Karen Armstrong during an interview in Swedish literature TV-show Babel. The show was recorded at the Göteborg Book Fair.
This Street Prophets Coffee Hour is brought to you by Karen Armstrong. Today’s article, Cyber Warfare Footing, is part 15 of 15 in a series about figuring out just what is going on in American politics. It will be about how we got to where we are now. And hopefully present a story of where we should be going. Along the way we will take a look at Russia, the U.S. 2016 Presidential election, Memes and Fiction, Network Propaganda, soft warfare, cyber warfare, and weaponizing Religion.
This is an Open Thread and all topics of conversation are welcome. What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment.
In Karen Armstrong’s book, The Battle for God, the author traces the history of how Religion has become more and more literal in its delivery and interpretation. I first read this book when it was first published in 2000 and I would say it was the major influence that shaped my understanding of how Religion has become weaponized. It is this book that motivated me to move beyond Armstrong’s authoritative qualitative historical analysis towards a more quantitative understanding as found in my Street Prophets diary A Taxonomy Of Elementary Frames.
Armstrong's central case rests on the confusion between mythos and logos, using these in the technical sense suggested by Johannes Slok.[2] Myth concerns "what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence... Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning".[3] By contrast "Logos was the rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world". In religion, logos appears in legal systems and practical action. By the eighteenth century, "people in Europe and America began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious." Armstrong suggests that fundamentalists have turned their mythos into logos using the mindset of the modern scientific age.[4]
Wikipedia: The Battle For God
Way back in part 1 of this series Vladimir Putin’s Philosopher Ivan Ilyin was introduced and thanks to Timothy Snyder we traced how his ideas were used by the Russian Federation to codify the spirit of of Russia into state that Snyder calls “Politics of Eternity.” Simply stated this is a condition where the individual is presented with many abstract concepts that are given labels and none of the concepts are linked directly to action that the individual can take to improve their lives. The individual is left repeating, believing, and worshiping these labels as if they had some intrinsic power of their own.
"For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved." ROMANS 10:13 — Click to Enlarge
Last week I found time to watch a few hours of the Jimmy Swaggart Ministries’ SonLife Broadcasting Network. Today beyond the fold I would like to share how I think this for profit enterprise illustrates the concept of weaponizing religion. And I would like to end this series by summing up what I have learned and the new directions I plan to move towards.
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Cyber Warfare Footing & The End
The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong ends its history of Fundamentalism around 1989 with a serious discussion of danger the Reconstruction Movement presents to democracy. And it just around this date that most of the authors mentioned in this series start their analysis of history and politics.
The Reconstruction movement, founded by the Texan economist Gary North and his father-in-law, Rousas John Rushdoony, is also engaged in a war against secular humanism, in a more extreme form than that waged by the Moral Majority. Reconstructionists have abandoned the old premillenial pessimism for a more galvanizing ideology. Like Muslim fundamentalists North and Rushdoony are principally concerned about the sovereignty of God.
From The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong — Page 161 of soft cover version
Armstrong covers the rise of the televangelists, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the PTL Network, The rise of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart. And she specifies how their theology adapted to the medium of radio and television. And most importantly for each of the individuals that ran these churches and ministries their efforts became a multi-billion dollar business.
When the Kingdom comes, there will be no more separation of church and state: the modern heresy of democracy will be abolished, and society reorganized an strictly Biblical lines. This means that every single law of the Bible must be put literally into practice. Slavery will be reintroduced; there will be no more birth control (since believers must “increase and multiply”); adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, astrologers, and witches will all be put to death. Children who are persistently disobedient must also be stoned, as the Bible enjoins.
From The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong — Page 161 of soft cover version
Take a moment and think about the stark militaristic language Armstrong uses in her writings that I quoted today. Even her book’s title is suggestive, The Battle For God. It is this “hidden” struggle that needs to be named. And I think it best to call it Weaponizing Religion. So, going forward upon occasion I will revisit this theme, Weaponizing Religion, on the Monday Street Prophets Coffee Hour.
A strictly capitalist economy must be enforced; socialists and those who incline to the left are sinful. God is not on the side of the poor. Indeed, as North explains, there is a “right relationship between wickedness and poverty. Taxes should not be used in welfare programs, since “subsidizing sluggards is the same as subsidizing evil.”
From The Battle For God by Karen Armstrong — Page 161 of soft cover version
In the Harvard / Oxford study Network Propaganda introduced in part 12 of this series the authors go into a great bit of detail about how the televangelism lobby of the 1960 through 1990 set the stage for the rise of the Fox News Channel. So tight is this linkage that the study suggests that without the existence of the televangelism market Fox News Channel would never of been profitable and never come into existence.
By the mid-1980s CBN’s viewership was third only to CNN and ESPN.31 This rise in audience share for Christian broadcasting coincided with a reorientation of evangelicals toward politics. In support of this reorientation, Robertson changed the format of the “700 Club” in 1980 to include the first investigative journalism and news reporting segments aired by religious broadcast.32 The reach of these broadcasts is a matter of some controversy, but 20 million American households is a reasonable estimate of the number who watched at least some religious programming in the 1980s. While televangelism viewership declined in the wake of the scandals that hit televangelists in 1987, most prominently Jim and Tammy Bakker, the new role of evangelicals as a major pillar of the conservative Republican coalition made sure that Christian broadcasting remained an important and distinguishing element of the right- wing media ecosystem— one that came out of a distinctly different moral universe than the framework that underlay the objectivity norms of professional journalism.
From: Network Propaganda PDF (320)
I have decided to end this series today as it will make room for more self contained Street Prophets Coffee Hours in the future. I will be continuing the this long thread into just what is a proper Cyber Warfare Footing in a series of articles published under a new group called: Cyber Warfare Footing.
I have been tagging and and republishing Daily Kos diaries of interest to this group so that they may be easily referenced. So look for a diary with the logo on the right for a discussion on Cyber Warfare defense, footing, and offense.
One of the outcomes of this series, for me, is expressed in the diagram below. While I do not want my political identity defined by what I’m against … well I’m against everything below. And as you can see from the diagram the situation is complex with the additional components of White Nationalism and Politicized Businesses added to Weaponized Religion. Never the less the list below is a lot to come to grips with.
At the center of The 21st Century Axis of Evil’s is the Republican Party. Enabled by the big three: Promoters of White Nationalism, Weaponized Religion, and Politicized International and Domestic Businesses. This diagram is by no means exhaustive. If space permitted many more organizations and links could have been added. Click to Enlarge
In closing today reflect on this finding from Network Propaganda. This finding down plays the “internet effect” and points the finger at Fox News.
Looking at the 2016 election, anyone assessing the impact of cable versus that of the internet has to contend with the fact that Trump supporters were, overall, primarily to be found in demographic groups that were the least attentive to online news sites and social media. Trump voters overwhelmingly reported tuning in to television: Fox News (40 percent), the networks (12 percent), and local TV (5 percent). Facebook was the primary source for only 7 percent.89 Moreover, the relationship between social media and internet use for election news and support for Trump and Clinton, respectively, across age groups and gender raises doubt about the role of online media in Trump’s rise. If anything, it seems use of social media is inversely related to support for Trump. Of white voters in the 18– 29 age range, whose social media and internet use for election news was 53 percent,90 fewer than 40 percent voted for Trump.91 Trump’s share of the vote increased with age. Trump’s share of the white vote was over 54 percent in the 45– 64 age range, and over 58 percent in the over 65 group, while social media use in these demographics was between 5 percent and 1 percent, respectively.
From: Network Propaganda PDF (338)
