freediver wrote on Jan 16^th, 2017 at 7:49pm:


What do you think of your proposals, FD?

I'm curious.

I'm sorry, G, repeating the same answers is simply not good enough.

Ask him again, FD.

I don't think you've twigged that FD is just having a laugh, G. FD won't even answer whether he thinks his own proposition that white countries kicking out their Boongs could be anything other than racist.

FD's just desperately scrambling for an out. Remember, FD started this board in part to promote the policies of the Sustainability Party, a movement devoted to low (or no) immigration. He initially spent his time trying to cool the board's racists down, attempting to reason with self-confessed racists like Sprint. FD dropped this facade when he was confronted with the self-confessed Muslims, Abu and Falah. FD found his cause.

The anti-Islam cause fit FD's pitch perfectly. Rather than kicking out the tinted races, he focused on radical Muslims, and then just Muslims. When Abu and Falah left, FD found you. FD turned the tables on his previous "tolerant" stance and started defending the racists. Now, he seeks to excuse racism itself, tap dancing as he puts it, around racism's very existence.

FD has joined the racists at a time when racism has made a comeback. In the US, white hate-crime has taken over Muslim terrorism as the biggest threat to security. In Britain, we've seen Brexit, and in Australia, the rise of One Nation. None of these movements make a distinction between Muslim or non-Muslim - One Nation's origins lie in calling for a ban on all Asian immigration.  The Brexit campaign targeted Gypsies and Poles. In the US, the KKK has gone mainstream, and Trump, the newly elected president, targets blacks and Hispanics along with Muslims.

The issue of racism has not been so important in my lifetime, despite the fact that so much has been done to eradicate it. Australians are no longer predominantly racist, as they were in the 1970s, but then our cities are no longer predominantly Anglo. Multiculturalism has been a huge success in Australia and Australians have embraced it. We're left with a few racist rusted-ons, newly liberated through the anonymity of social media, and this is the "free speech" FD defends.

Most of it is false propaganda, hence the centrality of porkies. For an example, look no further than the old boy's fake statistics. The old boy borrowed them from one of Trump's tweets, and has since rejigged them. This is the "post-truth" world we now live in.

This is the game FD is playing, G, and he fully understands this. I have a sneaky suspicion that FD's agenda was racist to begin with - that his claim to liberalism was a cunning disguise. FD's defence of groups like the Australian Liberty Alliance comes too easily to FD for a mere racist conversion, and can someone ever convert to racism?

That's a question.

polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 17^th, 2017 at 2:02pm:


Come come, G. Why would someone spinelessly apologize for racists and racism? "Because he believes that standing up to them presents an unacceptable risk in terms of empowering Islam and its attack on our civilization" is too great a mouthful to have any resonance in truth.

There is only one answer to why someone would stick up for racists to the exclusion of all others. You know very well what that is.

But I'm curious: do you think a racist conversion is possible? Or do you think someone who becomes a racist secretly harboured xenophobia to begin with?

A wise friend, G, but racism isn't just prejudice. We all have heaps of that, including moi.

Racism is a belief that you're superior to others based on your race/culture/skin tone. But it goes further. On FD's site, racism is a daily rant against all things tinted. It's a hate-rally, where people come together to express their shrill fear and loathing for those they've never met. If you don't share the hate, you're an apologist, a luvvie - worse than the tinted races themselves because you let them in.

Here, racism is a call to ban them, kill them, nuke them. It celebrates death, relishing in every attack on the tinted, be it the invasion of Iraq or refugees locked up indefinitely in detention. This is the reverse of the "banality of evil", the phenomenon used to describe the defense of Adolf Eichmann - that he was simply obeying orders. The racists are demanding that our leaders get stuck into it. If our leaders don't, they're filthy apologists. The racists demand bannings, killings and nukings at the drop of a hat, and ridicule anyone who even questions their hyperbole.

This isn't just prejudice, it's an entire world view - alienated, abstracted, atomized. I'm sure we can all be desensitized enough to pull the trigger or turn the electricity up, but the racists here are the ones calling on us to do it. They show just how easy it is to start pogroms, lynch mobs and honour killings.

I understand what you're saying about prejudice and how easy it is to turn the reactionaries into faceless targets of hate. But it's hard not to. I've fought very hard over the past few years to use reason - it has rarely worked. The haters nearly always caricaturize themselves. Try suggesting something as simple as the law or the constitution. If you're not met with silence, you'll be called an apologist for suggesting basic constitutional rights should be upheld.

I could not begin to list the sorts of outlandish claims used to spread the message. Not even satire can match it. The lies, the excuses, the surreal justifications. The sorts of things said with a straight face - calls to carpetbomb the tinted races, detain all Muslims indefinitely, reintroduce torture - it's a completely different set of values to the Western tradition. And where does it come from? We live in a rich, privileged society, where war and oppression are unknown.

This is the Freeeedom FD goes to such lengths to avoid discussing. He'll chase you around for 20 pages asking you the same evasive questions, but he won't touch the subject of the kind of Freeeeedom he's defending. FD even refuses to discuss the next US president, and no wonder. In this new "post-truth" world, FD's been evading the question of porkies for at least 2 years. 

Herbie's fullness of time has come quicker than any of us imagined. I'd hate to think it comes down to taking sides, but when it comes down to supporting racist hatred and lies, it's hard not to. And yes, I'm aware that this certainly involves prejudice. It could well contain the seeds of fear and hate.

But it's not wacist.

polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 17^th, 2017 at 5:50pm:


X 2

Frank wrote on Jan 17^th, 2017 at 8:56pm:


Really??  I thought they were killing the bastards who were killing them in their Lands we have invaded.  Did I get that wrong?

Quote:


I gave a detailed response to this earlier, which you largely ignored. It actually goes something like this: racism is real, even if race is not. This is why your insistence that it can be based on what you described as 'fake' groups like religion or profession cheapen the very real experiences of the victims of genuine racism. Scientific attacks on the foundation of race do not give you licence to racialise people saying mean things about Islam. All they really mean is that races have blurry edges.

Quote:


You 'explained' that the hypothetical does not exist. Yet you still appear to insist that superiority is the deciding factor. Hence, lacking superiority, it is not racist by your definition. Feel free to change your definition once more Gandalf.

Quote:


Unless they were born stupid because their parents are related, right? Because then you would have no choice but to interpret it as a purebred race of recessive inbred retards (regardless of what was actually stated). You even discard your own idea of ignoring impossible cases to make this argument.

Quote:


If white people were actually smarter on average, would it cease to be racist to make policy based on this?

Quote:


Ah, so the deciding factor for what is racist is not something inherent in what the person says or does, but something that you read into their motives, based on whether you think it is racist?

What is the deciding factor for "borderline racism"?

Quote:


Or a religion or professional group, right? Is it racist to say doctors are intelligent?

Quote:


Contradicting yoruself constantly is not actually explaining anything. It has superiority, which you insist is the deciding factor, and it has the in group and the out group.

Quote:


In other words, you reject the hypothetical because it highlights the absurdity of your definition of race, and the irrelevance of what you insist is the 'deciding factor' (when you are not insisting something else is actually the deciding factor). You cannot conceive of some English person disliking tinted immigrants simply because they fear or dislike change.

Quote:


I have given you plenty, and you waffled on with some absolute garbage about relative benefit that most actual racists would have little concern for.

Quote:


Because I am specifically referring to ingroup-outgroup dynamics where a racial sense of greed, fear or conservatism is the key driver, in order to highlight the absurdity of your argument.

You insist that a sense of superiority could be the only reason for someone to deny basic rights to their fellow man on a group basis, yet people have been doing this since complex societies began, and for the most part it was driven by greed and self interest, without any regard for the basic rights of individuals from either the out group or the in group. To deny greed as a motivator is to deny human nature, which is what you are doing when you reject the very possibility of the hypotheticals I put forward. Inferioity is only necessary after you introduce rights-based ideologies as a justification for restricting rights. For much of human history mere survival, and later greed, was the key driver, and sufficient to justify the mass slaughter of the outgroup, and this still plays a role today.