We Cannot Ignore Buddhist Extremism—Lions Roar

To be clear, this is not what I said. I said it was a red flag; and given that one member questioned this and then immediately posted a link to a nazi sympathizer, I’m feeling pretty good about that assessment.

Nevertheless, I appreciate your thoughtful contribution, and I’m glad that JP’s teachings helped you at that point in your life.

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Hi Eharp,
If you and @DhammaWiki could continue this line of discussion in a PM, that would be great.
Thanks

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The Vajjika Confederacy had a democracy of sorts, as an oligarchic republic. You are right though. Democracy as we understand it wasn’t around back then. I agree what the author might have had in mind were contemporary movements who want to replace democracy with some kind of authoritarian rule. I imagine what they had in mind were fascists, neo-nazis and the like. What about monarchists though? I am a monarchist myself, and whilst I wish for a greater role for the Sovereign I’m not quite wanting to abolish our current parliamentary system in favour of direct rule from the Queen. Let’s say however I do want that. A return to a more pure form of monarchy (not necessarily absolute), would that be in keeping with the Dhamma? I think it might actually.

Those who feel the system hasn’t or doesn’t work for them may feel they need to instigate a change. But if these individuals think stirring up hatred, phobias, and discrimination against minorities in order to gain power, it goes against the foundations of the Buddha’s N8FP, no?

Yes I agree. To go back to what I just said though, if someone wants to replace say British parliamentary democracy with more direct rule from the Crown, because they feel that would unite the country (arguments said people do make) is that against the foundations of the NEFP?

I do recall a time, in past lives, when the Left was about workers rights and related to the majority of people or “the collective”. Therefore, the Left also introduced Universal Health Care, Free Universities, Capital Gains Tax, Pension Plans/Superannunation & other social benefits for “the collective”. Are you suggesting ‘the Left’ is now mostly concerned with “minority rights” rather than “collective rights”? Or has “climate change” instead of “workers rights” now become the “collective mantra” of the Left?

The narrative above I think is quite risky for a Buddhist to hold because Al Jazeera is a Qatar news agency and Vice President Biden himself under Obama made a public statement at Harvard University that Qatar was funding the ISIS terrorists. I think it best for Buddhists who simply follow mass-media to avoid such convictions. Whether you follow CNN, Al Jazeera or RT, there will be political narratives (aka propaganda). Best to be well informed rather than contribute to a foreign war where international mercenaries are actually involved. Tulsi Gabbard’s former extreme anti-LGBTQ Hinduism is unrelated to her stance on Syria or Iraq. Keep in mind, she was part of the military in Iraq.

Hi all,
Just a quick reminder to continue bearing in mind the OP and make sure your post relates to this and Buddhism rather than broader political generalisations.
Thanks,
Alex

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I think policing on line extreme behaviour is really difficult. Just ask Facebook. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have an obligation to try.

I also don’t think that we can hide behind “some of my best friends are black/gay/bhikkhunis” when defending a forum we are responsible for. A few months ago someone made a post on DhammaWheel that was basically a bhikkhuni rape fantasy. I didn’t even bother trying to report it because I was sure that I would just be met with “That’s not against our ToS, sorry.”

As well, the argument of “Well, you should see all the bad stuff we remove,” is also quite hollow. Again, I know that moderating forums is difficult. But if you are going to make a forum, then it’s your responsibility to make sure it’s not a breeding ground for bad things. Just like any place of public accommodation, if you create a dangerous situation, then you are responsible for the outcome. I realize, though, that not everyone will agree with this.

I think that online mysoginistic, racist, trans-phobic behaviour is endemic on the internet. It’s really no surprise at all that we would be finding it in Buddhist forums. The question is whether or not Buddhist forums are accepting of that behaviour. I only participated in E-Sangha in the very twilight moments of it’s existence. But I doubt if the current right-wing stuff was it’s downfall. From what I hear it was more an issue of sectarianism and over-moderation based on that. I think the creation of separate wheel forums was a good remedy to that. However tight moderation is not an evil in and of itself. And liberal moderation is not a universal solution.

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Hi Bhante,

There was a falling-out on ESangha over the independence of the Theravada moderators, which led to the creation of DhammaWheel (Theravada). There were also similar fallings-out by the Zen group. ESangha went down some time later (allegedly it was hacked) and David helped them out by creating DharmaWheel (Mahayana).

I was on retreat when the ESangha bustup happened, but my understanding is that the anti-any-censorship attitude at DhammaWheel was a reaction to some of the heavy-handedness at ESangha (where you’d be banned for questioning whether the Buddha taught rebirth, for example).

As others have said, it’s posters who have views, rather than a Forum, but there was certainly a dramatic change in style when the current Admin took over at a few years ago, and my observation would be that it has tended to attract many posters who lean strongly to the right whereas posters at DharmaWheel (Mahayana) tend to be left-leaning (like this Forum).

I don’t have anything against traditional Conservatism, but I find aspects of the modern right-wing aggressively anti-woke, anti-expert (anti-vax being just a small part of that) attitude deeply concerning.

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Again, I think none of what is written above is specifically “left-wing” or “right-wing”. What is deeply concerning to me is labelling whatever you disagree with as “right wing”. Its fine to be concerned with so-called ‘Buddhist Extremism’, such as anti-LBGT, anti-Islam, etc, but to label these matters as “right-wing” I think is an extreme error and itself a form a extremism. People who oppose regime change wars, people who may support ex-Communist Russia in Ukraine, people who don’t support getting a certain vaccine, etc, are not necessary “right wing”. In fact, once upon a time, those who in general opposed ‘The Establishment’ were considered ‘Left-Wing’. I personally find your narrative very confusing, just as a previous poster said supporting Saudi Arabia was “right wing” when every American government since the 1930s has supported the British Empire created state of Saudi Arabia. For me, its getting very close to false speech to accuse people who may be from the Traditional Left or people who may be traditional religious people (such as simple Catholics) as being “right wing”. I think as a Buddhist, one should be very careful about the labels they use. If a person is homophobic then label then certainly label them as ‘homophobic’. But please don’t call them “right-wing”. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’m from Hungary, far-right Victor Orban just won his 4th term in a row with absolute majority. He has total control over Hungary, despite millions of voters disagreeing with him. The only districts where he did not have an overhelming majority was the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

I do believe this is due to the lack of answers and solutions our opposition is able to provide. There is also this smugness displayed by the Budapest people (including myself) who look down on the rest of the country as uneducated. No wonder there is a divide, and people at rural areas would rather vote for someone else, who at least acts like they respect them.

My degree is in social sciences and I came to somewhat resent it, as there has been near ZERO progress in the field in the past decade or so. If anything, the field became more anti-sicency where discussing biology or iq is a big no-no. Most of Zimbardo’s experiments were a fraud? No worries, we will just pretend those weren’t the pillars of many follow up research we still take for granted! Wait, societies do not all beome liberal democracies? Yeah, they probably will, we will just have to wait more. Wait, underdog countries can actually overtake the west, so our world systems must be more complicated than just exploiters and victims? Nah, screw that, we will just keep telling the same mantras, but louder. Having a place where everyone can discuss ideas will not lead to better democracies, because we now have Facebook and it sure did not do that? Well it would if I were in charge!

They lack the tools and the data large IT companies have that are able to run world wide experiments on human behavior, yet they still claim to have all the answers on how societies work. The hungarian social scientists in the 70s-80s-90s were heroes who were not afraid to go against the establishment and do research to undercover deep inequalities and unjustices, even if it cost them having to flee the country. Iván Szelényi - Wikipedia

This is what I was referring to. We all benefit from liberal ideas, they are the founding stones of our society, but we now take them for granted, and there is a lack of new ideas that provide actual help. I feel leftist politics has degraded to a loud, and angry name calling (that sometimes mimics actual nazi behavioural motives) instead of listening to people’s problems and providing solutions to them. If this wasn’t the case, there would be no black or women Trump supporters. And no, as an eastern-european I do not want to try communism again as a viable solution to the flaws of capitalism, thank you.

That’s what I was refering to vaguely, another thing that made me become more interested in JP is that he actually had alternative answers based on research to questions that social science was stuck with.

It’s so easy to just laugh at the masses because they can not keep up, but

  1. no one can keep up. I work in data science with artificial intelligence, in my opinion there are about a 100 people in the world who are smart enough to be up to date, everyone else is just trying to catch up because there is so much going on; I can only imagine how confusing the world would be for someone who can’t even use their smartphones right
  2. there will be parties to exploit their resentment, so if as a leftist we leave them behind, then that is indeed on us

So I can sympathise with people going conservative (even in Hungary, despite taking part of a lot of anti-Orban riots here). The ideas are shXt, but at least it used to work. While being liberal now is also shXt and its solutions do not work. Yelling harder will only make more people leave.

I don’t know what’s going on with climate change debates in the US. My opinion is that the problems are far far worse than we are willing to admit, and humanity has been gaslit for the past decades into thinking we are solving it. Oil companies willingly put in a lot of money into anti-climate research, defaming climate scientists and making people believe it’s their own fault for using straws. They also put a lot of money into marketing to make everyone believe that recycling works. I am amazed how the “solutions” to climate change are just marketing stunts that usually just accelerate the process. Like how paper straws are sold in plastic protective bags, how Germany is turning off nuclear plants and buying coal based electricity from other countries, or using electric cars even though mining rare earth metals for parts and creating short life batteries is adding to hazardous waste. Nevertheless, I still think this is still better than “going back to living in harmony with nature” like we did in the (not conservative) past. Throughout human history we used slave labor and blood to get what we want, and only a small procentage of people actually got it. Now everyone lives in luxury and we no longer kill each other. We pay with oil instead of blood, this is a huge progression. It’s either one or the other. Hopefully we will figure out how to get temperature low before we kill ourselves.

I realised I’ve gotten a bit jumpy, but it felt horrible that I might be following something you are so opposed to. I do believe JP’s book and old university lectures made me a better person.

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These political designations have their roots in religions. The only difference is that secular governments replaced the traditional god. I do not see how the Buddhist mundane right view differs from other religions that encourages conservative values. The following is the Abrahamic religions version of it:

In China, it is confucianism.

To be anti-woke is to refuse to equate the supramundane with the left.

Hi CurlyCarl,

Yes, thank you for pointing that out. I did try to draw a distinction between traditional Conservative views and these populist developments of anti-woke, anti-expert , anti-immigrants, etc. However it seems that in most cases these views have found a home in what used to be traditional Conservative/Right parties (such as the Republican party), rather than the traditional Left.

Luckily, in my country (New Zealand), most of the parties have managed to distance themselves from these populist developments, but, again, the ones that flirt with it are from the traditional Right.

Hi Richard,

My intent was to comment on the phenomenon of people who identify as leftists but who feel that the left has nowadays has “gone too far”.

But, it did come out like a sarcastic remark that didn’t add anything the conversation. I empathize with the fact that you were probably hoping for a better interaction given the thought you put into your post.

However, I did read your post and think about it seriously. For example:

To me, when I read this I see someone who has bought into the totally false image of the “extreme left” presented by people like JBP. That’s why it’s hard to engage with your post.

Take cancel culture. Cancel culture on the left is literally just people complaining on twitter. Cancel culture on the right is republicans banning abortion, gay marriage, contraception and health care for trans people.

Once you’re instilled with this false image of the “extreme left” and convinced that woke leftists on twitter with pronouns in their bios are just as bad as literal neo-nazis, it’s hard to engage with. How can I show you how distorted the picture JBP gives of the modern left is? I’m not sure.

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It’s a tad more than that. Whilst cancel culture can be exaggerated it’s not entirely made up. Mostly it revolves around universities in the UK, and mostly again it’s to do with the trans issue. One example was Germaine Greer, who found it difficult to give talks because of her views on the issue. We see similar reactions in the USA. In my experience there certainly has been a growing hostility to other views from a loud minority on the left. A bit of anecdotal evidence from me, but I’ve received more death threats and rape threats as a traditionalist conservative than I ever did when I was left wing. I actually had more hostility “coming out” as right wing than I did being gay. Also regarding abortion, whilst I get that liberals don’t like what happened in America it wasn’t a case of cancel culture since it had nothing to do with free speech.

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Thanks Erik, for taking the time to give a full answer.

I never said I’d prefer the old left, I said I’d prefer if it improved, and kept pace with the current world, because right now it is just as misguided as the right and is unwilling to admit it.

Thank you, this is exctly my point! Why do you think I came to these conclusions because of JP alone? That I was tricked by his sweet words into a false reality and am now blinded by his cunning social media presence?

If you remove his name from my post to someone you like, would it make more sense? Would you be able to better connect with it? If so, you have proven my point, on how divided we have become, and why I am fed up with not being able to have a conversation without getting labelled either way. Do you not agree with a single thing about ___, well you are borderline nazi dude, you are on a slippery slope!

I find both equally horrible, and the fact that we have to discuss abortion without medical professionals opinion in 2022 is just insane.

We may disagree, but I do believe that they suffer from similar mental disorders as nazis do.

There were multiple researches done in the 60s on how one becomes a nazi, because we as a human race wanted to understand the path to becoming a guard in Auschwitz. They narrowed it down to having a totalitarian father who beated you. What surprised me at the time, that no one researched what happens if your mother beats you for instance, or what makes someone become a radical leftists instead of a far right follower. Again, there’s a lot of bad science in social psychology.

It’s not the flag in your twitter bio that will make you a horrible person. It is doing horrible things in the name of protecting X’s rights and virtue signaling that makes you a horrible person.

Do you agree with doxxing and harassing J.K. Rowling? Is that a buddhist thing to do? Why do we hate her exaclty, is it because she said that trans peoplpe do not have periods so she is apparently a transphobe despite the contents of her books? Sending her death threats is apparently a virtous thing to do now? I do not know JPs opinion on this, I came to hate the situation on my own.

I guess my previous point was, if you (or anyone reading this) really believes these are equally horrible, you should stop identifying with labels like “leftist” or “progressive”.

Edit: Because, part of what it means to be on the left is to think that the latter is much, much worse than the former.

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If you are going to ignore everything else I wrote and just tell me I do not fit your definition of what progressive is, then be it.

Yes I do think that ruining the lives of people you disagree with, by riobbing them of the achievements they have built up throughout their entire lives is horrible. Getting people kicked out of their positions because of a tweet they made a decade ago is cruel. It might not be as bad, as some closeted gay politician who is trying to cash in on homophobia by claiming he is against homosexuality, but it ruins someone else’s life as well. Yet if you dare to call it out, you get simply labelled as misguided or a nazi.

So I agree, these are not equally horrible, but why is it that you are not allowed to talk about the former, since it is seen as some necessary evil? Where do you draw the line? If listening to JP is a slipery slope to becoming a nazi, ruining the lives of people you disagree with by forming an online mob would be regarded as a what exactly? Is it a pathway to what, some utopia? Just because these acts aren’t physically agressive it does not make them magically virtous. Bullying from anonymity and saying that it’s okay because “well it’s still not as bad as what the opposite does” is something that needs to stop.

Right, but why does it feel so horrible to see a billionaire like J.K. Rowling get criticized on twitter for using her influence to harm a group of people that are just fighting to live decent lives (trans people)?

She is not being “cancelled” in any meaningful material sense. Trans people kill themselves because of discrimination and lack of health care. J.K. Rowling will just… feel a bit bad for being criticized, I guess?

From where comes the feeling that there is something abhorrent about rich white people facing any repercussions for saying or doing bad things? (Even if it is just being criticized on twitter)

I would argue that it comes from being invested in a society that centers white cis people at the expense of everyone else. A society that sees equivalence between a billionaire lady’s hurt feelings and the lives of minority people.

I mean, JBP’s philosophy is its essence a defense of hierarchies. JBP himself has said that conservatives defend hierarchies, and leftists challenge them. I agree with JBP here.

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I don’t think Rowling’s life has been ruined. I do think she has made life more difficult for trans people by staring up anti-trans sentiment.

Let those who are transphobic be called transphobes. No need to legitimize.
Let racists be called racists and misogynists misogynists. If that is what they are. But the idea that everyone gets labelled as a “nazi” is rather tired meme now and clearly untrue.

And you are allowed to talk. Anti woke talk is everywhere. Our politicians, in the UK, talk about it. Some newspapers love to blow up “cancel culture” stories. Dhamma wheel used to love it. Some posters here love to talk about it. Peterson loves anti woke talk and he has had best selling book I believe.

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Please connect your posts to Buddhist extremism or start a new thread. Why is that such a hard thing for folks to do?

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This sort of thing is basically the problem with people like Peterson and JK Rowling. The problem is not always what they’re saying, but the narrative they’re building by saying certain things in a specific context.

For example, there is this idea that acknowledging biological differences between men and women is controversial now because of trans activism. When this is not the case. Sure, there is a small number of people who literally disagree that sex is a thing. But that’s not the problem with these statements. The problem is the picture that is being painted.

There is nothing inherently transphobic about saying that there are different sexes. But there is something transphobic about building a narrative of trans people as lunatics who can’t accept basic biology. Which JK Rowling participated in by arguing that sex is real. It’s a straw man argument since “sex is not real” is not a popular belief in trans communities. But arguing this, especially in the context in which she did it, carries an implication that this is otherwise.

Instead of actually listening to trans people’s viewpoints, some people take these debates out of context and reduce it to “trans people are denying basic biology”. The problem is not always what is being said, but what is written between the lines. “Sex is real” is not a neutral statement in the context of the debates happening around trans issues.

Bringing this back to Buddhist extremism, it’s basically the same thing we see in some Buddhist circles. For example… Women and minorities who share their experiences of discrimination are often met with dismissal along the lines of “gender is just your sense of self, something-something anatta”. And it’s not literally wrong. The Buddha did teach a path that leads to the end of self view, and gender is obviously part of self view. But hopefully it’s fairly obvious how bringing these things up in the context of discrimination sends a different message between the lines.

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