Sunday 11 December 2011

more on bigotry

i put up this post at the hand mirror a couple of days ago about a particularly offensive bigotted attitude. i expected a little bit of flack, but it seems the crowd from nzconservative decided to turn up and attack. it then got picked up by that rather sad internet troll known as redbaiter - banned from almost all left-wing blogs and for good reason. on his blog, the bloggers at the hand mirror have had some pretty misogynist insults thrown at them - which says more about their mentality than anything else. it sounds like nothing so much as certain men not being able to cope with strong women who are prepared to control our internet spaces.

and some of the commenters missed the point of the post, which is about bigotted attitudes that are often expressed by people without any thought of how nonsensical the proposition is. this proposition formed part of one of the questions asked of me when i did a session via skype with a high school class in christchurch. it's that whole notion of people expressing that i don't belong here, which is without any basis. people who can't accept that i have equal rights and equal value to them.

in sort of related news, american candidate (not sure of the correct terms here) for the republican ticket has surprised everyone by refusing to demonise all muslims. i can't say that i've been following that process very closely other than the various embarassments and scandals, most notable of which have involved rick perry and herman cain (michele bachmann has hardly covered herself in glory either).

nothing about mr romney had me enthused - but then i would say that as a lefty. he certainly hasn't stood out in any way, hasn't shown any spectacular characteristics, hasn't clearly been a front-runner. though, given that it's now looking like a contest between mr romney and mr gingrich, i'm picking that mr romney is most likely to win the nomination.

in which case, it was nice to hear this:

A man rose from the audience, claimed he had many Muslim friends, but said, “I have never heard one Muslim condemn Islamic jihad or terrorism. I see Islamic jihad as one of the greatest threats to America and the western world. Are you going to continue to give Islam and Islamic jihad in this country a pass like everybody before you continues to do? The only people that call Islam a religion of peace are the Muslims, and they are the most violent religion in the world.”

Romney said radical, violent Islamists pose a threat to Americans and others around the world. However, he said, “they take a very different view of Islam than the Muslims I know.” He noted that he was raised in the Detroit area, which has a large Muslim population.

“They are peace-loving and America-loving individuals. I believe that very sincerely. I believe people of the Islamic faith do not have to subscribe to the idea of radical, violent jihadism.”

ok, it's not a very positive statement, i wouldn't go anywhere close to saying it was an ideal reply. but compared to what the tea party crowd are saying, and compared to what mr romney was saying just 3-4 years ago, it's a huge shift. it's the kind of answer that our very own bill english didn't have the guts to give, in a similar context.

4 comments:

KG said...

1) On Redbaiter: "..banned from almost all left-wing blogs and for good reason.."
Yep--and that good reason is the marxist morons can't handle the truth.Looking at the sewers and the levels of dishonsty in left-wing blogs begs the question: What self-respecting person wouldn't want and expect to be banned by them?

2) On the Republican's "I believe people of the Islamic faith do not have to subscribe to the idea of radical, violent jihadism."

You confuse politics and truth. Not an uncommon condition among the uninformed. He said what he had to say in order not to alienate the overwhelmingly pc, left-bisased media. But the truth is that any devout muslim is bound to follow the koran (and the sura and hadiths). And to do that, they must perforce believe the "death to the infidel" meme of that primitive ideology.
Because some politician running for office says something doesn't make it the truth--rather the opposite.

stargazer said...

nice comedy KG.

as to your point 1: if you're such a self-respecting person, you shouldn't even be reading or commenting on left-wing blogs then. unless you do it for trolling purposes, in which case you're not respecting anyone, least of all yourself. and here you are with the name-calling again: that's the reason you lot get banned. you can't argue ideas without behaving like 5-year olds. i'd suggest you do a little growing up before you bother commenting here again. although, i'm pretty tempted to publish your stuff just for the laughs and for people to see exactly the kind of nastiness you like think is "debate" and "truth".

on your number 2, i don't confuse anything. and again, you make yourself a laughing stock by coming to a muslim person's website and trying to teach her about islam. again, you can't even see the stupid inconsistency within your comments. all us muslims are supposed to be killing you, and yet here are at least 40,000 of us in this country, and there you are very much alive. and muslims have been in this country since the otago goldrush, well over a century back, and yet the "infidels", even the grossly ignorant and bigoted ones like you, are alive and going about your daily business. there are plenty in europe and american too ($6 million in the US, last i heard), and yet america & europe continue to be full of not-dead "infidels". there are also plenty of not-dead "infidels" living and thriving in the middle east, malaysia (a huge chunk of the population being chinese, as well as many not-muslim indians). but of course, you're not interested in the truth at all, are you KG.

regardless of your comedy value, i really am not interested in tolerating such complete ignorance on my blog. i suggest you waste your time elsewhere. although if you want to continue to make long, hate-filled comments on this site in the knowledge that they will neither be read nor published, feel free to do so.

Lucia Maria said...

Hi Stargazer,

Only one blogger from NZConservative appeared on that thread (that was Andrei) and from what I can see, he was just asking you what rights you thought you were being denied.

One person is not really a crowd, nor was what he said in the slightest bit attacking.

We have this saying about logs in eyes blinding us while we try to take the speck out of another's.

stargazer said...

ok lucia, i don't read nz conservative & i thought KG & mondeo were yours as well, since we were getting a reasonable of hits coming through nzconservative just after that post went up. i'm happy to be corrected.

i didn't have too much problem with andrei's comments and thougt i responded very reasonably to him.