Psypost reports about another group that God commands Christian nationalists (CNs) to hate and oppress, atheists:
New research has uncovered a significant connection between the belief in Christian nationalism and negative attitudes toward atheists in the United States. Intriguingly, this connection tends to be weaker among Black Americans who live in states with higher levels of Christian nationalism. The findings, published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, provide insights into the complex relationship between race and ideology in shaping societal attitudes.
“Despite being one of the fastest-growing groups in the U.S. religious landscape, atheists are still confronted with more negative prejudice than many other religious groups,” said study author Fanhao Nie, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) who is also an affiliated faculty member at UML’s Center for Asian American Studies.
“This is particularly the case in an era when Christian nationalism, an ideology that integrates Christian identity with American identity, has been building more boundaries and instilling more distrust in an already highly divided society.”
To measure attitudes towards atheists, the survey asked participants to respond to statements that reflected opinions on atheists’ moral standing, their impact on personal freedoms, and their perceived threat to physical safety. Similar questions were asked about other religious minorities, such as Jews and Muslims.
The key independent variable, Christian nationalism, was measured through a series of statements about the role of Christianity in U.S. governance and society (e.g., “The federal government should declare the United States as a Christian nation,” “The federal government should advocate Christian values”). Participants’ level of agreement with these statements helped gauge their inclination towards Christian nationalism.
On average, the respondents exhibited a moderate level of prejudice against atheists, much more than against Jews but slightly less than against Muslims.
It’s interesting that social science includes a peer-reviewed journal to study religion. It was established in 1961. It's not a surprise that CNs, basically anti-democracy theocrats, tend to hold negative attitudes toward atheists and other groups that God has decided need to be disrespected and oppressed. After all, God can’t be wrong, right?
It will also be no surprise when the day comes that a powerful CN elite with a bee in his bonnet about Godless atheists** comes along and rises to prominence. Then, that enraged monster can foment a higher degree of hate against atheists in his effort to make CNs hate atheists as much as Muslims, or preferably hate them more. That’s an prominent aspect of religion. Different elites can pick and choose who or what they hate and attack. Hating and attacking in the name of God is fun, easy and guilt-free. It’s also authoritarian theocratic.
** Godless atheists = without any morality at best, more likely evil
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NPR reports about authoritarian nations that use social media to constantly attack the US and other democracies and enemy nations everywhere:
China is stepping up efforts to manipulate people in other countries on social media, becoming the third most common source of foreign influence operations, behind Russia and Iran, according to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
Meta has taken down five Chinese networks of fake accounts in 2023, the most of any country this year, the company said in a new report published on Thursday. That's a significant increase from 2019, when Meta first removed a campaign based in China, although the country's efforts over the years haven't gained much traction.Most recently, Meta took down two China-based operations in the third quarter of this year. One was a network of around 4,800 Facebook accounts impersonating Americans and posting about domestic politics and U.S.-China relations.With a slew of elections on tap in 2024, including in the U.S., Taiwan, India and the European Union, Chinese operations may pivot to target discussions of relations with China in those places. That will add to expected operations by Russia and Iran.
“Much of their content appears to have been copy-pasted from mainstream U.S. news outlets and altered to question U.S. democracy," an expert said. "In addition, soon after the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, we saw these websites begin portraying the war as proof of American decline. At least one website claimed that Ukraine supplied Hamas with weapons. Other websites in the cluster focused on politics and migration in France and Germany.”
Presumably, the X hellscape does not care about foreign dictatorships attacking democracies or poisoning their societies with lies, slanders and crackpottery. That’s because Elon Musk is a free speech absolutist. He believes the more speech, the better. For a smart guy, he is either amazingly stupid about free speech, or more likely he’s a cynical fascist sympathetic to dictatorship.
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Speaking of Elon Musk and his X leads on to wonder what that unfettered free speech hellscape is up to these days. NPR reports about one toxic slice of the overcooked X beast:
Civilian deaths are being dismissed as ‘crisis actors’ in Gaza and IsraelOn one side of the split-screen video, a young man lies injured in a hospital bed. A red banner across the top of the frame reads “Yesterday.” On the other side, under a green banner reading “Today,” a similar-looking man walks through rubble in Gaza.
“I'm now walking in a neighborhood where there were houses. There are no houses anymore,” he says.
The post on X claims the side-by-side videos show the same person. It accuses him of faking his injuries, only to be “miraculously healed” and walking around just a day later.
But the videos actually show two different people, according to fact checks from multiple media outlets. One is a Palestinian teenager who lost his leg this summer during an Israeli raid in the West Bank. That video was originally posted to TikTok in August.
The other is a Palestinian social media influencer in Gaza who has been documenting the conflict since October.
The conflation of the two individuals is a prime example of a crisis actor trope: the false claim that, for propaganda purposes, people are pretending to be victims of tragedies — in this case of Israel's war in Gaza, which Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 14,000 people.
Bravo Elon. Well done! Keep up the hellscapery.
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A prominent disinformation scholar has accused Harvard University of dismissing her to curry favor with Facebook and its current and former executives in violation of her right to free speech.
Joan Donovan claimed in a filing with the Education Department and the Massachusetts attorney general that her superiors soured on her as Harvard was getting a record $500 million pledge from Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm.Last year, the school’s dean told her that he was winding down her main project and that she should stop fundraising for it. This year, the school eliminated her position. The surprise dismissal alarmed fellow researchers elsewhere, who saw Donovan as a pioneer in an increasingly critical area of great sensitivity to the powerful and well-connected tech giants.Donovan has remained silent about what happened until now, filing a 248-page legal statement obtained by The Washington Post that traces her problems to her acquisition of a trove of explosive documents known as the Facebook Papers and championing their importance before an audience of Harvard donors that included Facebook’s former top communications executive.
Harvard disputes Donovan’s core claims, telling The Post that she was a staff employee and that it had not been able to find a faculty sponsor to oversee her work, as university policy requires. It also denies that she was fired, saying she “was offered the chance to continue as a part-time adjunct lecturer, and she chose not to do so.”
Why on Earth would Harvard terminate critically important research into the one thing, disinformation (dark free speech), that poses the greatest, most urgent threat to American democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law?
Money.
It’s always money. Money, money, money. Lots of it. Corrupt, authoritarian tech giants like X and Facebook make money by promoting and spreading disinformation. To protect that money, the tech giants (and the poisonous Republican Party) are now attacking disinformation research as quietly as they can.
If one thinks that Mark Zuckerberg is significantly different from Elon Musk, one would be mistaken. Zuckerberg is just much better with fig leaf technology. He pretends to honesty and niceness. Musk just doesn’t give a rat’s ass, as exemplified by his recent public statement about things that irritate him (of which there are an awful lot), go fuck yourself.
Ivy League Q: It was recently pointed out to me that a lot of the nastiness, corruption and rising authoritarianism in both politics and commerce is coming from ivy league school graduates or attendees, including their elite law schools. I think that is true. Are elite ivy league schools more kleptocratic authoritarian than honest (transparent) democratic? (I suspect they are because there's just so damn much more of a money reward for kleptocratic authoritarianism compared to honest democracy)
Zuckerberg being honest (😮) in the
early days of Facebook (1984)
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