Y’all Qaeda : What is Fundamentalism?
That’s the joke, right?
This is what people have been calling right-wing fundamentalists for some time now. Why? Because somewhere in their consciousness they know what it was they were looking at.
I served in the United States Army from February 2002 — to February 2005. I joined after and because of September 11, 2001.
Now if you can journey back with me to that day, to the media coverage of what was transpiring on the eastern seaboard, you’ll remember at a certain point in the broadcasts, regardless of stations you were watching, new words were being used into the American vernacular. New names.
Some of them were:
Mujahadeen.
Terrorism.
Taliban.
Al-Qaeda Network
Osama Bin Laden
Khalid Sheik Mohammed
Mohammed Yusef
Because of my M.O.S in the Army, 54 Bravo (Chemical Operations Specialist) these names and all the politics that surround them, all the history that surround them, etc. became especially familiar to me. Antiterrorism was my job. It was a job I loved, that I took seriously, that I understood in some kind way.
As a country, we’ve lived the past 20 years associated with the events of 9/11. We’ve fought two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve lost thousands of soldiers in the Global War on Terror, we’ve spent trillions of dollars trying to eradicate this menace to civilization as best we can.
So what is Fundamentalism?
In my personal opinion, based upon experience and observation:
Fundamentalism (not to be confused with Orthodoxy) is not a facet of religion alone. Fundamentalism is inherently political as it is a lens in which one views the world.
It is a distortion of the world and the distortion process is rather simple.
1)You bring someone into the fold — via a natural desire for community (or a person is born into it)
2) they are in turn indoctrinated.
3) They are then isolated and turned against the world (society, communities, families etc) they live in — via that indoctrination.
And the way out — is also surprisingly simple.
Fundamentalism dies a quick death when exposed to scrutiny or new ideas, hence the isolation.
So, the fundamentalist will seek out and attempt to destroy any other influence on its subjects whether it be other religions, other sects of the same religion, art, history, music, or any other thing that can cause the subject to doubt its infallibility and inevitability less they find connection to the secular world thereby drawing the subject out and away from under the power of the leader. (I.e. the destruction of antiquity in Iraq by Isis)
Yet, this is also happening here in America.
There exists no war against religion in this country but there damn sure is a war against secularism — and it’s a threat to democracy.
In our context, despite what Fox News, Brietbart, 4Chan, etc. will have you believe, the radical fundamentalist is not a Muslim, a Mexican, or an angry black woman.
He’s White and Male.
We were introduced to this reality in 1995 with the bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh.
We saw this in Charlottesville with the marching crowd made up with a majority of white men holding tiki-torches shouting, “Jews will not replace us.”
We witnessed this in the assassination of the 7 African American parishioners at Emanuele AME Church in Charleston by Dylann Roof.
Fundamentalism also has within it a sort of natural inflection moment. It’s like riding an emotional Sugar high.
A) it’ll either implode — whereas the fundamentalist finds a connection to the secular world and simply leaves Or
B ) an explosion — whereas the fundamentalist turns violent against the world, a target, or their own families. (9/11, the shooting in Georgia, the assassination’s of Ytzak Rabin, domestic violence, etc., and the aforementioned events here by white men)
It’s important to note, as mentioned before, it’s their certainty that allows them to conduct these acts. No one flew a plane into a building or shot an abortion doctor shouting, “I’m not sure.” Or “Just in case.” They are 100 percent convinced of their rightness.
From People Magazine:
In a 2015 manifesto seized by authorities, written after his arrest, Roof offered no apology for the murders.
“I would like to make it crystal clear I do not regret what I did,” he wrote, according to the New York Times. “I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed.”
That is a fundamentalist. Those folks on January 6th, religious or otherwise, are fundamentalists. And we’re in trouble…
Originally published at http://deconstructingthedread.wordpress.com on March 22, 2021.
