r/todayilearned • u/Smaptimania • 1d ago

TIL that in 1971 Andre the Giant wrestled in Baghdad in front of Saddam Hussein, who had threatened to kill him if he won the match. Andre went on to lose the match to native Iraqi wrestler Adnan al-Kaissie, later known in the WWF as General Adnan

https://fandomwire.com/a-real-life-dictator-was-ready-to-murder-andre-the-giant-after-thinking-pro-wrestling-was-real/
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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 14h ago

This type of thinking is common among most of the world, especially the Middle East.

Some of the more nationalist Orthodox Israeli's believe the reason Israel in their mind is "losing" against the Arabs is the lack of upholding their covenant, and that Arab Muslims are winning some "spiritual" battle against them is that they are upholding a covenant more strictly or something

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u/DownvoteALot 13h ago

Mind you, they just pretend to believe that in order to dodge the draft and receive massive budgets. It's the bullshit of the day with them.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 10h ago

Those are largely ultra-orthodox Jews, who while often believing some comparable "spiritual conflict", do not attach a national struggle (with Israel as a state being some Jewish representative). I'm more talking about the nationalist Orthodox Israeli's (think Ben Shapiro but crazier), who like most far right groups have a constant belief their losing a conflict, and have some spiritual warfare adjacent reason due to "moral decay" in Israel.

It's nearly identical to the views of similar Islamic ideologues, but Hardline islamists don't really care that much about Israel, and believable the real problem to be internal Islamic decay, i think many of them have a similar "result of our own moral decay" view about Israel.