• acargitz@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    The “Right” harps on the fact that they are Syrians to somehow paint all Syrians, all Muslims, all immigrants with the same brush, stoking fears of population replacement and other such bullshit.

    The “Left” says that we have already laws for mob violence, apply them. Bad people who are Syrians exist just like bad people who are Italians exist and just like bad people who are Americans exist and bad people who are Canadians exist. There is zero reason to weaponize the bad behaviour of those bad people to enact discriminatory policies against an entire community. Just apply the existing law. Persecute these assholes for the homophobic hate crime they did. Why is that not enough? In fact, the only people who would say this would not be enough are people with a hate agenda of their own, i.e., the far right…

    • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      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.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Bro you did the thing right there.

        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.

        If you want to make it about “cultures” and “religions”, well, you’re offside. You’re extrapolating from a bunch of criminals to entire culture and an even larger religion. That’s bigotry and “the left” would be correct to call you out on it.

        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.

        This is basic shit.

        Ps. And no, the “aspects” caveat doesn’t work. We didn’t have a moral panic about antidemocratic aspects of Christianity because of Jan 6th. But it seems the far right loves to stir panic about “aspects” of Islam or brown people all the fucking time. 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.

      • Floey@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        I’m in multiple left circles and had literally never heard such a thing, this is a conservative strawman.

        • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          You’re either intentionally looking the other way without noticing or you’re in a bubble. You can literally just browse the comments under this post or this very thread to see examples of what I’m talking about