Unthinking academics and terrorism

Blaming men and masculinity for everything evil in the world has become such a commonplace prejudice that it has infiltrated academia.

Unthinking academics (of which there are many) are not able to escape this Zeitgeist and thus they cannot produce objective or nearly objective research nor conclusions.

All of the following quotations are from a Sunday Herald article called: Criminologists say London bombers were motivated more by masculinity than Islam.

So basically these Criminologists claim that the main factor in motivating the London bombers was masculinity.

Let's have a closer look at this idea by examining the article.

They claim that in Britain’s consumerist society, in which masculine success is equated with material wealth, young Asians who are poor or disenfranchised or who feel oppressed will feel inadequate and will be vulnerable to manipulation by older men to commit horrific acts such as mass murder.

So here is an unqualified assumption:
Masculine success = material wealth.

I do not buy that (no pun intended). It sounds like a Marxist reduction to me. The masculine strives for something higher than material wealth.

Anyway let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are right about this assumption.

Dr Antony Whitehead, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Huddersfield, said: “The bombers have said that they are motivated by loyalty to Allah, which they may entirely believe. But if you are going to start to unpick their motivation, you need to consider their experience as young men as much as their adherence to Islam.

Ahhhh. So they did not really know what motivated them? Another Marxist legacy, called False Consciousness. A concept without any merit in reality.

So I guess now Mr. Whitehead is going to tell us ignorant readers what really motivated them?

“It’s a very understandable dynamic. Young Muslim men in the British culture experience a lot of internalised pressure to conform to the idea of manhood – the ideal of courage and standing up for yourself.

I thought he just equated manhood with material wealth? Now he is equating it with courage and standing up for yourself. This sophist will change his definitions to suit whatever he wants to get at in any particular context.

“We are coming at this from the wrong angle. We are making the assumption that it’s all about Islam.”

No. We are not coming at this from the wrong angle. And no, we are not making the assumption that 'it's all about Islam.' It is you, Mr. Whitehead, who are making all the assumptions and silly psychological reductions here.

It is you Mr. Whitehead who is trying to reduce a complex mix of 'reasons' and causes to just causes. Material causes.

Taking the London bombers as an example, Whitehead said the role of older men in manipulating young Asians to carry out acts of suicide was a crucial factor. He stressed, however, that this was not unique to Asians.

Ahhhh, it is the evil patriarchy at play again. Those old evil men.

But wait! Whitehead stresses that this is not unique to Asians --- what is he getting at? His own manipulations of which there are plenty in just this short article in Sunday Herald?

No. Of course not. Such an enlightened feminist would never manipulate, right?

Giving the examples of the first world war and Vietnam, he said: “You need to make young men more afraid of being called a coward than they are of dying. Otherwise, how do you get thousands of young men to walk into machine-gun fire?

Mr. Whitehead has just proved himself unable to make justified distinctions. Another hallmark of the unthinking academic.

Mr. Whitehead apparently thinks that terrorism and WW1 is the same thing.

Whether Mr. Whitehead is stupid or this obvious conflation of distinct issues is a trick will remain unsaid, because I will not go to the low levels of trying to guess the "False Consciousness" or real intentions and motivations of Mr. Whitehead.

Does Mr. Whitehead really think that men have always just gone to war because they are afraid of being called cowards?

Oh, what a poor understanding this gender researcher has of issues he is supposed to research.

Could it be, that men have priciples and that they are not just standing up for themselves as Mr. Whitehead would have us believe?

That masculinity is actually about standing up for yourself AND others, and do the right thing, and maybe even make the ultimate sacrifice in the process?

Mr. Whitehead basically just called every soldier in history an egoist that only went to war for fear of being called a coward. In fear of losing face.

Men like Mr. Whitehead always talk about how men should be more sensitive. Well, Mr. Whitehead, how about showing some respect and sensitivity yourself?

Mr. Whitehead, you are ignorant about the things you supose yourself an expert on, and your unjustified authority in the field is making the world a more dangoerous place for the rest of us, because ultimately the delusions you are sharing with us, will obscure real causes and real 'reasons' and thus our attempt to understand and halt terrorism will be delayed.

Taxpayers of U. K. please fire this swindler.

By the way, this kind of stupid reductionism is not new with Mr. Whitehead.

The American feminist and sociologist claimed something similar a few years ago here Gender, Class, and Terrorism