The following is a set of definitions I will be using in a talk I’m giving on Sunday. They are, I think, critical terms in understanding what has happened in the 21st century, and why we’re losing a war of the minds with triumphalist imperialist zealots. I will post the talk after I deliver it.
Definitions for Talk (* = my terms)
Journalism
Lethal Narrative (Nidra Poller): a story designed to create hatred and a desire for revenge, like accusing someone of deliberately harming innocents. Most lethal narratives are false.
War Propaganda: False lethal narratives stand at the center of war propaganda produced by a belligerent force about their targeted enemy. A form of hate speech.
Lethal Journalism (Yossi Kuperwasser): The war correspondent’s first task is to filter out malevolent war propaganda, even on his own side. Lethal journalists, however, pass on lethal narratives of one side as news; they act as propagandists in someone else’s war.
Patriotic (tribal) war journalism: reporting “our” side’s propaganda as news. Widespread practice in early national journalism, today a major ethical challenge.
Own-goal War Journalism*: reporting your own side’s enemy’s war propaganda as news. Sinon, Laocoön and the Trojan Horse; Abu Rahmah, Enderlin and al Durah.
Religion
Triumphalism: dominion proves truth of one’s religion; to be right, “our” religion must rule. “I’m right cause I’m on top.” One God (ours), one king. Hierarchical.
Supersessionism: passive aggressive monotheist triumphalism; the conviction that one’s own value system completely replaces – erases and replaces – previous ones. Christianity supersedes Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism, secular progressive left, all monotheisms… but especially Judaism.
Demotic religiosity*: dignity of manual labor, egalitarian relations of autonomous moral agents; positive-sum chosenness. No king but God.
Triumphalist Muslim terms:
if you don’t know these terms you are religiously illiterate in the 21st century
Dar al Islam: Realm of submission/peace, where Muslim law (Sharia) rules.
Dar al Harb: Realm of the sword/war, where infidels are autonomous.
Kafir, kufar (pl): Infidel (one who “covers/conceals” the truth).
Harbi: one destined to the sword, autonomous kufar, inhabitant of dar al harb.
Jihad: holy war for the defense or expansion of Dar al Islam
Da’wa: summons or invitation to the kufar to convert to Islam.
Dhimmi: “Protected” people whom Muslims allow to live in exchange for their voluntary assumption of a condition of public disgrace.
Cogwar
Cognitive War (Stuart Green): Convincing more powerful enemy not to use its power. Mostly defensive, get imperialists to leave; some invasive: get enemy not to resist take-over.
Caliphaters*: triumphalist Muslims who believe that in this generation they will spread Dar al Islam to the entire world, and put an end of Dar al Harb. Both Jihad and Da’wa are legitimate means to that end.
Caliphaters three choices: conversion to Islam, death, or dhimmitude.
Da’wa cognitive war*: Caliphaters summoning people to the three choices; get kufar to become proleptic dhimmi, submitting without (before) conquest. “Europe and US will be conquered not by jihad but by Da’wa.” al Qaradawi, Muslim Brotherhood.
Proleptic Dhimmitude*: behaving submissive towards Muslim demands even though free to dissent. Jihadi terror and Da’wa cogwar are the one-two punch of proleptic dhimmitude: PD’s motto: “don’t piss them off.” PD’s self-image: mature, generous, considerate.
Islamophobia: caliphater cogwar weapon designed to silence opposition and apply laws of dhimmitude to harbis, forbidding criticism of Islam or Muslims.
Israel: demotic state of autonomous (non-dhimmi) Jews in Dar al Islam. Central target in an apocalyptic war of extermination against all enemies of “true” Islam.
Own-goal cogwar*: scoring goals for enemy; blocking own side’s shots. #ASSO21C
To use that terminology in two paragraphs:
Lethal journalists, thinking they were siding with insurgent nationalists (Palestinians) against an imperialist colonialist occupier (Israel), engaged in own-goal war journalism, systematically pumping jihadi war propaganda into the West as news. In so doing, they on the one hand, strengthened the triumphalist caliphaters, both those who, like Bin Laden, embraced Jihad and those who, like Muslim Brotherhood preacher Yussuf al Qaradawi, embrace Da’wa in the war against Dar al Harb and, on the other hand, weakened fellow resisters of Caliphate imperialism (tautology), starting with Israel, a nation whose very existence is an insult to triumphalist Muslims. (Free kufar in Dar al Islam? Allah forbid!) Anyone who imagines the new century’s global community as one of pacific and productive global civil society, knows for a certainty, that we need to confront, not appease this aggressive triumphalism.
BDS constitutes a main front in the cogwar that Caliphaters wage against the West right now. They have enlisted as allies, allegedly progressive Westerners who promote their triumpalist cause – namely, eliminating independent Jews in Dar al Islam and silencing as Islamophobes, those in Dar al Harb who object. This own-goal rhetoric, adopted as policy (!), in the name of human rights (!),complies with the demands of proleptic dhimmitude, joining the jihadis in attacking the only democracy in the authoritarian, unstable political culture of the Middle East. By stigmatizing any resistance (Zionism) as racism, they open the field to the most ferocious Caliphaters (Jihadis thrive on chaos), and block the resistance. Hard to imagine a more own-goal demotic foreign policy.
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