The dark side of the atheist movement


Here you go, Pat Condell telling us how we all have to listen to the big bag of Truth Donald Trump has opened up, and ignore those creepy progressives.

Excuse me, I have to go throw up in the corner.

Comments

  1. says

    I wonder if Condell is all right with being barred from the US. After all if you can ban an entire group for being undesirables you can ban other groups, and the people who Trump is pandering to generally think atheists are evil. So maybe Trump will ban them from entering the US at some point too.

  2. birgerjohansson says

    I have suspected that Pat Condell is some kind of a shape-changer but until now I have not known which kind.
    There is a marine bird who sometimes feeds by harassing terns and other birds until the victim regurgitates the eaten fish stored in the craw, after which the attacker eats the fish vomit soup.
    Old Pat has simply moved this tactic way inland of the shore!

  3. whywhywhy says

    I want my 5 minutes back. My life was not improved by listening to a series of bigoted blather.
    I am still confused how any thinking human can listen to Trump and think he is honest. I need to go look up what honest means.

  4. says

    There is a marine bird who sometimes feeds by harassing terns and other birds until the victim regurgitates the eaten fish stored in the craw, after which the attacker eats the fish vomit soup.

    Is that a real thing? If so, that is disgusting and cool. But mostly disgusting. Like most of nature. :-)

  5. Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia says

    @3
    Don’t insult frigate birds by comparing them to Pat Condell…

  6. calgor says

    Despite heralding from the UK, I had never heard or Pat Condell… Thanks PZ for ruining my innocence When I eventually see FSM, that’s another couple of minutes I want to clam back…

  7. says

    @4 – Oh, I think Trump is honest. In the sense that he says what he thinks, that he actually believes it. I think it’s all shallow and bigoted, but I see no reason to think Trump has been faking that persona for decades.

  8. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    *retch*
    Trump tells people the truth, they want to hear, as no other politician will.
    Truth should be in scarequotes as it is used with an alternate definition, of “what one wants to believe is true“.
    When Condell ranted about Religion of Peace being an obvious falshood, I’d like to show him a Venn Diagram of the set of Muslims and terrorists. Muslim being the big circle, with terrorists having a tiny circle with a sliver of overlap to Muslim circle.
    To characterize Muslim as the religion of Terrorism because a few recent terrorists are Muslim is
    [wait for it…]
    RACISM bigotry.

  9. davidnangle says

    Martin Wagner, we’ll get the brownshirts and the violence and the genocide… but I don’t think anyone at all will assume that Trump will make the trains run on time.

  10. newenlightenment says

    We are often told life is short. Indeed it is. Every second that passes is a second you move closer to the day of your death, a second you will never recover. It’s a second closer to the death of all life on earth, and to the heat death of the universe. We are marching, steadily into oblivion, every single moment of our lives. This is true all the time, but watching a Pat Condell video really rams this home

  11. Scott John Harrison says

    I can’t remember if it was the 2008 or 2010 Election or if he was supporting UKIP or the BNP – but he has been known to have these views for nearly a decade – why I stopped watching him (about the same time I stopped watching thunderf00t.)

  12. mond says

    It has been a long long time since I have watched one of his videos and that isn’t about to change any time soon.

  13. Pteryxx says

    Hasn’t Condell gotten the memo? You’re now required to express your support for Donald Trump by shouting “Sieg heil!”

    In case folks think that was sarcasm…

    It gets worse: Trump supporter yells ‘Sieg heil!’ as protester violently dragged out of Vegas rally

    While it had previously been reported that one black protester was assaulted by security as a Trump supporter shouted, “Light that motherf*cker on fire!” a reporter from MSNBC said a large middle-aged man shouted, “Sieg heil!” — a Nazi-era salute — while one protester was hauled away.

    In video from NBC (see below), the shout can clearly be heard

  14. rietpluim says

    “The truth they want to hear” is a contradiction, unless people actually want to hear the truth.

  15. Pteryxx says

    More from Shakesville citing Buzzfeed’s coverage here: Trump Campaign Rally Erupts In Chaos And Ugly Confrontation

    “Light the motherfucker on fire!” one Trump supporter yelled.

    Physical altercations between protesters, security, and the occasional tough-guy supporter have been a running theme in Trump’s combative campaign this year — but Monday night was different. Reporters who regularly cover Trump said they had never seen anything like the fevered, frenzied mood that gripped the ballroom in Las Vegas.

    …One after another, protesters were forcibly dragged from the ballroom — limbs flailing, torsos twisting in resistance — while wild-eyed Trump supporters spewed abuse and calls to violence.

    “Kick his ass!” yelled one.

    “Shoot him!” shouted another.

    When a white activist proclaimed “Black lives matter!” as she was being carted out of the building, a male Trump supporter leaned toward her and snapped, “White lives matter.”

    According to NBC News, someone at the Trump rally even yelled a German Nazi-era salute — “Sieg heil!” — while a protester was being removed from the event.

    Trump, meanwhile, gleefully narrated the madness from his podium like a tabloid talk show host presiding over an on-camera brawl between guests — egging on the confrontation, whipping the audience into a frenzy, and basking in his fans’ celebratory chants.

    “Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!”

    “This is what we should have been doing to the other side for the last seven years!” Trump exclaimed during one of the scuffles with protesters.

    That will be reported, though not nearly as widely or seriously as it should be. This part of story will not get as much attention, although it is just as chilling:

    But while Trump and his hardcore supporters seemed to be enjoying themselves, not everyone was thrilled by the night’s unexpected turn toward mayhem. …Among those most put off by the display, though, were the recreational spectators who had stopped by simply to see Trump’s famous performance in person.

    “I just came for the spectacle,” said Stephan Reilly, a left-leaning Las Vegas resident whose college-aged son had tagged along for kicks. “This is the best show in town!”

    But by the end of the night, neither of them were smiling much.

    “I’m very alarmed,” Reilly said.

    The best show in town. The fucking privilege to be able to imagine that Trump’s campaign is nothing more than a “spectacle” for your consumption—a terrific bit of entertainment to take in with your son, like a revival of Hair, perhaps.

    Trump is a white supremacist, misogynist, eliminationist, authoritarian dirtbag, who has made abundantly clear his extremist views and his willingness to endanger marginalized people. Scapegoating vulnerable people is the centerpiece of his campaign to “Make America Great Again.”

    If you have heard Trump say anything at all, you have heard at least some of this vile rhetoric. It is only by pretending that words have no consequences, that language cannot cause or incite harm, that a person could regard Trump as “the best show in town.”

    Privilege gives us bad instincts, by design. In every way, privilege erodes our ability to connect to other people, including and especially by subverting our empathy. It is unexamined privilege which has profoundly eroded one’s empathy that allows someone to hear Trump say heinous things about Muslims, or immigrants, or women, and find those things to be outrageously hilarious, rather than feeling the chill that runs down the spines of the people at whom Trump’s hate speech is directed.

  16. throwaway, butcher of tongues, mauler of metaphor says

    So Condell doesn’t see a problem with barring all Muslims from entry to the USA based only on their religion (because they go through a rigorous refugee evaluation already, so that complaint that we don’t evaluate them strongly enough is irrelevant BS), but there’s obviously something wrong with barring one man who advocates Nazi-esque ideals of nationalism from entering the country, cause his ‘free speech’ is being suppressed. Ugh.

  17. Scientismist says

    I watched the video through the first lie, that prospective refugee immigrants to the US are not properly screened, and quit. But I finally went back and watched all of it, to see if he defended that lie. He doesn’t. His entire rant is justified only by citation of popular fear of Muslims and blind hatred for Obama.

    I fully expect that Pat Condell is the kind of atheist who will eventually see the light and give himself to Jesus, or to some other authority figure who will tell him the Absolute Truth, just as he now longs to be able to give himself to Trump, whom he imagines as a great Truth-Teller.

    My suggestion for a TLDW: “A riot is an ugly thing. Und I think that it is just about time that we had one.” Except that I think Inspector Kemp was more open to reconsidering his prejudices.

  18. woozy says

    @1 and @20

    Early in the video (I quit watching so everything I saw was early in the video) he mentions a petition in England barring Trump from visiting Great Britain. He thought it was an appalling idiotic idea. By his tone of voice its apparent that the entire irony of the petition was completely lost on him.

  19. FossilFishy (NOBODY, and proud of it!) says

    So much straw in one video. Ah well, I guess that’s appropriate in the video equivalent of a scarecrow. Shorter Condell: “ISLAM! BOOGAH, BOOGAH!”

    And what’s with the argument ad polulum? That’s one of the first logical fallacies I learned when I began to pay attention to counter-apologists. You’d think that Condell would recognise that one when it comes out of his own mouth. Fuck me, these neo-con atheists have stole religion’s play book and are hell bent on becoming just as evil.

  20. says

    Jolly nice to know (after blissful years of not watching the farnarkling, lackwitted, skinhead blaggard) that he’s finally crossed the line into the land of full-blown unapologetic racist neo-fascism.

    That this smug, uber-Tory, racist idiot (forgive the redundancies), along with Chunderh00f and TJ, were once in my ‘tube subscriptions because I looked forward to hearing from them, is a source of grave embarrassment. If nothing else positive came out of E-gate and the Progressive Atheist/Establishment Atheist Deep Rifts™, at least a shiteload of misogynist, bigoted spankrags came out of the woodwork and allowed many of us to thin out our subs a bit (only to then fill their empty slots with decent, thoughtful, progressive people who were brought to our attention precisely as a result of the explosion of misogyny).

  21. newenlightenment says

    @24. Indeed, I saw his first videos, which were pretty much standard atheist stuff, and actually quite witty. There were a few pops at Islam back then which seemed ham-fisted, but nothing horrendous. Now I can only express my contepmt for Condell in rhyme:

    Come freindly Huntingdon’s, and fall on Condell’s mind
    It is not fit, for human kind

  22. lotharloo says

    Pat Condell is just irrelevant. The time when prominent atheists used to pay attention to him has passed. Incidentally, the first time I got banned on Jerry Coyne’s blog was when I called Pat Condell a “racist asshole”. He put up one more video since but with disclaimers.

  23. diatryma says

    @25 newenlightenment
    … and better videos you’ll find
    In half a shake.

    And also fall on Donald Trump
    Who acts like – but is not – a chump
    For his career to hit a bump
    For goodness’ sake

    Anyone care to continue? :D

  24. whywhywhy says

    #9 John-Henry Beck

    Oh, I think Trump is honest. In the sense that he says what he thinks, that he actually believes it.

    I strongly disagree, I think he spews bullshit all the time and knows it. He has just been doing it for so long that he doesn’t think about it anymore. That doesn’t make Trump honest. I think we completely agree that Trump is not trustworthy. So another way to think about the honesty of Trump: Do you trust what Trump says represents truth?