r - random

Because they're being funded by the CIA.

Because they are not a danger to rich people and oligarchs.

>>17930
I didnt have nationalists in mind when i made this post, but okay. But there Irish should almost be an exception, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_uprisings, there has barely been a single generation that has not experienced an uprising against their British overlords

>>17920
>Why are islamic extremists the only ones that get things done?
i doubt they get much done. they spread like the cancer they are, if that's what you call getting things done...

>Why are there no exremists socialists hunting rich people and oligarchs for example?
Violence does not lead to a more just society, it only leads to more violence. If you're gonna pwn the rich, you gotta do it with law and politics, which doesnt happen because rich people and oligarchs are manipulative bitches who spend a lot of money to meddle in politics or fund extremists to make sure they stay in control

>>17921
>>17922
these are just unfounded claims without sauce but i think the general direction is correct.

>>17920
I wonder who could possibly be importing them into Europe so they could do these things.

The only reason muslims are able to do anything is because the world has been convinced that slaughtering evil people is bad now.

Evil people succeed when good people do nothing.

>>17941
Islamic extremists rarely get much done on their own. Generally not smart enough for that. They tend to have outside help from groups with interests lying in stirring the pot.

They are not getting much done. They are still destroying the lives of their own people in the very hard struggle to maintain control over their lands. They will lose and a very sad part of history is being written of all the deaths that have already taken place. Syria is slowly becoming an empty nation with the thousands pouring out to seek refugee from the chaos.

>>17920
Well to say they're 'getting things done' might be too generous. Power & territory accrued by warlords never last long.

As for why they're actively prone to employ violence and terror...?
Well, you said it yourself-- they're Islamic-Extremists, who are themselves a subset of Conservative-Extremists.

Conservative-Extremism is rather prone to resorting to force or violence in their campaigns-- whether behind a bavaclava or an actual army (as is the case with the U.S. and its idiotic forray into Iraq during Gulf War 2).

Liberals usually are not very warm towards violence, guns, or the death penalty. So, that tends to mostly rule terror out of their toolkit.

Sure, some people might like to say that the Bolsheviks or Communists were 'liberal revolutionaries', but, that's only true if you look solely at their economic agenda (and maybe not even then). Insofar as they embraced guns & brutal policing, they had more in common with Conservatives.

>>17960
Although they are both leftists, there was nothing liberal in socialism as it was implemented in the eastern bloc. Well, Yugoslavia maybe, but not the rest.

>>17960
>>17968
Conservatives are liberals, socialists are not. Liberals are not leftists, they are in the centre.

>>17969
I'm using the nomenclature as commonly used and understood within the United States, in present times.

It would be interesting how fast they could stop extremists when they are taking out their own, the rich and powerful.

besides, if anything like that were to start up, it would almost be guaranteed to have a rat in it.

>>17969
This.

>>17975
I would suggest you stop doing that. It's more useful to explain why these terms have been co-opted by reactionary capitalists to squash the revolutionary anti-capitalist left by promoting the narrative that there is literally no political platform that isn't in some way supportive of capitalism. Because conflating leftism with liberalism is doing exactly that.

The only difference between "liberals" and "conservatives" as we understand them in the US is an artificial and superficial divergence in views over some relatively meaningless meme issues - muh gunz, muh death penalty, muh religion, muh gay marriage, etc. In reality, both liberals and conservatives support capitalism, but each supports different capitalists that pander to their identities and interests; conservatives support companies that throw a bone to religion once in awhile and other traditionalist stuff, liberals support companies that put up Facebook profile pictures in support of the gay marriage legalization, but both are essentially misguided capitalist reformists who fight endlessly over what set of social policies would magically solve all the economic ones. In this sense, they are both right wing - although liberals are a little more centrist.

The fundamental defining trait of leftism is to be anti-capitalist.

>>17985
What incentive do I have to consider that nomenclature? nobody will understand me and I'll look like an extremist and my opinion will be discarded.

>>17993
reads like the life of j. christ.

>>17993
If you use the "mainstream" nomenclature, you will be immediately associated with liberals and Democrats. I wouldn't say that's anymore desirable, which is exactly why it has been co-opted by liberals.

For practical argumentative reasons, for instance, I wouldn't suggest you tactlessly spout off Marxist jargon to someone who may not exactly be willing to listen to anything afterwards. But on the other hand I think there is value in using technical terms (political theory and philosophy do use technical terms) in the right context and in explaining them to people. So one could ease the other person into an understanding of what leftism actually is and not leaving it associated with lifestylist hippies and hipsters. But I also understand that political discussions tend to be a lot less clean than that.

Still, I think it's important to point out. Liberalism is most certainly not leftism, or even anti-capitalist.

>>17985
You sound like you don't have a very deep understanding of American politics; the economic division in thought between the liberal and conservative parties, while both capitalistic, vary greatly in the application of the values of capitalism. One just needs to look at American history to see that the division between the two political classes is very diverse and distinct.

>>18006
How is what you're saying in any way in disagreement with what my post?

Even if it is the case that conservatives and liberals differ in any meaningful ways on how they apply capitalism (are you speaking for instance on Keynesianism vs. classical liberalism?), it isn't really of concern to me. That is beside the point that I was making.

>>17941
>Violence does not lead to a more just society, it only leads to more violence. If you're gonna pwn the rich, you gotta do it with law and politics, which doesnt happen because rich people and oligarchs are manipulative bitches who spend a lot of money to meddle in politics or fund extremists to make sure they stay in control
Nice logic. The "only way" to pwn the rich is by law and politics. But they've got control of law and politics and will not voluntarily give up that control. Hence, to pwn the rich you've got to pwn law and politics. Remove the structure by which they exercise their control. This obviously requires violence.

>>18057
You're delusional.

>>18057
I don't understand anarchists that don't understand this

Usually state leftists just want to sell newspapers

>>17993
your ideas are coopted and placed in a narrow frame when you use the words. and using them paints you as a partisan.

>>17920
>Why are islamic extremists the only ones that get things done?

Honestly, I think ISIS' success is way overblown. Most of the area they control is useless desert and they can barely muster a couple hundred thousand fighters.

The only reason ISIS is successful is because of all the other divisions in the ME. The Sunnis don't like the Shi'a and have pretty much no issue with ISIS as long as ISIS is attacking just the Shi'a or as long as ISIS is not in their neck of the woods. Seriously, do you think Morocco gives as much of a damn as say Jordan or Lebanon? They may condemn ISIS, but they don't do anything to actively stop it because ISIS is not in Morocco. The Shi'a are pretty divided among themselves that it's difficult to mount an effective resistance. Assad is battling multiple fronts. Kurds are selfish and care only about themselves. I suppose you could consider some Islamist movements to be successful such as the Iranian Revolution of '79 and the short lived rule of the Taliban. But for the most part, Islamist movements are either crushed by people unhappy with them or simply fade away after a brief period in the spotlight.

Even Saudi Arabia, probably the biggest patron of violent Islamist activity, is not technically an Islamist country itself.

So, the real question in OP is, why are islamists the only people actually fighting.

The reason is, their society has been effectively decentralized forever. People's loyalties are to their tribes and clans, not to their nation states. The support systems are more localized. This means that MENA countries are always going to have weaker governments that can't rely so much on civil society to stay in power.

Communism in the middle East would actually have been a godsend. Communist dictatorships would have obliterated Islamism and tribal culture like Mao obliterated foot binding. But America stopped that. It's a shame, because if we couldn't have counted on their oil, maybe we'd have more prevalent nuclear power.

The second factor is, there is a lot of empty space in MENA countries, and a lot of resource extraction. This means miles of vulnerable pipeline. This means that all Islamic extremists have learned first hand that networks are more difficult to defend than to attack. This is the strategic insight of 21st century warfare and barely anyone has gotten it yet. It's the blitzkrieg of 2015.

Like tribes, terrorist groups are massively decentralized. They create a bazaar of violence that looks a lot like the open source community, except instead of stack overflow, they have the ISIS help desk, and instead of sharing software, they're sharing expertise. Like multinationals, almost everything is outsourced. Cells build up very specific domain expertise: a cell might only make detonators or assemble IEDs or place IEDs or recruit and so on. Because these groups are all networked, eliminating one of them just locally raises the price for an attack, but never stops it.

The last factor is that the middle East has been at war for a long time. This means people have technical skills related to warfighting. Communist, anarchist, and fascist groups lack this expertise. (Maybe we'll see some communist or fascist decentralized networks of terrorism in the Balkans but I doubt it.)

Right now, these groups are learning they can export violence fairly easily. It's harder to get people and weapons to Paris, but it's not impossible. It's harder to recruit from the US, but it's not impossible.

A final reason is that non-Islamic extremists are typically in western countries with sophisticated police apparatuses, and since they don't operate as a bazaar (more like a cathedral), they're easy to neutralize.

>>18129

While I appreciate your well-thought out response, I think there are some points where you are mistaken

Communism really wouldn't have helped the Islamic world anymore than it helped Albania or Afghanistan. And communism's inability to gain a real foothold in the ME owes much more to the emergence of Islamism and Arab Nationalism as a third way between Soviet brands of communism and Western capitalism. The US definitely played a role in trying to keep Soviet communism from entering the MENA, but the MENA peoples were already rejecting communism in favor of third-way nationalist socialism or Islamic socialism as embodied by the Islamists.

Also, I think you've overstated decentralization. Most of the instability is concentrated in a particular area of the ME, which is Iraq, Syria, and the Levant. And I think the reason for this has a lot to do with the fact that many of the countries in this area are fairly new. Most of them have only existed as independent nations for little over 70 years, having been former provinces of the Ottoman Empire. I think what we are seeing with them is part of a kind of identity crisis. Before, there had only been two major Islamic powers in the ME: the Ottoman Empire, which controlled most of the Middle East and North Africa and the Persian Empire, which passed from Safavid to Qajar to Pahlavi control.

When the current Iranian republic took over, the country still was pretty much the same it had been for the last 500 years, so Iranians had a strong identity as a Persian culture following Shi'a Islam inhabiting a particular defined region of the world. The same can't be said for Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Most of their borders were drawn up by Western countries who took them over after the Ottomans and for the last sixty years they've been unable to really come to a real sense of who they are as nations. ISIS may be trying to unite Syria, Iraq and Lebanon under the banner of Pan-Islamism, but that's exactly what Syrian Ba'aths wanted to do under Pan-Arabism, which was resisted by the Lebanese nationalists and Palestinians who wanted to be their own independent nations.

>>18135
>Most of them have only existed as independent nations for little over 70 years, having been former provinces of the Ottoman Empire.

This is a contributing factor in the lack of civil society I mentioned.

The comment re: communism was flippant and not so serious analysis. You make very good points.

>>18141
>The comment re: communism was flippant and not so serious analysis.

I didn't want to devote too much time to it, but communism was never poised to take over the Middle East, with or without American intervention. The popularity of Marxism among Muslim intellectuals is probably what is responsible for the rise of Islamism if anything. Sayid Qutb, the ideological forbear of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and many other Islamists, accepted the Leninist idea of a "vanguard party," which in this case would wage jihad against infidels, purge Islamic societies of "bidah" or "innovation" accrued over the centuries under the traditional monarchies, unite the entire Islamic world under a pure and just form of Islam and eventually create a stateless or classless society. The Ba'athists, although more like national socialists, had also accepted some of the Leninist ideals of vanguardism and permanent revolution.

The third world for awhile had developed a sense of exceptionalism, a sense that neither the Soviet brand of communism nor the Western capitalist democracy were suitable for their needs. And this goes all the way back to Tito's break from the Soviet Union and his attempts to unite the neutral third world into an alliance of nations that didn't really fit the usual paradigms of the East or West. Islamism emerged as one of several ideologies proposed as a perfect third way for Muslim countries, particularly due to the failure of communism to produce any results and its connection with the atheist Soviet Union. That's why communism diminished because unlike Arab Nationalism, modern Islamism and the Islamic traditionalists (who were usually monarchists), all of which worked to curtail its growth, sometimes by adopting facets of its ideology for their own purposes, it didn't seem to have much of a connection to the Muslims' cultural past. At least the Ba'athists, although secularists, tried to create a connection based on Arab language and culture and some of them were at least nominally Muslim or Christian.

>>18149
Thanks for the insight!

>>18129
you make some interesting points but I disagree with your analysis of USA terrorism: I think that we experience and used to experience something very similar to Islamic terrorism in the United States. The KKK currently operates as a network of unaffiliated white nationalist movements, and there are lots more white terrorists in the United States who operate outside of the KKK - Dylan Roof being the most prominent example but there's more you don't hear about. White terrorism in the United States is also assisted by the police state, but rather than racist orders being passed down by the upper levels it's white nationalism infiltrating the police departments and generating a racist culture within them.

I also think that the formation of cells in the United States is unfounded - pretty much all of the Islamic terrorist activity that we've seen have been sting operations of some kind, there's basically no such thing as Islamic terrorism in the USA, and no it isn't "coming soon" either, since we already have our own homegrown nationalist terrorism (which totally isn't terrorism as the mainstream will tell you).

I also don't think the premise that the middle east has been at war longer than Europe or the United States especially is factual, Europe has had wars as long as history and the United States in particular has been at war something like 97% of its lifetime. Of course the warlike United States is different from the warlike middle east or Europe - there was no empire that has collapsed yet.

>>18161
>The KKK currently operates as a network of unaffiliated white nationalist movements, and there are lots more white terrorists in the United States who operate outside of the KKK - Dylan Roof being the most prominent example but there's more you don't hear about.

The KKK is a shadow of its former self and is basically an activist group at this point. You make a good argument about lone wolf attackers but by their nature a lone wolf tactic is limited.

Crucially, the KKK have not institutionalized strategies of systems disruption the way ISIS, MEND, AQAP, and similar groups have. They're still focused on body count.

Back when ISIS was AQI, they would actually minimize body count while attacking pipelines, because they knew body count could be used against them for propaganda. MEND still does this in its pipeline attacks.

Also, eventually ISIS will figure out authenticated communication, and the sting operations will become actual recruiting.

>I also don't think the premise that the middle east has been at war longer than Europe or the United States especially is factual

Well, Europe has certainly had a long peace, but the point I was trying to make is that the middle East has been in conflict for most of recent history. The last war fought in CONUS was the civil war, and the last war fought on Western European soil was WWII. In contrast, there has been armed conflict in the middle East for the last 70 years. That's generations growing up with warfighting skills, and an exposure to conflict. Unlike whatever wartime experience Americans have had, these wars are total and involve the entirety of the population in some way, while in the US there hasn't even been a draft since Vietnam.

That said, I'd like to talk about why Islamists are the only groups that have adopted systems disruption strategies, not the minutiae of my bad middle eastern history or American white supremacist terrorism (not to say these aren't all good points, they're just not the topic of this thread). Does anyone know of any communist groups using these strategies, possibly in south Asia or Latin America? Has anyone besides islamists? I think this strategy is THE way conflicts will be won, and its going to have a limited timeline of effectiveness.

On the other hand, the fact that the security apparatuses of the West are focused on trying to watch everyone all the time indicates that they haven't really picked up on it either.

>>18189
Wellll WESTERN europe has had a long peace. Eastern Europe/Eurasia... Not so much.

That being said, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I think religious zealots in the west who fear and stunt science are a lot more damaging to western culture than some sand-people screaming and killing a few folks.

Think about the fact we could have totally operational and sustainable ectogenesis right now if it was for ethicists and religious zealots who are afraid of use "playing god".

>>18191
I did mention the Balkans, but the issue there is that the systems disruption strategy really shines matched with resource extraction economies, which aren't present in eastern Europe.

That said, we could easily see Ukrainians using systems disruption against Russian occupiers.

Of course, systems disruption will work anywhere. In the US, it would be trivial for an organized group of about 10 men with rifles to disrupt economic activity significantly just by attacking power stations. This is likely being tested now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

Though that was certainly not islamists, and could easily be a black op looking to red team the power grid.

>>18189
>Does anyone know of any communist groups using these strategies, possibly in south Asia or Latin America?

Closest I can think of is the Naxalites in India

There have been numerous communist organizations that employ terrorist tactics in recent history: New Peoples Army in the Philippines, Maoists in Nepal, Shining Path in Peru, to an extent FARC and other Colombian paramilitaries
They all still operate, but on a smaller/different scale than their peak

>>18161
>Dylann Roof was a white terrorist
He was just another beta upriser who needed something more motivating than Elliot Rodger