden media blitz infuriated Wang, he says. He had closely followed China and India's border tensions and questioned the initial lack of fatalities reported by China. He wondered about the families of the soldiers who he suspected had died, left to grieve silently in the absence of official recognition.

In late February, as he sat in the backseat of a friend's car in Europe, Wang went back and forth for half an hour over whether to write anything online. He currently lives in California but his parents remain in the Chinese municipality of Chongqing, where they worked for two state-owned firms.

"I knew if I mocked these soldiers, it would bring a negative impact on my parents," Wang says. "But I was just too angry." He pressed publish on three comments under a news item lauding the four Chinese troops.

The People's Liberation Army soldiers "deserved to die," he wrote, and the Indian forces were within their rights to confront their "offenders." Wang now acknowledges the comments were offensive, but he says he deliberately crafted them to push the bounds of speech in China.

His comments went viral and were aired on China's most-watched evening news program. Shortly after, Wang says his parents were questioned for hours by police officers.

Chongqing's police department did not respond to a request for comment.

In the days following his social media posts, Wang says his mother and father were kept under effective house arrest in their Chongqing home, where they were able to call Wang twice, briefly, under police watch. He has been unable to reach them since.

"They told me they support me, and they are proud of me," Wang said.

Amy Cheng contributed research from Beijing.

Excerpt from:

China Makes It A Crime To Question Military Casualties On The Internet | NPR - KCRW

Warning: This story contains spoilers from future installments of HBOs Q: Into the Storm, whose first two episodes aired Sunday.

The new HBO docuseries, Q: Into the Storm, attempts to answer one of the most urgent questions of our time: Who controls QAnon, the elaborate but baseless conspiracy theory whose followers believe the world is run by an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

Over the course of three years, as QAnon migrated from the fringes of the internet into mainstream American politics, filmmaker Cullen Hoback attempted to determine the identity of Q, the anonymous poster who claimed to be a high-ranking government official and managed to lure thousands if not millions of people into an alternate reality where JFK Jr. is still alive.

A documentarian with an interest in digital privacy a subject explored in his 2013 film, Terms and Conditions May Apply Hoback became curious about QAnon in 2018 when Reddit, the hugely popular message board, banned QAnon forums. What was an idea that was so pernicious that they felt it warranted banning? Hoback asks. And might banning it actually make people more interested in it?

That may be the case. Though QAnon originated in one of the most toxic corners of the internet the unregulated image board 8chan, later known as 8kun, a notorious bastion for hate speech and breeding ground for mass shooters it quickly spread to everyday platforms including YouTube and Facebook.

Jim and Ron Watkins in a scene from Q: Into the Storm on HBO.

(HBO)

The six-part series focuses less on the many Americans sucked into the QAnon vortex, or even the theorys destabilizing impact on democracy, than the digital cesspool from which it emerged. Hoback gained unique access to Fred Brennan, the founder of 8chan, as well as Jim and Ron Watkins, the shadowy father-son team who took over the platform and fought to keep it online amid growing public backlash.

I wanted to unmask whoever was behind this, because I thought that that might bring the whole thing to a conclusion, says Hoback, who spent a collective four months filming with his main subjects.

The investigation took him around the globe from Italy to the Philippines and finally to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 as an angry mob of Trump supporters many outfitted in Q gear stormed the Capitol. After pursuing several false leads, Hoback ultimately determines that Q is not a high-ranking member of the military nor even a shadowy political operative but Ron Watkins, a porn-loving bro with a flat affect, a nervous blinking habit and a disturbing lack of empathy.

Hoback unpacked his investigation and its conclusions for The Times; this conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Did you worry that by making this series you might be giving more attention to QAnon and granting a platform to people like Ron and Jim Watkins?

Over the last few years weve seen people try censorship, theyve tried ignoring it, theyve tried attacking it. And the only thing that hadnt really been tried yet is just showing it for what it is and the personalities behind it. Now almost 20% of Americans believe in QAnon. Fifty-two percent of Americans, according to an NPR poll, think that its possible that our country is run by a group of pedophilic elites. [Editors note: 54% of Americans in the poll say either its true that a Satanic pedophile ring controls politics and the media or that they dont know.] So whatever weve been doing so far hasnt worked. I thought I would try a different approach, which was the antiseptic of sunlight. I think most QAnons, most people who deeply believe in Q, have no idea the kind of place that Q posts [8chan] and have no idea regarding the personalities behind it.

Its not like were just handing Ron and Jim a microphone and saying Go! This is a carefully curated and thought-out piece of work designed to reveal Q for what it is. So its just a different way of thinking about it.

You have been following the issue of digital privacy for years. What is your take on it now?

The situation on the internet has gotten far worse since I made [Terms and Conditions May Apply] back in 2013. Privacy is all but dead on the internet, and privacy needs to be dead for Silicon Valleys business model to thrive. One of the things Ive learned through this production is a lot of people right now are pointing at the speech and saying, This speech is dangerous, this speech needs to be silenced. And, to me, the speech is almost a symptom of something much deeper. Not just fractures in society but deeper problems with how the internet is currently functioning. We can trace it back to digital privacy. If all these companies hadnt been collecting thousands of data points on each of us, then they wouldnt have been able to target us with manipulation campaigns and drive us into echo chambers. By virtue of having these psychometric profiles on each of us, we now have this ecosystem of hyper-polarization and that manifests in the form of extreme speech.

Its also worth noting that the algorithms drive us toward increasingly sensational content. QAnon wouldnt have been successful without those algorithms.

One of the things you see in the series is were always going three hops away from some QAnon-related content. You could be looking at Tom Hanks in Toy Story on YouTube and be three clicks away from Tom Hanks is a pedophile. Thats completely factually ridiculous, but it didnt matter. Thats how so many people gravitated toward QAnon, especially in the early days; YouTube didnt really start restricting QAnon-related content until October of 2020. And [YouTube and others] didnt describe the problem as the algorithms having driven people to this content. They just described the content as the problem.

Director Cullen Hoback in Q: Into the Storm

(HBO)

Over the course of making this series, did you get a sense of why this theory which seems so ludicrous on its face has gained such a foothold with the public?

Theres a real anti-establishment thread that runs through most of the people who believe in QAnon and a high capacity for religious conspiratorial thinking. A lot of the people who follow QAnon feel like a lot of things in society have failed them. Theyve stopped trusting expertise. Theyve turned away from institutions. And theyre looking to other sources, but then they find sources that are much worse and far less reputable.

I think a big part of it is that people feel like theres something wrong in the world. But the banality of evil isnt sexy. Its hard to understand. And what QAnon does is it takes heaven and hell and says actually its right here on Earth. It puts things in very black and white, super concrete completely false, but concrete terms that make it easier for people to understand, as opposed to looking at the nuanced complexities that lead to something like the banking crisis or the war in Iraq. Its easy to use these old tropes saying theres an evil group out there thats out to get you as opposed to looking at the complex systems that allow this.

Do you think the identity of Q even matters to followers? Will they care if Q is, in fact, just a troll with a powerful platform?

Absolutely. Something I heard a lot along the way from anons was that it doesnt matter who Q was. But when I pressed all of them deep down, they all really wanted to know. So much of Qs power is derived from anonymity. Q doesnt come with any of the baggage that a normal person would come with. If you take off the mask, it reveals all of the ugliness and its all connected to a person. And Q understands that. I think a lot of people who follow QAnon are feeling pretty misled right now. Theyre unsure if there was ever any plan at all. And theyre looking for answers, post-insurrection.

Something Ive learned through the process of making this is just how powerful belief really is. Pretend to be something long enough and you become that thing. In the beginning I think a lot of people werent sure if they believed QAnon; they were kind of playing along, but over time they came to believe it. And over time those who were behind QAnon tried to make it become real, tried to meme Q into existence. And to some extent, thats what happened on the 6th [of January], that was their attempt to make Q manifest.

Trump supporters gesture to U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6.

(Associated Press)

Tell me about being at the Capitol on Jan. 6. You were clearly expecting something like that to happen.

I was extremely anxious going into the 6th. I personally thought it was going to be much worse than it was, I was expecting things to break out into a much more severe conflict. I didnt get much sleep the two nights before it. I was there to document Jim and to see how he felt about his websites involvement in what was happening that day. It was one of the more nerve-racking experiences. You can never tell if Jim is being sincere or joking. He uses humor to mask something more sinister. But when hes there, screaming [to encourage people whod penetrated the Capitol], Out the window! I think you see what his desires were.

Did you get any sense of what makes Jim and Ron tick what motivates them? Theyre pretty inscrutable characters.

When it finally clicked for me is that segment in Episode 4, where Ron is talking about Diogenes. He sees this pseudo-Socrates-gone-mad character as a role model: cynicism as an ideology. And he respects and enjoys the idea of taking a s in the middle of the town square just to troll people, with this mentality of Well, the dog can do it, why cant I? And I feel like thats his entire mentality in life. They are the embodiment of the websites that they host. Theyre constantly trolling and trying to provoke a response, whether that response is something thats humorous or something thats scary. They also see the world as a game. Theres a nihilism to it.

In the end, how certain are you that Ron Watkins is Q?

I think we made a very strong case in the series for Ron being the linchpin in QAnon, and having been that linchpin since late 2017 or early 2018. Thats not to say that there arent people working with Ron. We paint a picture of the bigger network. But Q only works with Ron. And when you see all of the things that he was covering up, the ways he changes his story and covers up his own fascination with all of the theories and ideas that he had; all of that, he had everything. He has the motive, he has the technical skills. So yes, I do think Ron is Q.

Originally posted here:

QAnon HBO docuseries asks who is Q? And may have the answer - Los Angeles Times