Nowyn

It has been about 20 days for me. But I hardly miss Reddit. While my niches aren't niche enough here yet, I am actually having somewhat meaningful discussions.

Admittedly I just took a huge jump and changed so many platforms, devices and software this month that I might not even notice the intricacies.

Things either need to be really, really bad and people are done or we need to find what they care about more than being comfortable. I was not always politically active. It took until my late twenties and seeing how bad things can really be. I have been an activist on the human rights front for about a decade. And it only happened because I really saw the issues in my country and continent. But while my family knows as I make sure they know, and some kind of care, it is not important enough for them.

But weirdly. My country had literal neo-Nazis as a minister and everyone with a brain thinks we still do as bids of the same feather and so on. And suddenly my leftist but not active friends became active, online and outside that. It is weird when I have been warning that this is the road we are on for the better part of a decade it took it to happen for people to take action. Thankfully we are still solidly democratic so this might work. At least for a few years.

While I mostly agree with you I don't think country-owned companies or even monopolies are always bad. There needs to be a huge amount of real separation between politicians and those companies but it can work. In mine, both gambling and alcohol spirits stores are monopolies and owned by a country. Profits from gambling are distributed to grants for health and social welfare nonprofits. The question is if my country with very little corruption is the exemption that confirms the rule or if, if you do it right, it can work.

I also do not believe communism without very solid safeguards can work and those would need to be applied almost at the start. I am also pessimistic about human nature these days and am not sure if there can ever be enough safeguards to protect that model from misuse. I am what you could call a democratic socialist. I believe in mix and match where public and private companies can work in the same economy. Although I do oppose land resources being sold, especially as they are usually sold with a pittance for companies to profit. And I am not talking about private persons selling their land's resources but government land resources. Selling them really doesn't often make economic sense unless extraction would require a really high investment. Ecologic considerations should also be taken a lot more into account.

There was a lot less difference in liberties in majority Islamic countries and the majority Christian countries until the 60s' and 70s' when Islamic fundamentalist theocracies got enough popular support to gain power. It is a very complex phenomenon that is largely linked to colonialism and especially de-colonization.

Based purely on books Islam is actually the most advanced of the religious texts. It for example actually grants rights for women that are not found in other Abrahamic religions. Do they actually happen as Quaran and hadiths say? No, they largely don't. But there is a high level of differences between different Islamic countries and that are not explainable by sects they believe in. For hijab (as clothing) Afghanistan and Turkey are very different from burqa to hijab (headscarf) having been banned for decades.

Current people in power in Islamic countries aren't there necessarily because of current popular support. Trying to unravel Gordian's knot of Islam, dictatorship, culture, fundamentalism, colonialism and decolonization is as the name tells pretty impossible., For example, FGM is seen as Islamic practice and while not haram it is not Islamic but cultural one that seems to have at least one center in Kurdisrtan. Only thing prophet Mohammed said about it is that if you have to cut don't cut so severely. Which by Islamic jurisprudence makes only the cutting severely not practice itself haram. One of the Islamic principles is that if it isn't explicitly banned it is allowed. Honor violence is a thing. Part of it is largely cultural and how the majority of Islamic countries are honour based societies.

Of course Islam and especially Muslims have a huge amount of issues with social liberties and human rights. But even worst of it, Islamic terrorism, has been a minority in both casualties and attacks in Western countries. In the US in past 50 years majority of attacks have been linked to alt-right and Christian fundamentalism. The majority of attacks by Islamic terrorist organizations happen in Islamic countries which tells us that either governments or inhabitants are not fundamentalist enough for those groups. The rise of the two biggest of past couple of decades, Al Qaida and ISIS/DAESH can be followed to the actions of Western countries. Former because of armament and training because of Cold War and the latter to the power vacuum left by the Iraq war.

Current issues in Turkey are a lot less Islam related than to things like having autocrat and a culture with ultra nationalistic. For example how Ataturk is seen as something that is closing what is haram. Turkey is following especially civil society and oppositional politicians to close degree. The space for advancement in social liberties and human rights is very narrow and they have no issue deporting, jailing or vanishing people (usually just jailing them in black sites). But that does not differ from Russia for example. Erdogan also has no qualms of for example fucking up the economy even more to gain votes. There are different rules for different types of people. If anyone can skirt the rule of law they will. Tax evasion is more assumed than something notable. But one thing I had no issues with was Islam itself. While as foreigner albeit woman I had more leeway but I did not need it. The biggest culture shocks were not Islam but living under autocrat, my and my organizations actions being followed constantly, wide corruption and the absolutely mind boggling one was getting used to people not caring that things are not functional. Currently, the majority of my Turkish friends who have a way out are leaving. Erdogan's economic decisions for winning elections are already increasing inflation that already was entirely out of hand. You literally had no idea what things would cost tomorrow even before elections. The last earthquake in Turkey destroyed a lot of land that was farmland and with war in Ukraine already causing famine forecast is not great.

This summer I have switched my Reddit, web browser, password manager, laptop, external keyboard, mouse type and now I either have to learn to live with Windows 11 or deal with the head ache of installing Linux. In other words I feel you. And figuring how to make Windows 11 to be tolerable and having to look into keyboard as touch typist is annoying as hell. I am not sure how I can completely degoogle myself as I use or used everything they have although not for really sensitive content in long, long time. But the fact is my gmail is my first adult email address and is even older than my Reddit account is.

I remember some time in high school somewhere around their IPO my friend told me google will be the next really big thing. If I had had listened listened him and had had some money I might have become a lot richer than I am. There was some now weird optimism and exitement around the now big tech companies. The vision I have of google is really different now than then but I still carry some attachement as sentimental person. I guess I am taking steps. And if anyone has input into which securish cloud storage to use that is somewhat cheap for multiple terabyte of things and can be used from file explorer, please tell me. Thankfully sensitive data is mostly elsewhere.

Basically in those situations people find new ways to be connected. For example, while satellite dishes are banned in Iran they are pretty common in that if you don't have one you propably know someone who has. Mesh networks are currently being used in Sudan and have been in other countries where government has shut down internet. Usually shutdowns and restrictions don't happen without warning so people have usually started to smuggle in satellite internet devices. But there are two huge issues. One. you need certain level of technological literacy and there is often some financial cost applied. If you asked my mom what is dark web she would look me weirdly. Partially as her English is not great but I have never heard anyone actually using the Finnish version but mainly because she has no idea what it is. Majority of people are somewhat priced out of satellite internet globally. And no one has heard of mesh networks unless they are techies, activists or people who have experienced government severely limiting internet access.

I am always astounded about how big of procentage manage to stay connected. Need really is mother of inventions. But if you put my mom, stepdad or stepmom in these situations, they would have no idea where to start. The rest of my immediate family would figure it out as we are more or less techies.

RFK was pretty great. Not just by intelligence and actions but for politician he made a really good AG. His son RFK Jr is an idiot.

Mine is either Paradox Games although my preferred is CK series. Also, dabble in the Sims. Which I have been told is weird mix.

There is no Orthodox Vatican. While the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is first among equals Orthodox church comprises self-governing canonical areas. The majority of Orthodox patriarchates fall under either Russian, Greek or Constantinople Patriarchates. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Ukraine has fallen under Russian Patriarchate since early modern times but the Patriarchate of Kyiv existed before Muscovite Patriarchate. There has been multiple attempts to return it under Greek Patriarchate with varying success but they have been separate although not recognized by Russian Patriarchate since 2018.

And that was probably as many times as I have ever written Patriarchate on one text.

They definitely are emotionally compromised person being manipulated but being emotionally unintelligent and being emotionally compromised are not the same thing. While being emotionally unintelligent will affect your risk of being radicalized it does so through your own emotions and capacity to process them in a healthy way.

Radicalization happens in steps. You don't get from being blind to racism and as the next step participating in genocide. Nor do you go from wondering if you are being lied to for some nefarious reason to believing 5G will kill you. It is a slow and gradual process. A lot of people are following the same playbook. It includes things like moving goalposts, giving the same legitimacy to two viewpoints that are not equal in ethics or evidence, playing on fear and discomfort, and giving convenient fall guy for people's difficulties. In my language, there is a saying that in a group stupidity condenses. That isn't because people's intelligence somehow lessens but because of the social nature of human beings.

It is not like people in Nazi Germany suddenly lose their collective cognitive or emotional intelligence in 20s and 30s. There were pretty clear issues going on that could be seized for populist politics. It is also not like Nazis themselves didn't have a huge amount of anti-intellectual pseudoscience in their idealogy and, in the case of some members, a lot of occultism going around.

The hard truth is that people in general are really bad at seeing manipulation. You can see the clumsy attempts but the majority of people judge others' actions based on their view of their intentions. And as in general we would like to think of ourselves as well-intentioned, we are not judging if someone is manipulating all the time. Critical thinking can help but the thing about radicalization is that it speaks to multiple psychological tendencies we naturally have.

And while I deem QAnon shit and even any flavor of alt-right or religious fundamentalism idiocy, the pure fact that they have been as successful as they have tells that their manipulation is quite finessed.

It is because radicalization is more than a cognitive process. It is as much social and psychological. Intelligence alone is a pretty bad predictor of a lot of things we like to think only depend on intelligence. While there is some causation, it is not a vacuum or often even the biggest predictor of many things.

Radicalization is the thing that makes you believe in things that can't be real. Making people believe a lot of things is surprisingly easy. Look into religions. While I don't believe and you might not, a lot of intelligent people throughout world history have. There might be a correlation between intelligence and atheism these days, but the effect is far from linear.

We really need to step out of the idea that radicalization only happens to people who are somehow slow or uneducated. It might make you more likely to fall for it, but cognitive ability and education will not mean you will not end up there as well. Issue with the anti-intellectualism of the alt-right is not if someone themselves has education but if they are willing to listen to other people who do. If no one is an expert for example racist ideas of the alt-right about biological differences can't be refuted. Which is probably partially where it comes from times quite a lot.

Everyone likes to think they have cognitive ability. If we just think radicalization happens only to stupid people, and you are not stupid, getting a person de-radicalized is going to be a lot harder. Thinking that we as people with cognitive ability can't be radicalized will also make it easier to fall for it because you can't be radicalized.

Instead of intelligence or education, we should focus on the trifecta of vulnerability, marginalization, and othering. That's a better predictor.

(And no, I do not actually disagree about the ideas being idiocy, just that falling for them are not just for idiots)