Straya!

[Brian Peacock]

To make a minority group feel safe we need to restrict the rights and police the language of everybody else, thus raising the temperature of community discord and making that minority feel even less safe.

So where have we picked up the idea that the psychological or physical security of a minority group depends on a kind of zero sum, where protecting the rights and well-being of one section of the community can only be achieved by legislating a diminution of the rights and well-being of the rest of the community?

Similarly, why do we think that a particular word only ever has a single meaning and therefore is only ever used in a specific, negative and threatening manner?



The Right has spent decades decrying exactly this kind of language absolutism as 'political correctness gone mad' - usually in cases where the charges language was being sinisterly (albeit mostly socially) legislated against were constructed entirely from straw. One might think that the proverb "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" has become the justifying basis of political persecution.

[rainbow]

IMG_20251217_161918_245.jpg

How does Bernie know they were innocent?

Maybe they were IOF sympathisers, or potential IOF combatants. Maybe even having undergone training in gentilecide...

[Sean Hayden]

To make a minority group feel safe we need to restrict the rights and police the language of everybody else, thus raising the temperature of community discord and making that minority feel even less safe.

So where have we picked up the idea that the psychological or physical security of a minority group depends on a kind of zero sum, where protecting the rights and well-being of one section of the community can only be achieved by legislating a diminution of the rights and well-being of the rest of the community?

Similarly, why do we think that a particular word only ever has a single meaning and therefore is only ever used in a specific, negative and threatening manner?



The Right has spent decades decrying exactly this kind of language absolutism as 'political correctness gone mad' - usually in cases where the charges language was being sinisterly (albeit mostly socially) legislated against were constructed entirely from straw. One might think that the proverb "what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander" has become the justifying basis of political persecution.

In my experience it is antisemitism. But to say that these people are hateful in the same way as an American Klansman, or German Nazi, is dishonest, and wickedly so. Certainly anyone chanting "from the river to the sea" was longing for the day Israel was destroyed (I'm obviously not hanging out with a lot of young people chanting this). But people are complicated; those same chanters could also acknowledge that "jews aren't a problem". --go figure, people are strange...

What I'd probably focus on are the reasons for these feelings. If you want to say it's never okay to feel a certain way then in my opinion you can't be taken seriously, you're a hopeless bullshitter. Hate is a normal reaction to being treated like vermin, and given our capacity for empathy, we can expect to take on some of that hate as witnesses as well. This goes both ways.

The solution is to stop killing. You'll never police our natures out of existence, especially by wagging your finger at some other guy who's just like you. Just stop killing, extend rights and protections to everyone, and police the remaining killers long enough, and then maybe you can get to something like a lasting peace. You'll have to do all that while hating the other guy for awhile of course...

[Svartalf]

it's not antisemitism. a) the israelis are really commiting atrocities. b) the palestinians are fully as semitic as the jews.

[Sean Hayden]

Nonsense, hate ain't that tidy. If it were, we wouldn't even need to have this conversation.