It’s somewhat difficult to compare American conservatives to the Taliban because those are such vastly different cultures. But the equivalent left wing-right wing comparison wouldn’t be about “whiteness,” it would be about attitudes towards the ethnic in-group vs the ethnic out-group. For the Taliban, the ethnic in-group are Pashtuns, but Afghanistan is a state bounded by former colonial borders that has always included major territories inhabited by other ethnic groups, making Pashtuns a plurality rather than the majority in the country. But the Taliban are clearly right-wing because they are religious fundamentalists obsessed with trying to recreate a (possibly semi-fictional) 8th-century Islamic society from when they considered Islam to have been the most pure.
Obsession with the past is in general a right-wing trait."
Response:
On the topic of defining conservatives: "it would be about attitudes towards the ethnic in-group vs the ethnic out-group."
Earlier in the message, the topic of Malala Yousafzai was established, yet the reddit reply emphasizes ethnic. As is clearly documented for nearly a dozen years in the book published October 8, 2013 titled "I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban" - ethnic is not core of how conservatives operate.
the equivalent left wing-right wing comparison wouldn’t be about “whiteness,” it would be about attitudes towards the ethnic in-group vs the ethnic out-group. For the Taliban, the ethnic in-group are Pashtuns,
Malala is a girl, a woman, a female. "ethnic" isn't the out-group of the conservative Taliban. Their exact same ethnic human people, but a different gender of sex. Male vs. female, men vs. women. Conservative behaviors are not defined by "ethnic" and "racial", they are defined by the avoidance of nonfiction, science, comprehension understanding. Anti-progress, anti-progressive. In Malala's situation, her father was a school teacher who introduced ideas from outside the fiction story of the single book the Quran imported from Saudi Arabia to Pakistani (across the world) originate in the year 635 to year January 2009 when Malala was first forced to stop attending schools where multiple books from the world's public library were being taught and educated to young girls by her father.
Again, not ethnic, gender. But that's another characteristic of "conservatives", the desire to burn / ban / limit books and ideas of science, nonfiction.
In the United States of America, conservatives can be entirely against white "hippies" in Berkeley California who created Unix computer software with the BSD free software license. "First released in 1978, it began as an improved derivative of AT&T's original Unix developed at Bell Labs, based on the source code." This has nothing to do with ethnic or skin color, conservatives in USA treat white men who are idealists ("hippies") as an out-group, even though the are the same race / ethnic - BSD free software is nonfiction, and USA conservatives do not want science and progress of comprehension and understanding, they want people in USA to follow the imported Levant Bible stories in a very poor dehumanizing interpretation.
Addiction to fiction content and fiction storytelling is core conservative value. As I said in the earlier message, in USA: Rupert Murdoch media network Fox News is fiction storytelling, like Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" news, dramatized - it is not reason thinking factual news telling, Fox News is entertainment sports simulacra fiction.
You will find it incredibly unpopular and egoism confronting to view this in terms of media ecology and not make it about ethnic / skin color (blacks vs. whites).
As Joseph Campbell described it, everybody, 100.0% are wrong, it is not popular at all to face up to the reality of the fiction attraction problems.
Half + half = total, all, everyone
- “Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.” ― Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
Expand the context beyond "religion", (as the quote is saying, religion is not nonfiction, religion is not facts, it is science fiction).... Fox News is fiction media, fiction storytelling vs. factual news. Joseph Campbell's quote could be applied to:
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Fox News and Newsmax and Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" -- all fiction news.
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People who use Reddit / Lemmy to get news to mock and react to Fox News and Newsmax audience. Calling them stupid idiots. That is the atheists in Joseph Campbell's equation of people who do not grasp metaphors.
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Zero people, the third group, who fully understand media ecology behaviors and how atheists are reacting to Bible / Quran / Torah fiction fanatics and not seeing the blend of fiction and nonfiction.
Expanding on number 3 on the list.
Take for example "The original Terminator film, released in 1984, is a science fiction action movie directed by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger" - there are a blend of fiction and nonfiction elements. The non-fiction setting: "The first Terminator movie, released in 1984, was primarily filmed in Los Angeles, California. Specific locations include the Griffith Observatory, Tech Noir (720 S Hill Street), and various streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Some scenes were also shot in South Pasadena, Huntington Park, and Littlerock, California." - much of the setting depicted is nonfiction, but the fiction element is the terminator robot technology, artificial intelligence, the time travel technology.
Take another science fiction story, Star Wars 1977, the location / setting is entirely fiction. There is almost no non-fiction content of any kind in that Star Wars 1977 film / story. The planets depicted, the food, everything is fiction.
"Conservatives" are unable (uneducated) to distinguish fiction of the Bible, Quran, Torah story books in Pakistan or USA - they often revel in entirely fiction contents such as the character Allah / "God" in the story, without any proof or evidence, they are attracted to the fiction in a compulsive behavior. Unlike in USA with fiction story of the "Easter Bunny", they do not grasp that Allah / "God" is a metaphor (again, the Joseph Campbell equation above).
This is a literacy problem on a global level across long time periods, it goes beyond any geography or ethnic or race or skin color.
"Conservatives" can behave this way towards any media. Not just Levant Bible from 2000 years ago or Levant Quran from 1,360 years ago. Rupert Murdoch media empire is in multiple places and multiple media venues, not just USA Fox News network. But the core thing of conservatives is favoring fiction, that Donald Trump is a magical perfect person, not a flawed human being. Conservatives treat Fox News and Truth Social media content as nonfiction, like treating the Easter Bunny as if it is not a metaphor.
Humanity has in no way owned up to what Joseph Campbell is saying about the history of comparative mythology. We, world wide, are living in denial of this crisis and acting as if it is OK, whistling past the graveyard of all the deaths between religions and within religions and things like the Jewish Holocaust by Germany in 1940's. Where Bible religion tradition people exterminated and killed Torah religion tradition. Book vs. Book, both imported from the Levant (Torah and Bible origins), both science fiction stories, fiction vs fiction killings.
The Crusades of Europe vs. Levant. The Taliban in Swat Valley Pakistan that Malala is highlighting.
Conservative is not about ethnic race superiority. Conservative is about egoism of the in-group vs. out-group. Fox News is fiction storytelling, Church is fiction storytelling, Mosque is fiction storytelling. Analyze conservative in terms of Star Wars 1977 cinema science fiction fans fighting with Battlestar Galactica 1978 television science fiction fans.
The Bible is a retcon science fiction of the Torah. The Quran is a retcon science fiction story of The Bible. Jesus, Mary, Adam, Eve - are all in the Quran / Mosque that Malala Yousafzai had in Swat Valley Pakistan with the Taliban. But the Taliban will not admit that the Quran is fiction storytelling any more than Fox News audiences and Truth Social audiences will admit that they are consumers of fiction storytelling.
Egomania abounds, people with their "one true fiction story", story supremacy - not racial supremacy, not ethnic supremacy, not just gender supremacy, but fiction story supremacy. Be it Fox News (venue) fiction story MAGA supremacy in USA … … … or … … … Quran Mosque (venue) / Radio Mullah (venue F.M. radio) fiction story supremacy in conservative Taliban Swat Valley Pakistan.
P.S. Please excuse my writings, these topics are extremely difficult to put down in words (Joseph Campbell wrote more than 40 books, I recommend him over my Reddit / Lemmy comments). And I do not have endless time to spend composing this message, nor do I have a professional editor like Joseph Campbell does in his writing.