Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Some reading on Norway

I'm working on a longer post on what happened in Norway in Finnish. I'll try to return to the topic in English later. For now, here's some recommended reading:

New York Times: Breivik and His Enablers
What has become clear in Oslo and on Utoya Island is that delusional anti-Muslim rightist hatred aimed at “multiculturalist” liberals can be just as dangerous as Al Qaeda’s anti-infidel poison: Breivik alone killed many more people than the four Islamist suicide bombers in the 7/7 London attack of 2005.


Guardian: Anders Breivik's chilling anti-feminism

Breivik's introduction is entirely given over to a half-baked history of political correctness, "no aspect" of which, he tells us, is "more prominent … than feminist ideology". The PC-project is bent on "transforming a patriarchy into a matriarchy" and "intends to deny the intrinsic worth of native Christian European heterosexual males". But more than that, it has succeeded. The "feminisation of European culture" has been underway since the 1830s, and by now, men have been reduced to an "emasculate[d] … touchy-feely subspecies".


The Nation: Europe's Homegrown Terrorists

Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.


New York Times: Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.


BBC: Norway and the politics of hate

Back in 1985, I was in the US reporting on the emergence of right-wing militias. They were springing up across the Mid-West. Some were little more than gun clubs. Others trained men in uniform.

They believed that their idea of America was under threat. Many saw the federal government in Washington as the enemy, staffed with officials who were betraying America's core values.

A strong strain of paranoia ran through their conversation and publications. I recall a man showing me a grainy photograph, claiming it proved there were secret Russian bases in Michigan.

Most of this reflected the margins of a society and could easily be dismissed. But the idea that his government was the real enemy worked away inside the mind of a young man called Timothy McVeigh. Sometime later he packed a van with fertiliser and diesel fuel and blew up the federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.


And, finally, The Colbert Report.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Janeane Garofalo Opens Her Mouth; Stupidity Emerges

But that's hardly news, because stupidity emerges every time she opens her mouth.  Here's her latest:

Janeane Garafolo says Tea Party is racist and Liberal Media is a myth

Janeane Garofalo's talent is a myth. Her Air America radio show sucked so badly, it was one of the reasons why Air America failed so spectacularly. Someone needs to tell this fugly wench that making idiotic and provably false inflammatory statements to get attention is not a suitable substitute for talent.  She's like the ugly, stupid girl in high school who couldn't be popular because of her looks or brains, so she had to resort to either whoring or name-calling to get attention.  She should have picked whoring--at least she might be good at that (although I can't imagine anyone paying to get close to that skank)--because the whole name-calling thing isn't working out so well.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Different ID cards for foreigners

According to Helsingin Sanomat, the new Finnish ID card project is getting some bad feedback from European anti-racism coalition ENAR. The new system will feature blue ID cards for Finnish citizens and brown ones for foreigners. Sweden's Nöjesguiden agreed and thought the project was amusing because of Finland's relatively low foreigner population. Finland's Hufvudstadsbladet also questioned the move.

Finnish nationalism being what it is, the social networks are awash with outrage. How dare they criticize us! The sad thing is that attitudes in this country have become so polarized that if someone even implies the word racism, people have a knee-jerk reaction to it and don't even bother to look at the issue. Why on earth should a foreign national living in Finland be forced to broadcast the fact that he's a foreign national? Just a few weeks ago, when Finland won the ice hockey world championship, foreigners and Swedish-speakers were attacked and threatened on the street for, well, being foreign.

"How can anyone possibly be opposed to something like this?" they ask on the social networks, as if they can't understand how it might be discriminating to make a certain part of the population carry distinguishing IDs. A few years ago, the same conversation was had when the Finnish police announced they would be stopping and searching "foreign-looking" people in Helsinki to ensure they were in the country legally. When it's foreigners who are involved, even people who are highly critical of the Finnish government and police will immediately leap to their motherland's defense, especially if it's criticized by foreigners like Swedes.

The real point is that in this atmosphere, it's a little odd to find Finnish officialdom making a move like this. There's no pressing need to introduce this scheme right now, in the middle of a very acrimonious social divide on immigration and racism. It makes you wonder if they're taking sides. And what's worse is the fact that it's almost certainly impossible to have an actual discussion about this, because a certain, very vocal, class of people in this country immediately fly off the handle at the least implication that something racist might happen in Finland.

There's a good Finnish proverb involving sticks and dogs that would work well here.