Thread by @mattsheffield

1/x: It's uncomfortable to contemplate, but it's a reality that Western white nationalists and Islamic jihadists are starting to come together.

I talked about how and what it means w/@MoustafaAyad on @TheoryChange flux.community/matthew-sheffi…

Terrorist propagandists aligned with the Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda and other groups have wholesale adopted Christian radical memes. They have hundreds of them now, mixing white nationalist iconography with jihadist slogans and people.

This emerging trend is a mirror of what happened in the West when Christian supremacist groups began coming together in the 1970s, but especially in the 2000s, putting aside sectarian grievances in pursuit of the larger goal of eradicating religious freedom for everyone else.

Authoritarian personalities, an almost sexual love of guns, and a shared hatred of secular knowledge, women's rights, LGBT existence, and racism against people of African ancestry are the common denominators in the emerging Christianist-Islamist unity.

So what is to be done by the vast majority who disagree? A few things come to mind:
🟦 Curricula must include teaching about the origins of tolerance and its value
🟦 Social media companies must drastically step up moderation hiring (esp in languages besides English)

🟦 People who are moderate Christians, Muslims, and non-religious need to understand we have much in common as well
🟦 Political leaders need to speak about tolerance and its value more
🟦 Left-of-center orgs need to reorient toward creating cultural and news content

There are a lot more things to be done though. So please chime in with your own ideas. And follow my colleagues and I at @DiscoverFlux to stay in touch!

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