SocraticGadfly: More proof Sam Harris is a #neocon

July 25, 2011

More proof Sam Harris is a #neocon

Anders Breivik, self-photo
I've blogged before about how famous "Gnu Atheist" Sam Harris, with the intensity of his Islamophobia, how that seeped into his book "The (IM)Moral Landscape," including authors in his bibliography and more, are clear signs he's some sort of neoconservative. (His stance on other aspects of moral issues, outside of Islamophobia, kind of gives tangential credence to that, too.) I blogged about P.Z. Myers trying to claim Harris isn't a religious conservative, which Zed continues to refuse to accept.

More circumstantial proof is now in. Harris tries to defend Norwegian bomb/shooting suspect Anders Breivik against claims he's a Christian fundamentalist.

Here's an extract from Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto that seems to be pretty clear evidence he's a fundamentalist.
When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. (p. 1344)
If a Muslim bomber/shooter said that, Harris would be mad-dog foaming at the mouth.

Instead?

Here's Harris trying to explain this all away:
(T)he above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.
Harris then goes on to show how he and Breivik have further neocon backgrounds.
I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al.
The last four are clear neocons, sometimes virulent. So is Lewis. Kaplan's on the fence. Warraq? Has other issues at times. I've not read too much of the others.

Sam Harris, you have now fallen into an even lower circle of any Dantean secular hell consignments that could exist.

Update: Andrew Sullivan uses his old term "Christianist" for people like Breivik. That said, without naming names, he has a word or two for the Sam Harrises of the world:
A pseudo-believer, he nonetheless favors the arch-authoritarianism of the Old Catholicism rather than contemporary Protestantism (just like the atheist neocons). He loathes all transnational institutions and reads at times like an incarnation of Richard Hofstadter's brilliant description of the "pseudoconservative". He is also Christianist in the new way. There was a time when the extreme Christian right in America was anti-Semitic; now the extreme right is fanatically pro-Israel as a vanguard against the real foe, Islam. And not Islamism, but Islam. They have long since dispensed with that critical distinction, leaving George W. Bush's scruples in the dust.
Sully, while I disagree with you a fair amount on some things, I couldn't have said that one better myself.

No comments: