Far-right activists in Britain are increasingly adopting the rhetoric of Christian nationalism. Yet while they look to American churches for an example, their evangelical style seems unlikely to map onto Brits’ quite different attitudes toward religion.
Fighting fascism doesn’t mean destroying your ability to self reflect or question yourself. That’s a ridiculous way to think about anything.
Edit: apparently I’m wrong. The guys who never allow themselves to question their actions or thoughts are typically known as the good guys.
No, you’re right in general, but context and frame of reference are a thing. Here the discussion is specifically around reacting to the rise of Christian Nationalism.
This is Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. If these christofascists are allowed to take power, they will aggressively erode tolerance of anyone else. And based on precedent they will lie and manipulate to get that power. The response must be swift and ironclad.
But knowing the UK cultural propensity for excessive politeness and unhealthy avoidance of social discomfort, they’re probably screwed.
This is a solid misunderstanding of, well, everything. Britain takes great zeal in tearing down those who purport to be moral. See: British Tabloids and British Satire. And as for religious leaders trying to make a political issue, that’s a big nope, and they will be savagely ridiculed for it.
The only way these weirdos can survive is by staying under the radar, like the mormons and the scientologists. Once they start to insinuate themselves in public discourse they’re ripped apart.
Oh? I’d be delighted for me to be wrong and you to be right on this.
But the backlash to my comment is based on a strawman argument because people cannot imagine you can partially agree with a caveat. The implication of the downvotes here is that if I would say this, I must be a secret fascist. There’s absolutely nothing objectively incorrect about what I said, in context or not. The only reason context would matter here is if you make assumptions about why I made this comment, and that requires a leap. Which apparently, people are very happy to make.
I only see one other reply to your comment, and I’m not sure it’s making these assumptions. Maybe you could point to the ‘backlash’?
Regardless, I already said I think you’re right in the grand scheme of things and shared my input. But I didn’t write the original comments you were responding to and have no need or desire to defend those.
The many downvotes is what I am referring to
Nobody here’s against self-reflection or questioning or critical thinking. These comments come from people who explicitly did do self-reflection and left. The ones who don’t are still in the evangelical system, I presume.
Believe it or not though, those things have an empirical or social component. Namely, if seemingly rational actors (by all means grill them) are giving such grave warnings, which is an astonishingly rare event… Heed them.
This is more prudence and modesty than mindless or naive deference, an ironically fine line given the subject matter. Lastly, this isn’t simply a black-and-white matter of “good and bad” however comfortable it is to give in to the impulse to reduce everything to such. Reminder: following said impulse doesn’t make you any more moral than the next person.