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yelosonI'm thinking about hate. This Islamophobic hate shit is getting ridiculous.
1. Hate is about convenient targets.
This shit we're seeing? It's not actually about Islam. These people don't even know shit about Islam or the people who practice it. If you asked them 10 years ago, they'd have no idea about anything, except maybe something to do with oil or Gaza and maybe a couple of airplane hijackings.
It's not like a personal hate. And even if they talk about 9/11, that's not it either, because that was NINE YEARS AGO. There's no reason for hatred to get stronger, absent actual repeated attacks. 9/11 is an excuse. This isn't about the attack. This is about people being frustrated, and here's a convenient set of targets to take that frustration out on.
2. How children bully
It's not like kids plan ahead who they're going to bully. They just kinda figure out who holds the least status, that people care about the least, that they can pick on and no one will stand up for them or care for them. A convenient target.
Once a few kids do it, then more kids jump in. It's demonstrated who the target is, and then they know who they can go kick.
3. Mob mentality
Part of it is that it's about social status. Pushing someone down means you're higher up than them. Isn't that nice? Part of it is it's a group thing - it's a "thing to do".
Right now? It's popular to hate on Muslims. There's a lot of excuses, but that's all they are, excuses. "I'm defending science!" "Their religion is about violence!" "Their religion is about changing the law to theocracy!"
Strangely, you'd think if these were the issues, the #1 concern for Americans, at least, would be the Christian right and the Tea Baggers- all of these folks have decades of attacking science in schools, in universities, and in government policies. They've bombed abortion clinics and killed people. They have repeatedly attempted to change laws, through direct action and perverse reinterpretation to remove freedom of religion... including the right to no subscribe to any religion at all.
Instead, we're to believe a minority religion in the US, with no cultural inroads into the mainstream US, or immediate political power is a bigger threat to our society? Meanwhile Tea Baggers are actually winning political seats?
4. The bigger problem
As much as this isn't about Islam, it's that this hate isn't based on actual reasons for hate, like having your family killed in religious wars - it's all manufactured hate... not even that, just painting targets and giving people excuses at this point. The reason this shit is kicking off is the economy, really. It's worse 9 years later because people are out of work, losing homes, and feeling like crap.
And, sure enough, once Islam stops being a target, they'll go find a new one, or an old one. Latinos are pretty high up on the list with all the immigration raids. And surely a high profile scandal will probably put black people back on the limelight. Perhaps China, with it's growing economy?
A friend of mine once put it, "Niggerization" - who gets to be the one they'll treat the shittiest and put on target? Her word stuck with me as much as the signs people had about "Sand Niggers" as soon as the war started. Funny enough, it highlights it terribly well- it's not that the hate has ended, it just means a new group is put down in the same category.
5. Well, we never meant to
And, naturally, once enough people have been killed, enough firebombings, lynchings, or whatever else will come of it, they'll say, "Oh, we didn't mean that, we don't <i>hate</i> them, we can't possibly be racist". And, as far as emotionally, because the hate was actual, real hate, they'll consider it to be true- after all, they were just doing something fun, something to blow off steam, and those people don't really matter anyway.
Socialized sociopathy- a complete erasure of empathy for the targeted group, and you just do the actions of hate, not for hate, per se, but because it was a thing to do.
This is basically the cycle we go through, over and over. A mass genocide on the continent. "We didn't -mean- to kill the Indians. We had no part in it." Slavery with hundreds of millions murdered. "We didn't mean to kill the blacks. We didn't -hate- them." etc.
Now it's the Muslims. People too morally degenerate to think beyond the mentality of elementary school bullies, unwilling to take responsibility for the inevitable violence and murder that will follow, but all too glad to goad others into throwing the first stone.
After all, as long as you can tell yourself you didn't start it, and that you didn't "hate them", you're totally ok, right?
Who has the religion of violence that pushes us back to the Dark Ages again?
1. Hate is about convenient targets.
This shit we're seeing? It's not actually about Islam. These people don't even know shit about Islam or the people who practice it. If you asked them 10 years ago, they'd have no idea about anything, except maybe something to do with oil or Gaza and maybe a couple of airplane hijackings.
It's not like a personal hate. And even if they talk about 9/11, that's not it either, because that was NINE YEARS AGO. There's no reason for hatred to get stronger, absent actual repeated attacks. 9/11 is an excuse. This isn't about the attack. This is about people being frustrated, and here's a convenient set of targets to take that frustration out on.
2. How children bully
It's not like kids plan ahead who they're going to bully. They just kinda figure out who holds the least status, that people care about the least, that they can pick on and no one will stand up for them or care for them. A convenient target.
Once a few kids do it, then more kids jump in. It's demonstrated who the target is, and then they know who they can go kick.
3. Mob mentality
Part of it is that it's about social status. Pushing someone down means you're higher up than them. Isn't that nice? Part of it is it's a group thing - it's a "thing to do".
Right now? It's popular to hate on Muslims. There's a lot of excuses, but that's all they are, excuses. "I'm defending science!" "Their religion is about violence!" "Their religion is about changing the law to theocracy!"
Strangely, you'd think if these were the issues, the #1 concern for Americans, at least, would be the Christian right and the Tea Baggers- all of these folks have decades of attacking science in schools, in universities, and in government policies. They've bombed abortion clinics and killed people. They have repeatedly attempted to change laws, through direct action and perverse reinterpretation to remove freedom of religion... including the right to no subscribe to any religion at all.
Instead, we're to believe a minority religion in the US, with no cultural inroads into the mainstream US, or immediate political power is a bigger threat to our society? Meanwhile Tea Baggers are actually winning political seats?
4. The bigger problem
As much as this isn't about Islam, it's that this hate isn't based on actual reasons for hate, like having your family killed in religious wars - it's all manufactured hate... not even that, just painting targets and giving people excuses at this point. The reason this shit is kicking off is the economy, really. It's worse 9 years later because people are out of work, losing homes, and feeling like crap.
And, sure enough, once Islam stops being a target, they'll go find a new one, or an old one. Latinos are pretty high up on the list with all the immigration raids. And surely a high profile scandal will probably put black people back on the limelight. Perhaps China, with it's growing economy?
A friend of mine once put it, "Niggerization" - who gets to be the one they'll treat the shittiest and put on target? Her word stuck with me as much as the signs people had about "Sand Niggers" as soon as the war started. Funny enough, it highlights it terribly well- it's not that the hate has ended, it just means a new group is put down in the same category.
5. Well, we never meant to
And, naturally, once enough people have been killed, enough firebombings, lynchings, or whatever else will come of it, they'll say, "Oh, we didn't mean that, we don't <i>hate</i> them, we can't possibly be racist". And, as far as emotionally, because the hate was actual, real hate, they'll consider it to be true- after all, they were just doing something fun, something to blow off steam, and those people don't really matter anyway.
Socialized sociopathy- a complete erasure of empathy for the targeted group, and you just do the actions of hate, not for hate, per se, but because it was a thing to do.
This is basically the cycle we go through, over and over. A mass genocide on the continent. "We didn't -mean- to kill the Indians. We had no part in it." Slavery with hundreds of millions murdered. "We didn't mean to kill the blacks. We didn't -hate- them." etc.
Now it's the Muslims. People too morally degenerate to think beyond the mentality of elementary school bullies, unwilling to take responsibility for the inevitable violence and murder that will follow, but all too glad to goad others into throwing the first stone.
After all, as long as you can tell yourself you didn't start it, and that you didn't "hate them", you're totally ok, right?
Who has the religion of violence that pushes us back to the Dark Ages again?
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 07:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-20 04:22 am (UTC)It feels like some kind of weird confirmation, you know? Like I'm not totally crazy or a bad person for thinking "they think we're sand niggers" every time I hear someone be Islamophobic.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-20 05:24 am (UTC)- That the idea of being black, itself, is an insult
- That appending a prefix to it, somehow makes the person less of a bigot, or that they're somehow rationalized in using genocidal language, that they were looking for an excuse to do so.
- That somehow, we're supposed to overlook the fact of how quick people jumped to that language, that anyone could be the target next.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-27 06:22 pm (UTC)