Item one is one that made me chuckle, since while reading a previous Bring on the Meteor not twenty minutes ago as of writing this, I found a not so subtle jab at Laci Green, a very prominent YouTube feminist who, it would seem, as gone rogue. Laci Green is an interesting case; over the years I've seen bits and bobs of her work, and to be honest, while she's never seemed as malicious or scheming as someone like Anita Sarkeesian, I've found her feminism to be laughably stupid. But in a somewhat striking move, Laci put out a video titled 'TAKING THE RED PILL?' which was in all caps just like that, in which she talks about talking to anti-feminists, which, as she says in the video, confused a lot of people. What I love about this video is how seemingly self aware she is, talking about how her SJWness has been turned into a meme, which is surprisingly honest and self reflective. It's also very surprising how she claims not to be the ideologue people think she is, which, hey, if that's true, more power to you Laci, if you understand that the world isn't as straight forward and black and white as SJW's seem to think it is, that's fantastic. And I do agree with her when she talks about internet hostility, because it exists on both sides; you have the likes of Steve Shives, who we'll get back to soon, who hates literally everyone with a different opinion to him, he thinks they're scum, but on the other hand you do have nameless faceless shitlords on the opposing team, who think all feminists are insane misandrists and or pathetic cucks. Neither of these things are true, but on both sides you have rabid ideologues who just don't want to hear what other people have to say. Laci Green is evidently not one of those people in this video; instead she explains how people on her side have been saying she's talking to bigots and giving a platform to bullies, typical ideologue shit. What follows is a piece that baffles me, Laci Green seemingly specifically refers to Milo Yiannopoulos, only not by name, and then argues against censorship, being very level headed and honest about the nebulousness of hate speech and harmful speech and the immoral argument also being used by the religious right. And then making a point I completely agree with, that censorship doesn't address anything, it just, in her words, "Shuts the conversation down." Her 'red pilling' as she claims came from seeing the author of philosophy journal being cannibalised by their fellow feminists, as ever by attacking the author for their bigotries rather than actually refuting the paper, so business as usual in the feminist sphere, as Steve Shives and a few other YouTube feminists express when addressing this Laci Green red pilling. My favourite is of course Steve: "Scumbag misogynist rape apologists" wow that's a very venomous assertion from the Shives. You see, Laci and Steve are different, they're both feminists, they both believe the nonsense about women's inequality in the west, but Laci has seemingly seen how venomous and cannibalistic the community is, while Steve is the epitome of that venom, a shameless ideologue who genuinely believes that anyone on the other side is evil, no exceptions, no self reflection, they're all evil misogynist rape apologists, they're also probably racist, and homophobic, and transphobic, just because they're so evil and so not worth his time. If Laci Green really is prepared to leave the feminist sphere and let her ideas be challenged, then that's fantastic, and it might finally crack the feminist bubble that idiots like Steve are in, so pieces of shit like him might actually do a bit of reflection themselves, maybe not Steve, but if Laci can do it, anything's possible.
Speaking of YouTube and pieces of shit, this last week has seen a very entertaining clash of the titans; Thunderf00t vs Sargon of Akkad. First, let's get my thoughts on these two out of the way; Thunderf00t is someone I used to be very fond of, it was videos from him and others like The Amazing Atheist that first got me interested in the whole YouTube atheist and anti-feminist community, before I found other Youtubers I now like like TL;DR, Kraut and Tea, and of course, Sargon. It should go without saying then that I'm fond of Sargon; his This Week in Stupid videos and older feminist videos were some good laughs, and his newer, less comical content is still very informative and interesting. Both of these Youtubers have changed since I came to like them, with Thunderf00t steering away from feminism and religion and doing almost entirely science videos, and Sargon ditching the dumb feminists for juicier meat like politics and world events. Which gets me to where I started to lose some respect for Thunderf00t, Brexit. I reckon that, Thunderf00t/Dr. Phil Mason being a research scientist, he saw Brexit as a threat to science funding in the European Union, and fair enough, that I can understand as his opposition to Brexit, but that's not how he framed it. Instead he hints at the "inefficiencies" of the EU, either unaware or ignorant that they are the reason people wanted to leave in the first place; the whole open borders, unaccountable bureaucracy, stagnant economy thing, no what matters is how 'farcical' the British political system is, or how there's an Islamic problem already in the country, or how Britain's electorate are dumbarses, which is actually what he says, nine and a half minutes into the video, needless to say, that didn't sit well with me. Fast forward a year nearly and a feminist YouTuber named Russian Deadpool allegedly got off his face on drugs and murdered his girlfriend, which was the subject of an admittedly poor taste livestream that Thunderf00t took great issue with. And again, if he was honest about it, and simply said he didn't want to be associated with the people on the stream, that would be fine, but again, that's not how he framed it. Enter Sargon of Akkad, who was on the stream, and who wasn't a fan of Thunderf00t apparently cutting together two different points of the livestream to misrepresent him. Thing is you don't need to be a genius at editing to recognise a cut, and there undoubtedly is one, which does give credence to Sargon's misrepresentation claim. And I do think that stream was edited in a way to suggest they were laughing at the victim, poor taste or not, Thunderf00t did cut that stream together in a deliberate way, one that did misrepresent Sargon. What's particularly bad is how he compares them to the Westboro Baptist Church, which, Thunderf00t, is really fucked up, Sargon and his gang didn't go to the girl's funeral with signs saying 'God hates Fags,' they made some poor taste jokes at the expense of the killer, who, by your admission, was a jerk. Was it poor taste, yes, but was it at the expense of the dead girl, no, and was it to push a narrative, no. Your objection simply seems to be you didn't like the jokes, in an ironic twist, you seem to have adopted the SJW mentality that jokes are immoral, something you double down hard on in subsequent videos. Now that shit's not cool, but it's something that wouldn't have blown up in Thunderf00t's face if he had just kept his mouth shut. In his follow-up video, he admits to losing thousands of subscribers, a point I'll get back to later, but what he says next is stunning.
"I feel clean having done what I've done." I could go on for about half an hour about how fucking stupid that one sentence is, because it is probably the stupidest thing I've ever heard him say. He feels clean? what does that even mean? clean, like morally clean, like you've been absolved of your sins or something? He said this in his first video, that he has seen movements being hijacked by ideologues in the past, but I'll be blunt, clean really isn't a word a skeptic would use, very uncharacteristic for this seasoned old atheist isn't it. Clean actually implies that you've lost your skepticism, and again, your objection appears to be I don't like the jokes, which is fine, but that doesn't make Sargon a piece of shit, like you try to make out he is. It's here that we also get to the first blatant lie; Sargon and the others were 'spinning a narrative' that the killing was because of feminism, and that male feminists are messed up. First up Phil, do you remember a chap called Hannibalthevictor, because I do, I remember those videos you did, and I also remember him being a sex offender. Sargon and the others joked that male feminists often have issues, something even you addressed when talking about Hannibal, you even said it yourself, although I think you used a more elegant word like maladjusted or something like that. Yet after you said that exact thing, you're going after Sargon for making the same observation, that's bullshit. What else is bullshit is that you claim they were trying to pin it on Feminism, something refuted by Sargon in very clear terms in his response to you, like you say, this was a guy having a psychotic episode and killing someone, the reason feminism was brought up is the irony of a male feminist murdering a woman, because yes Thunderf00t that is ironic as shit. And here you are a complete fucking hypocrite Thunderf00t, because you tired to pin the murder of Jo Cox on Brexit, you directly tried to associate her death with the referendum, conflating it with the media lying about Islamic terrorism, go fuck yourself Thunderf00t. What else is rich, besides you going full SJW, and full hypocrite, and a male feminist killing a woman, is you saying Sargon is making accusations about you, Sargon has every right to do that, you lied about him, you tried to make him look bad, and when your bollocks was exposed, you stood fast, doubling down on the bollocks and making yourself look like a fool. And I know you lied because in another video you uploaded while I was writing this, you show yourself cutting the stream together, and you cut together the joke about a triggered feminist, which was at the start of the stream, and Louis Le Vau joking about praising the shooter, which was fifty two minutes into the stream, that's a huge gap, and that cut does make it sound like they were laughing at the victim, which is the narrative you are trying the spin, the narrative that's total bollocks, there's no denying it at this point, you're lying. And you again prove that you're lying, when you say you didn't pay any attention to how you edited it, an innocent mistake then, that's been pointed out to you now, so you can fix it, so why don't you fix it, no instead you cut in Sargon waffling about ethics to make him look like he's full of shit, when we all know now who's full of shit.
Going back to an old point, Thunderf00t's lost a ton of subscribers over this fiasco, and he's apparently cool with that, to which I have only one thing to say, bullshit. Let's cast our minds back to FreeThoughtBlogs, if anyone remembers those clowns, and the time they conducted an organised campaign to destroy Thunderf00t, a campaign that didn't even dent his subscriber count. Now we have him stirring shit with another popular YouTuber, and his subscriber count took a massive beating. I am having a very hard time believing that Thunderf00t is cool with losing thousands of subscribers, even harder when he says the word clean, which in this context can be interpreted in two ways. Way one, all those subscribers were pieces of shit anyway, just tribalistic Sargon fanboys, so he's clean now they've been purged, we already know Thunderf00t is a liar, and all that would show is contempt for his subscribers, in which case, fuck him. Way two, his ego has taken a huge pummelling from this exodus of subscribers, and in an effort to salvage at least some of that crushed ego, him being moral and high and mighty, 'clean' is at least better than being in with Sargon and his shitty friends, which would completely destroy any illusion there is left of this cold, empirical, scientific mind that Thunderf00t apparently is. It's the same shit he pulled with Brexit, it's the same shit he originally pulled with the whole Russian Deadpool thing, it's an entirely emotional argument, and it's totally disingenuous. Thunderf00t has contempt for his subscribers, I say this because he calls this exodus of subscribers tribalism, going back to FreeThoughtBlogs, when they tried to destroy him, and only a few hundred people jumped ship, that apparently wasn't tribalism, that was the remaining audience knowing bullshit when they see it, which Thunderf00t evidently trusted they would. That audience still knows bullshit when they see it, but this time it's coming from Thunderf00t himself, and rather than trying to win that lost trust back, he's just dismissed them, at this point Thunderf00t your remaining audience are the tribal ones, since they saw your lie and either bought it or didn't care, maybe to them you being a disingenuous fuck is less important than you making good science videos, and that's fine, I and evidently a few thousand others have lost that respect for you, and if you're cool with that, fine, I'm unsubscribing, and I'll feel 'clean' doing it. Ultimately Thunderf00t, people once had a lot of respect for you; a man who knows his shit, does interesting science videos, and used to do good debunking videos of religion and feminism, but you taking an entirely emotional and disingenuous approach to that livestream, your blatant lying, and your contempt for your own audience, busts you better than you ever busted Anita Sarkeesian or nonsense science. But if all of your bullshitery makes you feel better, I'm happy for you, I hope you continue producing interesting scientific content, which is what you're good at, and I hope your ship doesn't sink like FreeThoughtBlogs did, but I won't be onboard, and according to Social Blade neither will about fifteen thousand others, fucking hell.
And that just leaves the most joyous and happy story we have on the table today, another Islamic terror attack, this one striking quite literally close to home, only about an hour's drive away in Manchester. On the 22nd of May 2017, during an Ariana Grande show at the Manchester Arena, twenty two year old Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb, killing himself and twenty two others, and wounding over a hundred more, making this the worst terror attack in Britain in over a decade. This attack has, like all of the recent blitz of attacks across Europe, sent shockwaves though the population, with people expressing horror and sadness that it could happen, and we've seen the usual response, again, people sending their prayers and love over social media, putting filters over their Facebook pictures, the media and politicians stating that we will be 'defiant' and that we will not let the terrorists win, and then you have the most shameless of society saying we cannot let this encourage Islamophobia, because that's the real problem. Well I'm going to say it, we've let the Terrorists win, nothing will change because of this attack, just as nothing changed with Westminster just two months ago, or with Brussels, or Paris, or Charlie Hebdo, or Nice, or Berlin, or Orlando. With all of these attacks, the response has been the same, people virtue signalling on social media, the media pussyfooting around the real problem, and politicians making the same pointless statements, that these attacks are barbaric, and that we will not let it scare us. Even worse is what you see with people trying to make it sound like Muslims are the real victims and that we should be tolerant and find strength in our diversity. The more people say that, the more I hate it, because it's not just bullshit, it's dangerous bullshit, the migrant wave across Europe brought with it an explosion in violent crime, and a hideous spree of murders and attacks, killing hundreds of innocent people in the name of Allah. You can probably guess where I think the problem lies, and I think people should say what they see, but they can't do that; they can't say that all these terrorists being Muslims is a bit too coincidental, or the equally interesting coincidence of a crime wave coinciding with a sizable influx of 'refugees' into Europe, because that might be racist, that might be intolerant. As if a religion and a race are just interchangeable, as if Islam is actually a race, and thus we should not be bigots and tolerate them, funny how racist that actually sounds, like all Muslims are brown, yeah, not racist.
My question is why the fuck should we be tolerant? The problem with the not all argument that is usually the defence is that Islam is an ideology; some people who follow it are good people, of course, but then there are some that blow themselves up for Allah. The weakness of the not all argument is there's nothing stopping it from being applied to any and all ideologies; not all Nazis, not all Communists, not all Ku Klux Klanners, if that's not fair, why is it fair to say not all about an ideology that is every bit as bad as any of them. Islam has a serious problem with tolerance, it's probably the most homophobic belief system in existence, it actively subjugates and oppresses women, and it sees people who do not follow the faith as infidels. And if that's not bad enough, its holy book tells people that if they kill themselves and take out a few non believers in the process, they'll go to paradise and be rewarded by god. A religion however is just a religion, it can't hurt people on its own, but that's where the people come in; the people who practice and enforce Sharia Law, the people who load up with guns or strap bombs to themselves for Allah. This is a problem that might be diffusible if people could be honest, if people could talk openly about the doctrines of Islam and criticise them fairly, but that can't happen because of political correctness, because of the sickening wedding of religion and race that is Islamophobia. As a result you have not only a vile ideology that goes unchallenged, but a group of adherents that can effectively do what they want, unchallenged, which is exactly what we saw in the child sex rings in Rotherham and other parts of the country, that were left in operation by a spineless and complicit police force. People are afraid to criticise Islam both because of the peer pressure of political correctness, and because of the serious threat posed by Islamists, who would gladly go in and kill you and your co workers for simply drawing a picture. But we are told that these are radicals, extremists, that they do not represent Muslims or Islam, Muslims I can understand, but Islam, bollocks. Muslims are people, each one is an individual who can think and act for themselves, and as a result not all of them decide to follow the will of Allah to its greatest extremes. And when Muslims live in or around a majority non Muslim area, and get to mingle with non Muslims, that further reduces the number of them who want to become martyrs. But we don't see that in Britain and Europe, we see insular, self segregated majority Muslim areas, places where they don't mingle, but instead marinade in their backwards beliefs, constantly surrounded by like minded people, who all think the west is evil, these are the numerous No-Go zones scattered all across Europe.
Sam Harris once said the problem isn't religious fundamentalism, it's the fundamentals of religion; a religious extremist is only as dangerous as the extremes of their religion, and Islam has some ugly extremes. I don't see how the argument can be made that these extremists are not following the faith right, if anything an extremist should be the single greatest example of the faith; a person who holds the faith to be more valuable than anything in the world, and follows it's teachings vociferously. The idea that Islam is a peaceful religion is simply a lie, but it's a lie that's taken hold, and now we just have to accept that all these Islamic terrorists are just not Islaming right, well no we don't. The Terror attacks in the short term will be tricky to stop, since measures will have to be taken that violates some of our principals in the west; things like surveillance of suspicious individuals of Mosques, ending the self segregation of Islamic communities, and intense security checks on Muslims trying to enter our countries. As horrible as all of that sounds, is being tolerant of Islam really more important than civilian lives? But instead of actually trying to handle the problem, politicians are being as scheming as ever, using it to justify mass surveillance of the population, and control of the spread of information, Orwellian concepts motivated purely by self interest and hunger for power. In the short term the target will unfortunately be Muslims, but in the Long term the target must be Islam itself, Islam is an ideology no different to National Socialism or Christianity of Feminism, and like all of those, it must be mutilated; its ideals must be challenged, its beliefs criticised and mocked into oblivion, something currently stifled by the social pressure of not being racist, and the watchful eye of Orwellian powers. The actions of those who follow Islam's ideals must be criticised; the treatment of women and gays, the cultish religious traditions, and the propensity for violence. Islam in its current form is dangerous, but so was other ideologies like National Socialism, and now they're a joke, people are too busy laughing at them to take them or their bad ideas seriously, and the same needs to happen to the so called Religion of Peace. Maybe then when we say they don't scare us they'll actually take us seriously, and maybe then the cries of Islamophobia will die, and with its teeth gone, maybe then the barbaric killing motivated by the Religion of Peace will stop.
Well, that got long, I was actually only expecting to do three paragraphs, but like the Tony Blair Brexit speech I cut from the last Bring on the Meteor, I just had too many thoughts to put in three paragraphs. And I should stress, probably this time more than usual, that these are my thoughts; if you agree, cool, if you disagree, also cool, I don't think people having opinions is a problem, though me being very opinionated, I suspect a bit of bias. I just want to express my opinion, which is what Bring on the Meteor is, in fact it's what this entire blog is. And in a world that's completely insane, where to some people, expressing an opinion makes you a bad person or dangerous, the more people who express what they really think, the better, and the more people who are not scared of saying what they see, who can stand up to buzzwords and bullshitery, the better. That means all ideas will be completely open to criticism, which might suck for some people who have shitty opinions, and I don't exempt myself from that, but only then can the good ideas rise through the shit, and can the bad ideas be cast into obscurity and insignificance where they belong. In the case of Thunderf00t that even includes edgy jokes, in the case of Islam, that includes criticism and mockery, but the freedom to say what you want to say is more valuable than anyone's feelings, and so is innocent lives.
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