There’s a very strange phenomenon in Western left wing circles where there’s a sizable portion that would go out of their way to defend these criminals and their behavior, and even go as far as attacking the victims, just because of their religious or ethnic background which they deem is beyond criticism and anybody who tries to call out these behaviors is racist. Calling out hateful aspects of cultures and religions and actually holding them accountable is not weaponizing anything, that’s just being principled.
The middle eastern immigrants who can in to Western countries in 1970s until the 2000s were mostly educated, affluent, secular, and had a desire to assimilate. The middle eastern immigrants who started coming during the 2010s until now are mostly uneducated, poor, religious extremist, and have zero desire to assimilate. There’s a pretty big shift in the pre and post Arab spring middle eastern immigrants. These immigrants we’re seeing now here in North America and Europe are the real representation of those societies and why they are the way they are.
I’m a first gen immigrants to the US from Iraq. Immigrants should 100% face consequences for their actions. Immigration is a PRIVILEGE, not a right. People who chose to move to Canada or whatever country have to respect the laws, culture, and customs of the country they’re moving to. If they’re not willing to assimilate or integrate then you get stuff like this. These types of attacks aren’t normal and we shouldn’t normalize them like you’re doing here by trying to coddle these people or give them special treatment because of their backgrounds. If their hateful because their culture or religion is hateful then we have to call them and take steps to ensure that we don’t have that hate spread here. If an immigrant commits a heinous crime, like these homophobes did, and they don’t have citizenship then they HAVE TO get deported. Otherwise there’s no law, order, justice, or accountability. Basically countries like Canada would be no more.
Actually fascism tends to be secular. The authoritarianism is derived from an extreme version of nationalism. The authoritarianism in theocracy is derived from religion. Fascism ≠ authoritarianism. There’s a lot of other authoritarian ideologies out there. Marxism is another example.
You’re being downvoted, but you’re absolutely correct. Anyone who defends islam either knows nothing about it or is a muslim who’s trying to muddy the reality.
If you condemn and criticize the individuals you would be right: these are vile people who acted out extremist hateful sexist violence. They suck, they should be arrested, tried and have the book thrown at them because their actions are disgusting.
This is what happens when you start sacrificing common sense in favor ideological dogma. See, sometimes issues go beyond individuals. When we see patterns emerging, we have to address the issues as societal problems. When you have one person burning down buildings you have horrid individual, when you have 1000 it’s a societal crises. While we have to criticize the individuals and hold them accountable for their actions, we also have to address the reasons why this is a trend to begin with so we can take steps to actually fix the issue.
You can’t do this red herring where you ignore the trends and the big picture and just have tunnel vision on the one instance. This is what conservatives try to do whenever there’s a school shooting. They’ll do everything but admit that guns are the problem. What you’re doing right now is the same as a conservative going “it’s not the guns, it’s mental health”, “you can’t say it’s guns because there are good gun owners”, or “why don’t we ban cars”. Come on dude, at least try to have a honest conversation about this.
Canadians as a whole are not violent islamophobes because some idiot shot up a mosque. Canadian culture is not vile and antisemitic because some other idiot shot up a Jewish school. The Christian religion as a whole is not antidemocratic just because some US evangelical trumpists did the January 6th thing. Same principle applies to Syrians or Muslims as a whole.
Are you really trying to virtue signal to me the ol’ classic “not all muslims”? At this point you have to be disingenuous. No shit, nobody is implying otherwise. You’re just trying to find every excuse to defend islam and homophobic cultures. No, criticizing a culture or religion is NOT accusing every single individual of that culture or religion of being whatever is criticized. If we follow your own line of logic then criticizing homophobia in the US makes you a bigot because not all Americans are homophobes… Not only is this stating the obvious which nobody is contesting, but it serves no purpose other than to distract and detract from the points being made.
And no, the “aspects” caveat doesn’t work. We didn’t have a moral panic about antidemocratic aspects of Christianity because of Jan 6th.
Wtf are you even talking about? We literally did. Not necessarily about Jan 6th because that wasn’t religiously driven, but we have moral panics about Christianity every other month. From book bans to abortion rights to erosion of church and state to whatever. We regularly criticize Christianity for it’s questionable teachings and culture… that’s why it’s presence has weakened so much over the years. Why is it so hard for you to be consistent and apply the same principles to other religions like islam?
But it seems the far right loves to stir panic about “aspects” of Islam or brown people all the fucking time.
Have you ever wondered why the cops didn’t actually do anything to stop the criminals here? How about the many other instances like it in Canada or the UK or Sweden or whatever? It’s because they’re scared of being called racist. This isn’t me making things up, this is an actual thing. Here’s the most famous example from the UK:
Over there they have these massive muslim gangs all over the country that have been systematically young girls for DECADES. The most infamous of these gangs happened in the city of Rotherham where the muslim gang raped over 1400 children for over 30 fucking years. The cops barely did anything about any of it because they were terrified of being called racist. Why? Because every time they try do something morons like you crawl out of the woodworks to call them racist form mobs, berate them, and jeopardize their jobs.
It’s not just the cops, the victims were shunned into silence too. Not by the criminals, but by the supposed “progressive” Labor politicians. For example, this ghoul publicly liked and retweeted a tweet that stated the following:
“Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.”
The worst part is that when you actually hear the stories of the victims, it is the most gut wrenching thing. You have little girls going home from school only to get kidnapped, beaten, and raped repeatedly. Some of the girls even got pregnant and gave birth to babies they were forced to have. Just when these young girls needed the human rights activists, the feminists, the progressives, the police, the politicians, the justice system by their side… they were abandoned by all them. These people either did nothing to not offend the mob or outright defended the criminals. Everything here is a part of the infamous Rotherham child abuse ring:
However, it should be noted that the raping is still going on today in that same city. It should also be known that Rotherham is NOT the only city. There’s literally dozens of other examples of the same exact thing happening:
The reason why I brought all of this up is to demonstrate how this IS about culture and religion, how it IS a societal issue, how it IS something that goes beyond individuals. Those girls are all humans who had their childhoods robbed from them, some of them might never recover. It’s truly is sad. What’s worse, is that the same issues that prevented the Rotherham case from being brought to light are happening again and again. All of this could have been prevented if people like you stopped this virtue signaling crusade and actually held a set of principles for once. Can you imagine if all the groups I previously mentioned in the UK stuck by their values, called out the problematic aspects of islam and homophobic cultures right away, held the homophobes accountable for their hate, and actually stood by the victims immediately? Perhaps thousands of those girls wouldn’t have ended up as statistics for this ongoing tragedy.
These lesbian girls are the same. They went through something that’s truly horrid, and instead of the LGBT groups, progressives, cops, and so many other supposed allies coming to their rescue… they all instead rushed to victim blame and defend the criminals. These girls aren’t the only LGBT victims in Canada to these types of incidents. Why? Why are we letting people live in fear like this? Why are we not defending the victims? Why are we not calling the vile aspects of islam and islamic cultures? Why are we not deporting these criminals? How many more victims do there need to be? How many more attacks? How many more traumatized souls? What I am saying is so well documented and there are so many examples, that I could give you as many sources and examples as you could possible want. I just want to understand what it will take for you to actually come to your senses and admit that maybe, just maybe, there is a problem with islam, there is a problem with homophobia form islamic cultures, that maybe we need to address it as a society?
You want to talk about “aspects” without being a useful idiot for the far right? Raise voices from within that community, who will know exactly how to walk that fine line.
Just an FYI, I actually lived in Syria (I lived in a suburb of Damascus called Jaramana from 2006-2009). There’s literally no way you know more about this than me. You’re trying to lecture from a place of ignorance. I’m 100% certain you have no idea what a sahih hadith is or what verse 4:34 says in the quran or what a fatwa is without looking them (which you should). Seriously, you know absolutely nothing about islam, islamic cultures, how muslims view homosexuality, or anything really. The image you have of islam is not based in reality.
I hate to break it to you, but there’s no such thing as a gay muslim. The religion is pretty explicit about homosexuality not being accepted. If you’re gay then muslims don’t view you as one of their own if you claim you are one. The polls pretty heavily back this notion.
Blaming religion for making people assholes robs them of their agency, letting them off the hook for being assholes organically and allowing the institution to shoulder the blame.
They’re not being assholes organically. They hate gays because their religions instructs them to hate gays. Your ignorance on islam doesn’t change the fact that islam is what drove these parasites to beat up these girls. Homophobia in islam runs really deep. The faster we address, the less of these instances we’ll have in the future. The more you rush to defend islam, the more people will end up being victims of such attacks.
Lol you’re the one virtue signaling and trying this into something it’s not. I’m giving you actual data backed points about a measurable problem and pointing out how you’re making it worse.
I wrote multiple times that the perpetrators here should have the book thrown at them. Existing hate crime laws are sufficient for that.
And I very explicitly wrote mutliple times, that you’re master plan is idiotic because it doesn’t actually address the root cause of the problem. Clearly, the current hate crime laws don’t mean shit when these types of incidents are happening and in increasing frequency, not to mention the criminals got away because the cops didn’t do shit.
And to cut to the chase, all your long tirade amounts to what exactly? Practically, in practice, in terms of actual policies that you want to see enacted, what are actually you advocating for, what do you want done?
Brief list of common sense policies:
Ban all foreign funding to religious institutions within the country
Deport any non citizen residing in the country immediately if they committed a serious crime
Increase integration and assimilation programs for migrants
Change the national narrative about diversity from a mosaic to something more successful like a melting pot
Make it policy for the local police department to explicitly stand in solidarity of the victims in publicly circulated cases like this
Require secularism and liberal values to be taught at all religious views
Ban gender segregation at all educational institutions
Explicitly iterate that blasphemy and criticism of islam and other religions is NOT a hate crime, but a fundamental part of free speech
Establish a system to make it easier for children and women to more easily report domestic violence and abuse at home and quickly receive help, and add support in languages where islam and other radical religions are more prominent
Establish a quickly accessible and reliable system to tip authorities about extremism that may lead to violence
Literally any of this beats your master plan of doing nothing to address the issue at a societal level and putting your head in the sand.
Because we can argue about whether 1 billion Muslims, 2 million of them in Canada are bad people or not until next spring, but ultimately it comes down to good or bad policy. Say your piece.
If this all your two brain cells managed to get out of what I said then I think I can understand why you’re position is the way it is, and I have no interest in wasting my time any further.
Okay, let’s suppose this plan succeeds… Then what? Are we going to replace the court? Who said the new judges are going to be more or less the same regardless of political affiliation? And what exactly is there to stop the opposition from doing the same thing?
There seems to be more systematic issues involved.
This is a pretty thoughtful response, I appreciate you taking the time write it. I agree in spirit with what AOC wants to accomplish. Some of those judges (Clarence Thomas) shouldn’t be anywhere near the Supreme Court. My fear is that this plan only works if the impeachments proceeding are successful, they manage to successfully replace the current justices with new ones, AND enact meaningful change in a short period of time to make that a situation like this doesn’t happen again. If they fail at any of these things, then the Republicans, who don’t respect precedent, process, or the rule of law, would just weaponize the impeachments to remove the justices and replace them with their own whenever they get a majority in government.
This is only true if you think it’s true. Pepe serves as a template for internet culture and can have anything projected on to it. Pepe has been used to push evil views like Marxism and Fascism to pragmatic views like universal healthcare and freedom of the press to non political things like complaining about video games and the weather.
“everything I don’t like is propaganda” - Typical Lemmy user
No, what I said is true. You’re Canadian, how do you not know this?
Source: CBC
Tens of thousands of Canadians are emigrating from Canada to the United States and the number of people packing up and moving south has hit a level not seen in 10 years or more, according to data compiled by CBC News.
There’s nothing new about Canadians moving south of the 49th parallel for love, work or warmer weather, but the latest figures from the American Community Survey (ACS) suggest it’s now happening at a much higher rate than the historical average.
Actual reasons cited in the article: Lower taxes, higher wages, affordable housing, dislike of Trudeau’s politics, cheaper groceries, increasing crime rates, increasingly disappointing healthcare system, and warm weather
Whether you agree or disagree with these reasons is irrelevant. The point is that trend is there and it’s accelerating. So to your tongue in cheek point about Americans mass migrating north, that likely won’t happen because the opposite trend is occurring as we speak.
But it is. A symbol can mean different things in different context. For example, this hand gesture 👌 means okay in Western cultures but means something more insulting and offensive in Arab culture. Does that mean one is right and is the one and only representation of the gesture? Of course not. Same here. Swastikas have been around for thousands of years across many different cultures and has many different meanings. It’s just one variation of the symbol that ended up being used by the nazis and is offensive to most people. It’s silly and rather close minded to try to disregard all these disregard all these different context and meanings when many of them have been around for longer than the nazi variation. The principle applies here.
I’m not arguing for or against, I’m just pointing out the fact that emigration trend from Canada to the US is happening and it is at a 10 year high. I merely pointed out the reasons cited in the article as I clearly stated.
I don’t care, my point still stands. Your hatred of America or love for Canada is irrelevant, and so are your assumptions as to why people are moving (even they literally give you the reasons in the article). The fact remains that emigration from Canada to the US is at a 10 year high, is far above the historical average, and is increasing.
In the same year (2022), only 10k Americans immigrated to Canada. This is only 8% of the number of Canadians who emigrated to the US (126k), despite the US having 8.5x as many people.
Please remember that this particular groyper meme is a literal copy of a Trump 2016 meme with the word “Trump” replaced with “Biden” and was deployed regularly by the alt-right
So what? You have to stop doubling down on this idiotic argument because it is getting ridiculous. Guilt by association and purity are heavily frowned upon and criticized throughout history for a reason. Different things have different meanings in different contexts, and you can’t judge people without proper contexts and for things they’re not or didn’t do. This should be obvious, but for some reason it isn’t.
This meme and others like it all originate from 4chan and the other imageboards similar to it, and these boards are responsible for internet’s most famous memes. Just think about what has come out of 4chan for a second:
Wojak and its variations
Pepe and its variations
LOLcats
Pedobear
Anonymous
Rickrolling
The popularization of Chocolate Rain
Greentext
Rage comics
The ungodly origin of “Bronies”
The Shia Labeouf fiasco
The 4chan-Tumblr wars
Pool’s closed
They are quite literally the foundation of internet culture. Everybody who grew up on the internet was used or at least enjoyed any of these. These imageboards are built on the idea that the internet is the wild west, where everybody no matter how tame or extreme, no matter how good or evil, and no matter how pragmatic or delusional can get together and shitpost. And guess what? 4chan and these other imageboards were ALWAYS cesspools filled pedos, Marxists, neo nazis, anarchists, racial supremacists, misogynists/misandrists, and so on, but at the same time, they’re also filled with a lot of normal people. Regardless, if we follow your logic, which is that anybody who has ever used any of these memes is a neo nazi by proxy then anybody who took part in mainstream Internet culture over the past 20 years is a neo nazi… which is obviously ridiculous.
Keep in mind, you’re right the groyper meme did originate from neo nazis but so did many other famous memes. I mean the latest famous variation of wojak, the chud, originated from some Marxist imageboard. Marxists are just as vile as neo nazis, does that mean anybody who used the chudjak meme is a Marxist? No, that’s stupid. The meme was started by Marxists, but it was used by a lot of other people, including those making fun of Marxists.
The point that I’m trying to make here is that memes serve as templates. Templates without content don’t mean anything, they’re just a structured blank document. Just like how symbols have different meanings in different contexts, so do these memes. If OP posted this same meme saying something like “Putin is still a great leader” then OP would be a fascist… but he’s not. His meme is about Biden.
Like seriously, do you honestly believe that OP is some secret neo nazi because he used a cartoon frog meme to make a pro Biden post? Even worse, do you seriously think that I’m also a secret neo nazi by proxy for pointing out that symbols and templates mean different things in different contexts? This is where you start crossing the line from a valid critic into a paranoid schizo or McCarthyist virute signaler.
A lesbian couple was brutally beaten by group of men in Halifax. Police still haven't filed charges (www.advocate.com)
AOC wants to impeach SCOTUS justices following Trump immunity ruling (www.businessinsider.com)
Stay Mad, Tankies (lemmy.world)
Take a gander at this (lemmy.world)