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İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
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20 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
White Evangelicals
Right-wing Israelis
Gulf counter-revolutionary princes

Quite the alliance.
United in their commitment to stopping history in its tracks.
Exactly this. The Israeli right thinks they can shepherd this alliance of convenience towards their goals, but what they can't see is that it'll burn them worst.
White Evangelicals are a group who feel their world is ending.
Gulf counter-revolutionary princes are another group who feel their world is ending.

The Israeli right thinks they're gonna use this to their advantage.

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More from @iyad_elbaghdadi

İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
17 Nov
The worst thing that happened to the MENA over the last 200 years was colonialism, and the absolute worst effect of colonialism was the ideology of the ethnic nation-state and the various nationalisms that it produced. We have been bleeding for over 100 years.
The majorities are afraid of the minorities and think that suppressing them is the best way to avoid their "separatism". Meanwhile the minorities are afraid of the majorities and think that keeping them living under a boot is the best way to avoid their hegemony.
The result is over a century of nationalisms and counter-nationalisms, of hatred and counter-hatred, of ethnic cleansing and genocide, of creating hierarchies for human worth among children of the same region who had lived side by side since the beginning of written history
Read 7 tweets
İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
12 Nov
As a rule, radicalized people who can find a powerful actor to act out violence on their behalf will invest in that powerful actor rather than commit the violence themselves. The Hindutva and the CCCP run governments, if you're partisan to their ideology you invest in them.
Meanwhile, there is no Islamist government equivalent among Sunni Islam (people point at Erdogan but so far he's more a cynical Turkish politician than a pan-Islamist militant populist). For this reason if you're an Islamist extremist you have to take matters into your own hands.
This false idea that Muslims are uniquely radicalizable and uniquely violent is an idea that is also popular among Arab autocrats who want the world to treat Muslims as especially dangerous, as part of a narrative to deny us political agency. These narratives are not innocent.
Read 4 tweets
İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
11 Nov
The root cause of violent extremism is not that an ideology exists. The question to ask is *why* someone would find that ideology convincing. The reasons for that are virtually always personal, not ideological. Pressured communities are full of potential customers.
Also, even in the lack of an ideology, potential customers can simply concoct their own ideology that answers their needs, of simply concoct an elaborate conspiracy theory that skips ideology altogether. Look at QAnon for example.
The "breeding grounds" of violent extremism are not ideologies - they're disenfranchisement, alienation, crises of identity & purpose, anger, feeling like you don't belong and don't matter, etc. Once someone feels like that, they'll seek out an ideology that suits them.
Read 4 tweets
İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
10 Nov
Hey @EmmanuelMacron, this Libyan activist made a video criticizing your sometime ally in Libya. She just got shot dead in cold blood. Wanna tell us about why we're in crisis, you neocolonialist piece of shit?
For those who don't know the context, here's an article from Politico about how Macron intervened in Libya politico.eu/article/france…
Here's another article, from Foreign Policy foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/lib…
Read 4 tweets
İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
4 Nov
I honestly don't think the story is how Dems are underperforming or Trump is overperforming. The real story is how polarization has reached a point where each side sees this as existential. When people believe the stakes are this high, they close ranks and vote from fear.
This level of existential polarization kills normal democratic norms. When we're afraid, most of us become more appreciative of order, more accepting of authority, and less likely to care about what's "moral". This is basic human psychology.
Earlier thread today about race and democracy, with some high quality replies. Generally, people agree that ethnic tribalism underlies democracy; it does so even more at times of deep polarization.
Read 6 tweets
İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي Profile picture
3 Nov
Don't come at me but I believe a significant proportion of violence extremism (if not the majority of it) is rooted one way or another in unresolved trauma on both the individual and collective levels. Unfortunately the response to it has been to create even more mass trauma
By "collective trauma" I mean when entire communities are subjected to traumatizing events, often systematically and often intergenerationally, to the point where traumatized behavior and attitudes are normalized
When I say this a lot of people say "hey, you mean these terrorists are victims?" I think that's irrelevant, if someone is coming at me to hurt my family I will defend myself. If I have no choice but to hurt him, I will, regardless what mental state drove him to attack me
Read 5 tweets

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