Response to Kyle: Apostates and Violence

The Author of this blog as recently received some comments from a user named Kyle. I could simply let them show up in the comments section, but that wouldn’t really do them any justice, and so instead they will get their own entire post dedicated to responding. One of the comments is as follows:

“Here you're painting all apostates with the same brush, a common logical fallacy. You've commented on Ad hominem before, look up Guilty By Association: 

After speaking with hundreds of ex-witnesses, I have yet to come across anyone who has advocated violence against witnesses. All I speak to have friends and family still in and hate the organization, not the individuals. Most would be happy to see the organization peter out and die, but no harm come to actual individual witnesses.

But instead you've cherry picked an example that asserts all apostates want to physically exterminate Jehovah's Witnesses, which simply isn't true.” --Kyle

In reference to this 2011 post here: http://tearsofoberon.blogspot.com/2011/11/examples-of-apostate-love.html

And this actual quote from a news article dealing with Russian persecution of Witnesses: “Ha ha! Russia had the right idea: rid the world of Jehovah's Witnesses by ANY MEANS NECESSARY!”

With that background in mind, let’s begin:

“After speaking with hundreds of ex-witnesses, I have yet to come across anyone who has advocated violence against witnesses.”  Haven’t ever found “anyone”? Not a single person? You are either a liar or you just aren't looking very hard, or both. I saw it almost constantly when I wrote more often.

Number one, you make no distinction between ex-Witnesses and apostate Witnesses in the psychological sense. I agree with you that the vast majority of ex-Witnesses faded quietly and without much fanfare. But those types are not the problem. You rarely see or hear from those unless you actively seek them out. The problem, however,  is the small minority of highly vocal apostate Witnesses that more or less dedicate their entire lives to “fighting against the organization” and “bringing it down at all costs.” These are the more ruthless, more violent, more obsessed, and more apathetic kind of ex’s.

These are the ones who applaud governments separating Witness parents from their children. These are the ones who cheer for nations that throw conscientious objectors in jail and say that they deserve it. These are the ones who find no fault with schools that beat and humiliate and expel Witness children for not displaying nationalistic pride and loyalty to the ruling political party. These are the ones who use the comments of articles reporting on the tragic deaths of Witnesses to stir up hatred and intolerance of the same group. These are the ones who track down the real identities of online Witnesses and then send fake accusations of crime and domestic abuse and pedophilia to their employers and neighbors. These are the ones who view forced deprogrammings and kidnappings of Witnesses as justified. These are the ones that, as in the original quote, support, ignore, play down or even help to incite the violent persecution of Witnesses around the world. These are the ones who lie and deceive and manipulate so much that they make their own accusations of “Theocratic Warfare” look like children playing with squirt guns.

I saw all these things coming from the online apostate community for years. Every group and every site and every community I looked at was exactly the same. All were overflowing with negativity and vitriol and intolerance and hate, very poorly masked as love and concern. It made me sick to the point that I finally just had to walk away from it all and stop sifting through such trash entirely. Those are the ones I refer to when I speak of “the other side.”

“All I speak to have friends and family still in and hate the organization, not the individuals.” And yet that is a giant fallacy in of itself. It is a completely meaningless phrase, like trying to argue that you hate “Society” but not any of the individuals that make up “Society.” “Society,” “Nation,” “Community,” “Organization,” all these words are just different ways of referring to groups of individual people. You cannot separate the people from the collective noun because the people ARE the collection noun. An “organization” cannot act or think or recruit or expel or teach or reprove – only INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE can do these things. An organization is nothing but a group of like-minded, individual PEOPLE. So to say that you hate an “organization” IS to say that you hate the people that make up the organization, because they are one and the same thing.

Now, in defense of both you and your ‘friends,’ I’ll admit that they probably don’t mean what they literally say they mean, because it is obvious they don’t even understand what it is they are saying. Perhaps we could rephrase it to

“I love my family and friends and consider them merely victims even if voluntarily baptized, but I hate the Witnesses who they hang around with because those Witnesses keep my family and friends away from me.”

This is a much more honest statement in my opinion, even if the factualness of it is debatable. Moving from feelings of abandonment and betrayal by friends and family to anger at the voluntary choices of friends and family to hatred of the individuals that the friends and family choose to associate with to hatred of an abstract, boogeyman “organization” is nothing but progressive scapegoating by those are not honest with themselves and who cannot accept the true nature of their pain.