More violent fundamentalism

Thank God these guys aren't better organized (intrusively detailed registration required).

In the Aryan Nations, we have a Christian identity movement strikingly similar to terrorist groups found in Islam, who have corrupted religion to give deeper resonance to what is essentially areligious hatred. This group is just one of the more prominent of hundreds of pseudo-Christian factions in the US. They're getting more numerous and increasingly violent.

I wish more people would see the parallels here, that no one religion is more or less susceptible to this murderous mentality than any other. I find the idea that Christianity is somehow immune to this--that westerners are the sane ones--so odd.

It's often [usually?] white, Christian, westerners on the killing end of the stick (See: Crusades, See also: Holocaust, Trail of Tears et al). This is a function of religion in general, not one religion in particular.

Religion is terrific for doing two things: creating cohesion and unity amongst people of vastly different backgrounds and upbrinings and for appealing to that-which-is-greater than ourselves, which often is the impetus for blind obedience.

This is certainly not the chief goal of religion by default, but it is at least an effect of a dogmatic indoctrination that makes the act of faith, no matter how perverse, exceptional at uniting people.

When that unity and zealotry is under a banner of hate, it doesn't really matter which deity is lending his/her endorsement, the effect is powerful. I'd say even that the that-which-is-greater is often simply the power of the group itself. In that sense, anything conveying a feeling of community and communion with something larger than oneself can confer the same effects as this religiosity.

It's God so frightening fascinating how close religious fervor often borders on mob mentality.