From: "K. Paul Johnson" Subject: Re: WARNING - Psychological WAR ZONE - WARNING - Psychological WAR ZONE -WARNING - Psychological WAR ZONE - Date: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 11:21 AM smaneck@aol.com (Susan Maneck ) w > >- that trb > >is a psychological war zone, that I will delurk to remark on it. > > Dear K. Paul, > > Of course it is. But it is not Baha'is who have made it so. Dear Susan, Three distinctions to keep in mind: 1) what you call "not Baha'is" I call "Baha'is" based on their own self-categorization. Therefore, almost all the hostilities here are intra-Baha'i (including Darrick for example) with just a tiny handful of non-Baha'is (Mahdi, me, who else?) participating. 2) Who made it so? There is hardly any non-Baha'i attacking of Baha'is going on, very little Baha'is attacking non-Baha'is. The blood on the floor of all these newsgroups is Baha'i blood shed by Baha'is. Thus, Baha'is "made it so." Freddy started this > newsgroup as a forum from which to attack the Baha'i Administrative Order. So > what do you expect? > Well, someone started a yahoo group as a forum perceived by ARE leaders as intended purely to "attack the ARE administration." What might be expected from a spiritual group that wasn't steeped in generations of fratricidal hatred is what ensued at ARE. A handful of irate members complaining about the administration's secrecy and highhandedness, a handful of defenders of the administration attacking its critics, a low level of participation and hostilities only intermittent with productive posts. I would *not* expect a big contingent of active members to rush over to Whitherare to engage in endless warfare personally attacking the disgruntled/critical members and ex-members in order to distract from the administrative issues. But then in ARE there's just not that crusading spirit of "defend the Faith from external and internal enemies" motivating people to play cyberwarrior. > > > >Bottom line: the only thing that helps me make sense of your and Pat's > >behavior here and all the other Baha'i aggression I've experienced is > >Peck's People of the Lie. > > I wrote a paper connecting Peck's thesis to issues related to the Covenant, but > I came to the opposite conclusion as you. Here is the website where the paper > is posted. > http://www.escribe.com/religion/bahaist/m18982.html > Thanks. From a quick reading I see it as focusing entirely on cbs, Remey mainly. My observation of behavior here fitting the model includes these elements: 1. It's destructive. Baha'i defenders of the AO aren't just out to defend anything, they are out to hurt people by personally attacking them, blackening their reputations. And their appetite for Baha'i politics of personal destruction is endless. 2. It's scapegoating. Any individual who comes along and voices a contrary opinion must be punished for the sins of the alleged campaign by alleged external and internal enemies. 3. There's total denial of responsibility for the bad behavior. It goes from "no, we're not behaving in a warlike way" to, "Well, yes we are but it's their fault and we bear no responsibility for the atmosphere." I don't say you AO defenders bear *all* the responsibility, but you certainly do bear a huge amount of it, judging purely on the basis of who attacks whom how severely. No one is making any of you be nasty. PaulFrom: "K. Paul Johnson" Subject: Who started the Baha'i wars? Date: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 12:09 PM Dear Brian, Time to start a new thread, as the old one had gotten so ugly. And to salute you for trying to rise above the rancor and focus on a basic issue. You wrote: > well. I was surprised by what you had originally said, and that occasioned > my butt-in. > No problem. I trust that you can and will understand and accept that my objections to Anon had nothing to do with the unexceptional statement that Baha'is are followers of Baha'u'llah and everything to do with the party-line denial that there is any such thing as a fundamentalist Baha'i. Moreover, let me flesh out the statement that very very few fundamentalists will admit to being that. Closest to home for me, there is a large contingent of Theosophists who are scriptural literalists, dogmatists, dismissive of academic scholarship on their history, aggressive and vituperative towards other Theosophists who take a more liberal view. The targets of their aggression and vituperation have been calling them fundamentalists for many years, and the aggressors consistently deny that there is any such thing as a Theosophical fundamentalist. The ARE was taken over in 1999 by a faction of Christian scriptural literalists, end-times fanatics, with an agenda of "cleaning up" the bookstore, library, ARE Press, conferences, and magazines of insufficiently orthodox content. Many members and staff were outraged, calling their objectives and tactics fundamentalist. Many others defended them, denying that such a thing as a Cayce fundamentalist was even possible. So in the two movements I know best, the 90s have seen a rise in fundamentalist aggression against liberalism seen as the "enemy within," and a rise of liberal protest against fundamentalist agendas. The fundamentalist Theosophists and ARE members not only deny that they are fundamentalists, but that they could *possibly be*-- and insist that the term is purely an insult devoid of empirical content. You can give them hundreds of pages of quotes on exactly what fundamentalism is, from sources like Karen Armstrong or Martin Marty, and they won't engage that information. They'll just ignore it and keep insisting that there are no fundamentalists in *their* movement and that all conflict over fundamentalism has been caused *exclusively and entirely* by those liberal malcontents making baseless accusations. So a great deal of what I see in Baha'i mirrors quite precisely what I've seen closer to home, which has a lot to do with why I empathize with Baha'i liberals. you wrote: > > unkind, destructive, etc. in the midst of being so to the nth degree. > > I agree that there is a lot of hateful stuff going on. As Pat has said, and > I agree, some of the exchanges are un-Bahá'í in the extreme, and prove your > point. But - bear in mind that the number of Bahá'ís who participate here > are small, and are not reflective of the wider community. They sure tend to pose as if they were! Just as the > anti-AO atacks can be perverse and hateful, so the defence can be as > hateful. I would put two points: > > 1. The participants here are not typical Perhaps not typical of the movement, but typical of those who participate in Internet fora, judging by others I've observed. and > 2. The origin of the problem is a consistent attack on the Bahá'í Faith, Some folks would say that criticizing the ARE administration is equivalent to attacking the organization itself. Millions would say that questioning the Bible's literal accuracy is attacking Christianity, Jesus and God. If people say they are Baha'is criticizing the organization rather than the religion, and the organization insists that they are in fact attacking the religion, who is to be believed? > Your main point was your main point. My point was to point out an incorrect > attribution. But Anon explicitly denied the existence of Baha'i fundamentalism, and that's what I object to. In what sense did I incorrectly attribute that denial to him? > So you were extrapolating from previous experience, and assumed you knew > what Anon had meant to say, He meant to say what he *did* say-- that there was no such thing as Baha'i fundamentalism. > even though Anon would say nay. How could he? The words are there. The only thing I attributed was the *ideological function* of such denials-- and that was based on how it's been used by many others all the way up to the House. > > *phenomenon* existed, not just a claim that the *terminology* was not > > widely accepted. It does exist, we all know it exists, and you want > > to blame those who *named* it for creating it. > > Yes. I do. I think it is a fundamental truth. > And I think it is *the* fundamental lie. Blaming the messenger. Blaming the victim. snip > > So the response to this can be twofold: > > 1. Use the system > 2. Use an non-Bahá'í system > > Assume the system is good (or else withdraw immediately, because if > Bahá'u'lláh erred, then He was not of God, and the whole thing is flaky) No, fundamental logical error there. You shift from one meaning of "the system" to another. "The system" of American democracy isn't perfect, but IMO very good. "The system" as manifest in the outcome of the 2000 election is an outrage. See the parallel? snip > > By attacking the system - by definition therefore - the choice has been > made to go outside the system. I don't know who you are blaming for doing that but here's where my observation of Talisman comes in. I know very very well that such figures as the Walbridges, Cole, Scholl and others were *totally committed* to working within the system, were *extremely concerned* not to be perceived as troublemakers, were trying to create *one little private space* where they could discuss Baha'i issues freely. They were *never* an "internal opposition." They were people who hoped that over the long term, positive reforms would occur. It is anachronistic to take the things these people might have said and done *after* "the system" did what it did to them in 1996, and take that as proof of where their hearts and minds were *before* the Covenant-breaker crap hit the fan. snip > have interacted with Bahá'ís in Asia and Europe in 5 countries) is of those > within the system (BIGS) being labelled fundies, Never, never was that the case before the system labeled the Talisman scholars as a variety of things they were not. *Some* aggressive individuals were called fundies; never was it suggested that such had taken over the AO-- in fact John Walbridge and Juan both explicitly said otherwise to me in 1996. They reached the conclusion of fundamentalist hegemony *because of what was done to them*. and those without the > system labelling themselves liberals, and having firstly made the choice to > opt out, and secondly by having made the labels, by definition I think that > yes, they are responsible for creating the divide. > Hopefully the above helps clarify my objection to that. The fact that they didn't meekly submit to an Inquisition certainly helped *publicize* the divide but the divide was created by their antagonists. > > My reasoning as given above is illogical? The terminology is in fact > Christian, early 20th Century. It first appeared in that context, but a huge literature now exists using the term in cross-cultural ways. It has been applied to Bahá'ís. > And Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians... anywhere that scriptural literalists and dogmatists are treating their more liberal minded coreligionists as internal enemies, attacking and insulting them, trying to drive them out of the fold, insisting that they were never real [whatever] in the first place. - is that > a group of Bahá'ís have a problem with the Institutions. That's a prejudicial and onesided view. A group of Baha'is sitting on the Institutions have a problem with "uppity" Ph.D.'s would be the opposite way of saying it. > > 1. They define the problem in terms of early 20th century christian > terminology, and make it their own. That terminology had long been transferred to a much broader usage, and said usage was constantly brought up to answer complaints that "fundamentalists" were by definition Christian. > 2. They create a divide (see above presentation) Ditto. They become scapegoats for a divide created by a host of social control factors in the Faith that have nothing to do with the source teachings. and ask Bahá'ís to accept > both the blame for their problems, and their diagnosis of the root causes. ?? > 3. When BIGS point out the command for unity and harmony in diversity, the > use of consultation for resolution of problems, turning to the UHJ for > guidance as commanded by Bahá'u'lláh and defined by Shoghi Effendi, we are > accused of demonstrating fundamentalist traits, and are called AO > supporters and - again by definition - part of the cause of the divide. It isn't any of those things in themselves that makes a fundamentalist. What leads to those accusations involves a lot more, but others can speak to that better than I. Nima? > > Well, Paul, at least you can see my reasoning. > > > I think it is OK to be opposed to the AO. It is natural to question, and > search for meaning. I also think it is logical for such a person to carry > on to the next reasonable step - withdraw from the faith (which is by their > definition inherently There's the rub. Are the flaws inherent (as I believe, due to the three generations of fratricidal hatreds among the members of the founding family) or accidental (as Karen or Juan would argue) and therefore potentially fixable? In any case, most of these folks *have* withdrawn from the Faith, so it would seem your real argument is with those who haven't. > too - if what you are doing is approved by God, it will flourish. Let us > not quibble among each other, but set out to do a positive and good thing, > according to conscience. Can't you give credit to such as Karen and Juan for trying to do that according to conscience, and that it would violate their consciences to just wash their hands of the Faith or to start a competing sect? > > > > > > If you are not that most of the time or with most people, you have > > been so with me this week, and all your over the top language about > > not lying down and receiving beatings from enemies shows that. > > The corollary to this is that a good BIGS should not protest when being > beaten? Come off it! That is not what you meant to say, I am sure. > No, that's silly. The corollary is that a good BIGS should not start making accusations about being beaten when no such thing is occurring, and react to someone as if it were. > > Aggressive and unfair? I am aggressive and unfair? Maybe aggressive - it > has been a very bad couple of weeks for me, and I am biting a bit, but > unfair? Definitely so in your attribution of blame to the messengers and primary victims of the Baha'i fundie/liberal divide, and your exemption of their persecutors from all responsibility. > > All the best, from a relentless, cultist, agressive and unfair, fundie > crusader for the AO. (Did anyone mention ad homeinems?) > Hoping you find my above words of value, KPJFrom: "K. Paul Johnson" Subject: Re: Article in American Family Foundation's Cultic Studies Journal by Karen Bacquet Date: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:19 PM Apart from the reasons Steve cites for Susan being wrong in this accusation, I can provide a more clearcut one. Here's the chain of events: 1. Birkland inquisition of Talisman scholars 2. Johnson article about this in Gnosis 3. Religion News Service picks up story from Gnosis 4. Religion Watch expands story into a fullscale article by Ira Rifkin NOT Rankin So: Rifkin not Rankin, Johnson not Scholl. The fact that Steve did cooperate with Rifkin was of course his responsibility, but this came *after the cb threats from Birkland and in reaction to them*. He did not *seek out* the opportunity to express his views to Rifkin; rather RNS was inspired by my Gnosis piece to look into things. And that piece was written entirely *in response to* what the AO had done to Scholl and others. Another case of victim blaming. PJFrom: "K. Paul Johnson" Subject: Re: Prof. Cole's New Article - "Fundamentalism in the Contemporary U.S. Baha'i Community" - Religious Studies Review 2002 Date: Thursday, June 06, 2002 4:35 PM Pat Kohli wrote in message news:<3CFDBC3E.D923E4CD@ameritel.net>... > Freethought110 wrote: > > > nim-vajab, get out of your box and look around you. This silly professor, as > > you say, is a Professor at the University of Michigan and one of the most > > widely respected scholars in his field. > > That is the "invisible directive" guy. You have turned into a cyberstalker, always lying in wait for the next opportunity to make the next opportunistic attack on the same person, with whom you've been negatively obsessed for months. This kind of obsession can last for years; I've seen it. Do yourself a favor and stop before it's too late and you become nothing more than a Juan-attacking-bot. Or is it already too late?