Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is a self-propagating memetic virus, the characteristics of which are advocacy of violence, extreme wealth inequality, xenophobia, racism, homophobia, extreme sexism, perpetual wars of conquest, attacks on science, logic, or reason, and massive erosion of civil rights in favor of wanton bloodshed and deliberate infliction of torture and suffering against preexisting named scapegoat individuals and groups. It reproduces by infiltrating and damaging the education or other knowledge-propagation mechanisms of the host culture, corrupting the education received by the culture's children. It usually takes the form of an extreme version of the dominant religion in the host culture. These children then act as vectors for propagation, or they do direct damage to society through commission of the above-named characteristic actions.

Combating fundamentalism is usually accomplished with direct mockery of the Fundie, or vector attempting to spread the virus to others, in open debate in front of an audience; education of the populace at large in science, logic, and reasoning; wide-scale broadcasting of the atrocities done in the name of fundamentalism; and social engineering to make fundamentalism frowned upon as backward and savage in the host culture.

Examples

• Christian Fundamentalists: Sub-divided into many groups, ranging from Catholics, Protestants, Weirdo Cults, to Bible Literalists.
  • Violence level: Ranges from harshly worded press releases and "boycotts" of movies, to attacks on abortion clinics which generally consist of pipe bombs or acid poured through the mail slot in the middle of the night. Occasionally, a nut will get ideas and shoot a Doctor who provides abortions.
• Hindu Fundamentalists: Not enough data to compute.
• Islamic Fundamentalists: Sub-divided into several groups; but can generally be divided into Sunni and Shi'ite groupings.
  • Violence Level: Ranges from releasing harshly worded press releases to extreme violence, such as suicide bombings, mass casualty attacks, etc.
• Buddhist Fundamentalists: Not enough data to compute.
• Shinto Fundamentalists: Basically believe that Japan was blameless during WWII, and that Comfort Women didn't exist.
  • Violence Level: Not enough data to compute.

Links

• [1]-A Brief History of American Fundamentalism by Yefim Galkine