More on Alienated America – and New Zealand?

Last updated on: March 16, 2019 at 5:12 pm by Jane the Actuary

More on Alienated America – and New Zealand? 2019-03-16T17:12:51-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So I wrote the other day about a book called Alienated America, the primary thesis of which is that Trump’s primary support came not from evangelicals but the men and women from communities where institutions of community life had collapsed, where the people might think of themselves as “religious” but were not affiliated with a church, nor did they have alternate forms of community life like book clubs or swim clubs or whatever. They were alienated, they had no sense of rootedness or connection to people. And he says that lacking these smaller group-connections made them more likely to form an identity around “I am white.”

Separately — and I say this knowing I can’t back it up with a link because the topic is too vague for me to find it again — a year or two or three ago I read an article in The Atlantic or a similarly mild-mannered left-leaning publication connecting up racism with declines in religious connection; that is, much as people have treated the decline in religious affiliation and practice in the US as a middle/upper-middle class phenomenon (“we’re educated enough that we don’t need the crutch of religion like poor people do”), it’s really something that’s occurring among white working class Americans, and, much as the educated “elite” nonreligious folk think that American religious groups promote racism, the reverse is true, that, whether they explicitly tell their members “don’t be racist” or if it’s just assumed in an overall message of “be nice to people,” being a part of a religious group causes people to be less racist — and the rise in nonaffiliation becomes, then, a rise in racism.

Dangit, I wish I remembered that article well enough to find it.

Anyway, I am still not going to address the killings in New Zealand directly; I have not seen anything in the news that provides any meaningful local context. Everything I come across has the same narrative that treats NZ as the 51st US state.

But here’s the gist of a tweet earlier today: in the same way as white Americans said that Muslims have to do something about the terrorists in their community (that is, the ISIS-joiners and the lone wolves), so, to, now do those same white Americans have the obligation to stop the racists in their own community.

Which — well, on the one hand, it misses the point to ignore the fact that those same Americans running off to join ISIS claimed that it was their religion that taught them that they were in the right, that in some cases, extremist religious leaders in the US were urging them on, and in other cases avoiding explaining their own interpretation of the Koran passages which the so-called “Internet sheikhs” used as proof-texts for wars of conquest. But those ISIS-joiners had religious communities to begin with (and, interestingly Carney in Alienated America writes that Muslim immigrants are more likely to agree in polling that the American Dream is doing just fine, because they have that community support).

The entire problem is that the young men who are drawn to racism in the United States (and again, do you know anything about New Zealand and its social problems or lack thereof? I don’t) have no communities.

It makes no sense to say “white community leaders should fix troubled young white men” in the same way as you can say “Muslim community leaders should fix troubled young Muslim men” when that is the entire frickin’ problem.

And I type this in part with anger at everyone who has written a stupid triumphantalist article in Slate or The Atlantic or wherever, celebrating the declining prevalence of religious belief and practice in the U.S. as a sign that we are all becoming more enlightened because fewer people believe that there is something “out there” beyond what scientists can prove exists — though, to be fair, it is mostly the commenters at such sites. They take it is a sign that everyone will now be more egalitarian, will welcome people of all skin colors and sexual orientations, will assiduously seek out each other’s pronouns and respectfully check their watch when they’re told that their conversation partner identifies as female in the morning, male in the afternoon.

But that’s not how it works.

And I think that some of those same triumphantalists understand that, when they express the idea that what is ultimately needed for the United States to become a place of social and racial harmony is for white people to just, oh, disappear. Give us a Thanos-snap targeted at the right people and we’ll be all set.

Oh, sure, we can debate whether or to what degree the federal government should treat white supremacist online groups identical to Islamist terrorist cells, though there is a difference between a group of foreign nationals with the explicit intention of engaging in acts of violence vs. American individuals who (to the best of my understanding, in the case of, say, 8chan) complain and say (truly) horrid things, but don’t collectively plan acts of violence. And entities such as Google and Facebook might well censor them — though it troubles me that this seems to end in people being censored for imagined offenses as saying “learn to code” on twitter, and that they likewise put their hand on the scale about other topics (e.g., “abortion” searches intentionally produce pro-abortion results). But how far towards a crackdown of civil liberties does this go? Do we put suspect young men into re-education camps?

Bethany Mandel, a Jewish writer, gained notice — and outrage — for an article describing the consequences of her actions to befriend Nazis, actions which she describes as continuously misrepresented by leftists who tar her as a Nazi herself and demand that Nazis — or racists, generally — must be ostracized, hated, have their lives destroyed, so that, while they might continue to live and won’t be converted, they’ll live in misery. She’s not the only one to have written about actions in which people “convert” Nazis by means of outreach rather than returning hate with hate.

Now we can’t all go out and engage in a program of adopt-a-Nazi. But the issue of collapse of community institutions, which is all bound up together with the decline in religious practice, is an urgent one. I don’t know how to fix it. But it makes me angry every time I come across people celebrating this.

Image: A Munich Neonazi demonstration, from Wikipedia, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Neonazi_2.4.2005_M%C3%BCnchen_2.jpg

Previous Post

March 15, 2019

In which, no, I am not a New Zealander

Next Post

March 21, 2019 A squandered inheritance

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the first disciple to be martyred?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Peter Thomas Andrew James