for those who haven’t read the woman’s FB post, here is a clip:
“…were attacked on Saturday night by a group of 7-10+ middle eastern men, believed to be from Syria, aged 18-25”
Canada has a lot of issues at this moment, stemming in part from increased immigration in the last 3 years (causing housing issues, etc). This sort of event, “brown people beating up white women” could be a dangerous racial catalyst.
I hope this gets dealt with as a single incident, but given current affairs, I am not optimistic.
Immigration is such a fucked up issue almost everywhere. You’ve got the right blaming everything on brown people and the left claiming all immigrants are just peace loving pacifists looking for a better life.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
You cannot tell me you support equality for all when your religion makes your wife walk 5 steps behind you in a beekeeper suit at 30c weather while you get to strut around in shorts and flip-flops.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
First generation migrants tend to be, in most receiving countries, less likely to commit crime than native-born population.
http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Bersani_2012.pdf
They found that immigrant men and women were less criminally active than native-born men and women in regard to self-reported crime, being stopped by the police, being charged with a crime, and having contact with a criminal justice agency. This pattern of lower levels of criminal activity among immigrants compared to the native-born held in models controlling for key background characteristics including a variety of educational, employment, and family history measures.
The problem comes with latter generations, if the receiving country isn’t doing an adequate job at integrating them. If the parents work really long hours, aren’t capable of spending much time with their kids, have trouble to pay kindergarten and have trouble teaching their kids the local language, if the kids are victimized by racist bullying at school, have less means to do well academically and land a good job, and are generally otherized by society, they’re at a larger risk getting alienated and engaging in antisocial behavior and even crime.
So, if you don’t want migration to be a problem, invest in public schooling (including kindergarten), offer classes teaching the local language to adults, empower unions, protect labor, and fight racism.
While the study has some value you cannot compare immigration from South America in US to immigration in Europe from North Africa and Middle East. People are people, but values, culture and religions are very different.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
America is hardly a country of “equality for all” sadly
Edit: This was literally 4 posts down
This happened in Canada, what does the usa have to do with this? This same thing is playing out over in the EU as well, and everyone here is wondering how the right is gaining political growth…this is why. People inherently do not want groups that come over and violently force their beliefs on the population.
This happened in Canada, what does the usa have to do with this? This same thing is playing out over in the EU as well…People inherently do not want groups that come over and violently force their beliefs on the population.
Maybe if the first group of countries stopped their centuries old “tradition” of doing exactly that to the rest of the world (and on a scale no immigrant could ever imagine inflicting, even if they were so inclined), there wouldn’t be so many people fleeing “developing” nations and war zones in the first place?
I mean, you’re a racist xenophobe so I don’t expect logic would mean much to you, you just want confirmation that brown Muslim people are violent by nature and that they’ve come over there to take your job and rape “your” women), but that doesn’t change reality (which is that your job is at risk because of capitalists, and white men are by far the largest demographic of rapists and other criminals, despite our “justice” systems doing their darndest to over represent minorities in prisons) , nor the fact that almost all of the supposed problems our “developed” world countries have with immigration are at the very least 98% self inflicted and could be resolved if only our governments didn’t treat, and brainwash the population to treat “foreigners” as their scapegoat.
You’re being manipulated by the oldest trick in the book, the fact that you’ve taken the propaganda on so enthusiastically is something you should work out with yourself, rather than taking it out on the most convenient target those in power have marked for you.
Lol you have no clue who I am, blind I am not. Your ignorance to the subject is not something that gives you a pass. Islam is not a peaceful religion, they’ve been fighting in that part of the world way before even the US existed. Right now, in today’s world it is the most violent of religions. It is oppressive to women and lgbtq+ persons and is a current stain on the world. Your whataboutsim does not negate these points.
People inherently do not want groups that come over and violently force their beliefs on the population.
Agreed.
To me, though, there’s a bigger problem with people already here who are violently forcing their beliefs o to others.
US has to do with everything, since facts don’t matter, only outrage
Being far from perfect doesn’t mean you have no values.
As with most issues the truth is in the middle and any immigration policy should absolutely demand that any immigrant coming into a country assimilate and fully support our values of equality for all.
Plenty of born Canadians do not support these principles at all
I agree, and it goes both ways. I was taking to a Mexican immigrant yesterday who hasn’t been home to see his mother in more than 20 years as he doesn’t have the ability to cross the border, and she has continuously been denied visas without explanation.
There’s a lot of shit the US puts immigrants through as they walk on the edge of being allowed to exist here. My opinion is that we should both open our borders, and document the people who come through.
Why are they believed to be from Syria?
Police said one man stayed and made a statement, in the US at least this means identifying yourself, so they have a likely reliable way to identify the men involved
I hope this gets dealt with as a single incident, but given current affairs, I am not optimistic.
Genuine question. Is it a single incident though?
There have been a lot of reports of issues with people coming to western countries and not holding the same standards of respect for women.
I think it should be dealt with as a single issue iff it is a single issue. If it isn’t a single issue why should it be treated as such?
I don’t think a lot of Syrians were allowed into Canada as much as Germany and Sweden (at least proportionately in the latter case).
Violent people should be brought to justice, this is unacceptable.
There are many Muslim or Islamic immigrants who live in Western countries just fine, what happened here? Many Muslim and Islamic immigrants are LGBT+.
The root cause of the issue in this incident should be examined, and if all else fails violent immigrants should be deported.
I work with middle eastern guys who are like this, they hide this side of themselves when I’m around (white guy) but it comes out when my female coworkers are alone. It’s common enough that I’ve heard about it from multiple people. But when I’m around they’re great and I consider them good work friends.
It’s hard facing this as a lefty. I met a Muslim European colleague at an all hands in tel aviv during pride a few years ago. Went for super late night constitutional with a few other internationals including fellow Americans and the whole city was alive and really queer. In depth conversation with this otherwise really nice guy about how he would minimum believe mental illness, maybe disown, his daughters for being gay or trans. I understood it’s religion like anti abortion and I’ll never persuade him and didn’t argue, just shared perspectives and asked questions.
It’s not hard at all to face this as a leftist. You can acknowledge that homophobia and sexism are deeply rooted in Islamic religions while also recognizing that not every adherent is guilty of either. Pretending something isn’t true because it’s not pretty doesn’t benefit anyone except those who would utilize the blind eye to continue to do harm to society.
What’s difficult about it?
Criminals can be victims, victims can be criminals. There is no rule that groups humans into two groups. Oppressed and oppressor with zero movement between the groups. Instead humans just go around, get hit, and hit. Sometimes they avoid hurting people because they can’t, sometimes it is because they won’t.
I have zero problems understanding that some Muslims have been mistreated by the West is one fact and a totally seperate fact is some Muslims would honor kill a LGBT person. Seperate facts.
The root cause is Islamic conservatism.
Root cause is religion which devalues this life for a hypothetical next one
Maybe? I guess I want to know what efforts are made for integration. If you treat people as subhumans, they will hate their fellow countrymen
What is it like to be an adult with no agency?
atheism is the answer. until we as a whole reject religion, these incidents will be recurring.
I know homophobes that are atheists. while religion being gone would decrease it, do not expect it to be gone just because of that. People will always have issues with people different than they are.
yes, but with religion out of the way, we can implement better education to reduce ‘otherism’ bias. i am convinced that the only obstacles stopping us from being better humans are all rooted in BS fairy tales.
You can be convinced, you will be wrong though. Religion is a means of justifying otherism, not the origin of it. People will just create another bunch of bullshit to justify why they aren’t bad people.
Secularism has caused two world wars and we’re heading for a third.
how many wars has religion caused?
So maybe the issue isn’t religion or the absence there of, but that shitty people will find excuses to justify their shittyness. That would make focusing on religion a waste of time.
so then what do you focus on as a cure for humanity?
Laws, enforcement (what’s being asked for here), and education.
How many wars has secularism caused?
not nearly as fucking many as religion has caused. are you seriously advocating for a more religious world?
Lol what? You are delusional. I’m not sure Orthodox Slavs would agree that WW1 and the subsequent Russian Civil War were “secular” wars considering most propoganda from that time was highly religious and they were seen as “holy wars” by both Slavs and Germans. The Ottomans literally were a Sharia state and the Sultan framed the war as a Jihad against the enemies of Islam. There was deep religious subtext in WW1 from nearly all the major European powers.
Both world wars were caused mostly by nationalism/ethnic conflict and recent history/economic problems. Secularism had literally not a single thing to do with it. Where exactly do you get this “WW1 and WW2 were caused by secularism” delusion from?
While true they won’t have a belief system that backs it up, it won’t have the power behind it.
There are smart homophobes. They use science, however flawed it is, to promote their arguments. Cutting out religion would take care of the few vocal people who genuinely believe being gay is against their religion but it definitely wouldn’t take care of the larger problem which has always been xenophobia.
No one is going to vote for science, give me a break. You don’t drive people to the polls based on a study or a syllogism, you get people to vote for you based on FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Religion is freaken awesome at this.
What are you talking about? Nobody mentioned politics in this thread.
They will just create a different one, like the atheists that are homophobic have.
Yes nothing ever happens
Doesn’t work. USSR murdered and prisoned both religious people and gay people alike. The answer is not being a fucking cockwomble, which is admittedly more easily done if you’re an atheist, but by no means is a guarantee.
agreed! but the path to not being a cockwomble aligns pretty well with the goals of a reason based, humanitarian, secular society.
if you don’t agree, what’s your path towards our common goal?
Don’t think you solve the problem of intolerance with bigotry towards religious people.
The article doesn’t mention anything about the group of men being religious, you’re just using this as an opportunity to attack religion because that’s something you hate.
Hatred doesn’t solve anything.
Not necessarily. Plenty of chill religious people and unchill atheists. Russian homophobia, for instance, is generally secular.
as it was under Stalin.
Correct
Well those Jehovah witnesses weren’t going to ship themselves to Siberia.
Some call it divine intervention by the state.
We were talking about homophobia. The concentrated effort to suppress religiosity is a whole other can of worms.
i’d ship every person that insists on their religion over science to some hellhole to rot away. building a better world now saves future generations form suffering. the payoff is immeasurable.
What if they’re Indigenous pagans?
even them. we’re a global society now. unless a group of people wants to live completely disconnected from the rest of the world, we cannot proceed as a global society if we’re not all on the same page.
EDIT: keeping traditions and preserving a cultural heritage is not the same as believing and abiding by a non-scientific set of beliefs. there are nuances to your question, but i provided a non-nuanced answer.
7 decades ago…
Really? So why is that Krill East Orthodox Shaman announcing he hates gays every single week?
Also show me the religious Muslim who isn’t a homophobe
Up until fairly recently, Orthodoxy was not a strong influence on Russian life.
According to this Guardian article, British Muslims have no chill, but more than a few Muslims on the mainland are chill with gays, particularly in France.
You seem very centered on Abrahamic religions. Pretty much all Western neopagans are tolerant of homosexuals. Francis Cabral, a Jesuit missionary, recounts with disgust about how homosexual relations were tolerated by Japanese Buddhists. Hsing Yun, a Taiwanese Buddhist who died last year, specifically said that homosexuals must be tolerated. Haitian Voodoo has two deities associated with homosexuality. Various indigenous religions in America have similarly tolerant views, and the term “two-spirit” comes from them.
Up until fairly recently, Orthodoxy was not a strong influence on Russian life.
Someone should have informed my grandmother and all her old friends of this fact, since they were evidently confused.
You seem very centered on Abrahamic religions
And?
- This is a few individuals. These individuals are old and thus in the group that is most religious. In another response in this thread I linked a study by Levada showing that for most Russians, religion is either minimally important or not a part of their life at all.
- Fukur said we will never be free from homophobia until everyone rejects religion.
I am tried of pulling teeth with you. Make your case
I did. In another comment in this thread, I put in the effort of writing a multi-paragraph comment with citations.
is it really, though? provide some evidence. and if it is, do you have a better solution to reduce bias?
“cutting off people’s pinkies will reduce global warming”
“People with missing pinkies contribute just as much to global warming”
“Do they really though? Provide some evidence. And if true do you have a better solution to reduce global warming?”
People don’t need to have an alternative plan ready to go in order to point out that yours is ineffective.
so you don’t think that a secular society is better for people, animals, and the planet than a religious one?
I don’t think whether people are religious or secular is a relevant metric for people, animals, or the planet. Shitty people exist in both groups and will be shitty regardless.
well, one path is based on reason and logic. the other is based on fairy tales. which path is more likely to produce the best result?
Anti - vaxxers are based on fairy tales but claim to be based on reason and logic. Religion is not the problem, education is.
Okay :)
The old homophobic laws of Russia, rooted in religion, were repealed under Lenin (Khoroshilova 2017). The reintroduction of crackdowns of homosexuals began during Stalin (ibid.). The Comintern began linking homosexuality to fascism and moral degeneracy under Stalinist leadership (Healey 2001, p. 183). Eventually, the USSR banned sodomy due to a conversation between Iagoda and Stalin, with Iagoda linking homosexuality to counterrevolution, degeneracy, corruption of the youth, and pedophilia (ibid., p. 184-187). This was then reinforced in propaganda by Gorky, who famously said “Destroy the homosexuals - Fascism will disappear” (ibid., p. 189-190).
I will skip over legal changes of most of the post-Stalinist era of the USSR, as they matter little in this context. What does matter is that the USSR continued to be strongly antitheistic and anticlerical. As a consequence, religiosity isn’t intense in Russia, and many aren’t religious at all (Agapeeva 2021).
Now let us look at modernity. Putin is allegedly religious, but his dislike of homosexuals is definitely secular in nature.
Analysis of his homophobic comments and the justifications of anti-gay laws reveal the same preoccupations of Stalin and Gorky. The law against being gay in public was described as preventing the propaganda of homosexuality towards children (Roberts 2013). In an interplay with nationalism, the LGBT movement is seen as an influence from the degenerate West, bent on corrupting the Russian youth. This is best seen in the designation of prominent Russian gay activists and organizations as foreign agents (Human Rights Watch 2021) or the use of the English word “gender” to describe things they despise.
Note how at no point have the protagonists of this story described homosexuality as a sin or invoked God. Indeed, the first half of this text is dedicated to Leninists.
Anecdotally, I see this in my personal life as a Russian emigre. Many people in my family hold minor homophobic views, framed typically as disgust, seen universally as Western and liberal in character. All of the Russians I have personally heard expressing a disgust or dislike of homophobia are atheists.
Now for the alternative solution:
According to Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), the three main ways of reducing prejudice against a group is through increasing understanding of that group, lessening anxiety about the group, and improving empathy towards that group, with the second two being stronger factors. Contact with the group accomplishes all three. This is supported anecdotally by tales of bigots changing their positions when they found out their own loved ones were gay.
One should note that a lack of empathy and high levels of anxiety about boogeymen are the hallmarks of a conservative worldview.
Therefore, combatting homophobia is best done through increasing visibility, which is the function of “outness” and pride parades, and through combatting conservativism and the reactionary gender roles that led to the birth of homophobic attitudes in the first place. This would in turn entail a battle against class society in general, but that is a discussion for another time.
Works Cited:
Khoroshilova, Olga. 2017. “1917 Russian Revolution: The gay community’s brief window of freedom”. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330
Healey, Dan. 2001. “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent”. University of Chicago Press.
Agapeeva, Kseniya. 2021. “Religiosity During the Pandemic”. Levada.ru. https://www.levada.ru/2021/04/14/religioznost-v-period-pandemii/
Roberts, Scott. 2013. “Vladimir Putin says anti-gay Russian laws are about ‘protecting children’”. Pink News. https://www.thepinknews.com/2013/06/26/vladimir-putin-says-anti-gay-russian-laws-are-about-protecting-children/
Human Rights Watch. 2021. “Statement by Russian and International Human Rights Organizations in Support of Russian LGBT Rights Activists under Attack”. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/19/statement-russian-and-international-human-rights-organizations-support-russian-lgbt
Pettigrew, Thomas F., and Linda R. Tropp. 2008. “How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators”. European Journal of Social Psychology 38 (6): 922-934. doi:10.1002/ejsp.504.
Now for the alternative solution:
According to Pettigrew and Tropp (2008), the three main ways of reducing prejudice against a group is through increasing understanding of that group, lessening anxiety about the group, and improving empathy towards that group, with the second two being stronger factors. Contact with the group accomplishes all three. This is supported anecdotally by tales of bigots changing their positions when they found out their own loved ones were gay.
One should note that a lack of empathy and high levels of anxiety about boogeymen are the hallmarks of a conservative worldview.
Therefore, combatting homophobia is best done through increasing visibility, which is the function of “outness” and pride parades, and through combatting conservativism and the reactionary gender roles that led to the birth of homophobic attitudes in the first place. This would in turn entail a battle against class society in general, but that is a discussion for another time.
do you think this approach is easier within the context of a religious society or a secular one? the beginning of your statement opens with “while rooted in religious doctrine”.
i’m sorry, but you have an inherent bias towards secular society as a russian emmigrant. you grew up in an authoritarian society masked as a secular one. you should at least acknowledge this. it might not discredit you to say so.
I have not used the word “doctrine” at any point in my comment. If I had to guess, you’re referring to the “old laws” from the opening paragraph. These old laws are from Tsarist times.
You contrast secular and authoritarian societies as opposites. They are not necessarily so. A society can be both.
When you ask if my approach would be easier in a secular or religious society, you are mistaken in how you construct the question. First, a secular society does not preclude religiosity among its members. Second, the optimal approach would be a pluralist one.
Homophobia and Atheism aren’t mutually exclusive to one another, hell I know plenty of Atheist Transphobes… some of whom used to be gay allies until they were radicalized by the Alt Right.
anecdotal.
What makes you think this group of men were religious in the first place?
just a hunch kid
So you’re being anecdotal?
really just providing a bad faith answer in a bad faith argument.
let’s start over. do you think a secular society is better for the modern world than a religious one?
Replying with just the word “anecdotal” is bad faith.
So is assuming this attack was motivated by religion instead of by a group of assholes.
Let’s start over: what happened here was terrible, shouldn’t be allowed, and it’s absurd that no one has been charged when police already interviewed one of the assailants and so should know who they are.
Instead of getting distracted by some secular vs religious debate that might not even be relevant, let’s focus on pressuring the police to do their damn job.
There is a really funny South Park episode about this… Bottom line is assholes will be assholes with or without religion, which is just a convenient excuse for assholery.
We don’t actually know this, just because one southpark episode depicts it happening like that doesn’t mean it would. Religion has a lot of archaic beliefs that actively harm people. It would be a lot harder for someone to be motivated to hurt someone if they didn’t believe they had a reason to justify it.
There were assholes before religion. Putting an emphasis on it being the problem is naive, imo. History is full of secular assholes. I.e. nazis.
What are you talking about? Nazis were very religious…
This is from their wiki article: “Nazi Germany was an overwhelmingly Christian nation. A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era[1] after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia[2] into Germany, indicates[3] that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig[4] (lit. “believing in God”),[5] and 1.5% as “atheist”.”
Just because it was the dominant religion in Germany at the time doesn’t mean that Nazism equated with religiosity. In fact, Hitler did not like religion being a potential rival to his power. The Nazi doctrine was very humanist, and drew,a lot of influence from science at the time. For example, the survival of the fittest mantra that had been popularized from Darwin’s studies was misappropriated by Nazi as part of their eugenics philosophy…
We kinda do though. There have been countries like USSR, North Korea, China, Cambodia, etc, that have been run by atheists. Being atheist most definitely doesn’t prevent people from being assholes.
but assholes are far and few when people aren’t deluded by religion. are you people actually arguing in favor of a religious society?
This sounds like something a member of the United Atheist Alliance would say.
Fk’n splitters.
Is it weird that I’m impressed by how minor their injuries are?
A significantly broken nose can be life altering, especially if it’s too swollen to set right away, don’t get me wrong, but they both walked away.
If I was in a fight with multiple men and I ended up on the ground, I don’t think I’m walking away. I say that as a 178cm woman who’s stronger than most.
I dunno. I read it after seeing your comment and it suprised by your assessment. Black eyes take forever to heal. They have to see that every day in the mirror for weeks while also trying to deal with the trauma of the attack.
I think it’s great they walked away, but then again, doesn’t seem like the kind of situation where it’s a group of people looking to maim or kill
I got punched in the face at 24yr, and it never fully recovered. My eye is ok, but any time there’s the slightest bit of facial swelling - tired, allergies, etc. the cheek under that eye pouches up and droops markedly.
I’m absolutely not minimizing their injuries, but I would expect myself to die in that situation. They handled themselves much better in the fight than I think I would.
I’m surprised how serious you take black eyes
The story could easily be “racist woman gets punched in face after saying something”
What? Where does it say at all in the article that these woman were racist to the guys before being attacked?
Apparently the women started it, got hit, then the attack was over and everything was civil when police arrived
That isn’t indicative of an attack, and as highlighted above the damage done is pretty minimal for 10 on 2
However the side you take will change the version of events you believe. My point was just that the media is taking a biased approach to the story and could flip it the other way if they wanted
the article clearly says the men made sexually degrading insults to begin with. did you ignore that part?
Oh good so you caught the part where the article was displaying a bias
My statement wouldn’t have made sense if you didn’t
Did you catch the part where she says the men claim she started it and the media didn’t follow up on it?
so, in doubt, you side with the men?
They’re Canadian.
Broken nose, broken teeth and black eyes? This was a normal day at whale shit hockey.
IIUC, that’s a mostly consensual activity.
translation: it’s a “minor injury” because they’re Canadian, and hockey is more violent than a gang of thugs.
“A group of men walking on the other direction made a comment to me. My girlfriend, Tori, said ‘hey that’s my girlfriend,'" MacLean told CTVNews. “They continued walking and Tori followed them to basically say: ‘That is not OK’.”
Don’t ever do this, no matter who you are.
I’d encourage LGBTQ folk to relocate to western and northern Europe. It ain’t perfect, but you’re very unlikely to get the shit kicked out of you.
These Syrian Islamists are also here. Like here in the Netherlands a couple of months ago two Syrians beat up an old Iraqi immigrant because he was wearing a cross. And in May a Syrian father honor killed his daughter with the help of his sons. This shit happens everywhere these Syrians fled to in huge numbers.
Yeah, sure, European reactionaries are so well known for their inclusive position towards the LGBTQ community; it’s those damn immigrants protesting drag shows and criminalizing abortion.
Stop instrumentalizing the discrimination minorities face to legitimize discrimination of other minorities, you xenophobe.
Lol stop thinking conservative Muslims aren’t a problem in Europe. Just because white racist conservatives are making live hard for the lgbtq and Muslims doesn’t mean the Muslim community are all allies. A person who suffers from discrimination can be themselves a bigot.
Also I’m an immigrant in the Netherlands myself living in a neighborhood with lots of Muslims. I’m seeing the problems some of the Muslim immigrants cause first hand. Lgbtq will never walk hand in hand in my neighborhood. Muslim youths will straight up harass and commit violence if they see a gay couple walking hand in hand. I’m not saying all Muslims are gay bashers but the portion of liberal minded Muslims is in my experience a tiny fraction of the Muslim community in my country.
I don’t think the Muslim community as a whole is an ally to the LGBTQ community, but to believe that this is an isolated problem that can be attributed to one single community is dishonest. By thinking that homophobia is isolated to specific communities along ethnic or religious lines and not economic or educational ones, you’re replicating homonationalism.
You can and will have the same experience as an LBGTQ couple in a poor neighborhood inhabited by Muslim immigrants and a poor, conservative neighborhood inhabited by predominately white people. I would not want to hold hands with someone of the same gender in a rural Polish/Hungarian/East German/etc village.
I never said it’s purely isolated to Muslims, but the left far too often turns in my opinion a blind eye to the problematic ideology within the Muslim community, just because the Muslims are victims of discrimination themselves. In the last 30 years left wing politicians have been calling everyone racist in a knee jerk reaction when people point to the problems within the migrant Muslim communities even to people who were just pointing out to integration and social economic issues. And now Europe is swinging to the right because the left and liberal parties haven’t been listening to the people for those 30 years.
And like you said there are plenty of poor conservative homophobic natives in Europe, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to let more homophobes into the country. The left wing and centrists parties have been too soft on immigration of poor conservatives Muslims coming into Europe, it just made the homophobia worse and put the LGBTQ community at more risk. And since these conservative migrants are more likely to move into the liberal cities than conservative rural natives the share of attacks and harassment on LGBTQ by Muslims is disproportionately higher. Look the West should always take in people who are fleeing from wars or who are seeking political asylum, but we should be more stricter when we give out permanent residency visas. Letting intolerant refugees, who would have never qualified to migrate into the country if they weren’t refugees, stay when their home country is already safe just makes the country less tolerant to LGBTQ which also in turn makes the country less tolerant towards migrants.
Both are true
I’m not sure about that for the UK at least. My British friends say Labour is going anti trans
That’s true. They don’t call it terf island for nothing.
Feels like Labour has really fallen behind other left-wing parties – to the point that they’re even right of Democrats on some issues.
Europe seems to be swinging hard right these days though isn’t it?
Depends where in Europe. It is a bit bit arguably not as hard right as the states. You also have to consider that the cut off for left and right differ wildly between countries. AOC is pretty much center for Scandinavia. Joe Biden is center right… Which is why we’re so concerned about trump.
The right-left spectrum is just a construct, a made up thing that doesn’t have much bearing on reality.
In reality politics is about pressure, not ideology. The the Democrats had the Whitehouse and Congress for a few decades, the US would be what you’d consider to be “further left” than Europe. Demcoracy is a process not a checkout on Amazon. You don’t choose which ideology suits you best (ideology is all just a scam) you choose which direction you want to pressure the government to go in.
Right now in Europe the pressure is going rightwards.
Fascism is a funny thing because it’s a hard focus on emotional manipulation to make it acceptable to flip the board and have a group of people seize authoritarian power. Communism is similar, they just exploit different emotional pressure points. A right-left distinction between radical ideologies is really silly since they’re all ultimately about emotionally manipulating people into being angry enough to think authoritarianism is a good thing. One promises to make you stronger another promises you make you more equal, but in the end it’s just authoritarianism.
Obviously the US is currently more vulnerable to this than Europe at the moment, but let’s not get under the illusion that Europe is safe because of made up political spectrums when so many people have been brainwashed by ideological bullshit in both places. Same goes for Canada (where I’m from) at the moment as much as it pains me to admit it.
I’d say the UK would be safer than both Continental Europe or Canada at the moment, since it’s guaranteed there will be at least four years without there being a chance of things going fascist, and it seems people there have generally gotten tired of the ideological bullshit and just want political stability. I doubt Kier Starmer will be doing any ideological purges.
👁️4️⃣👁️
It’s too bad that happened, and I dunno if I’m victim blaming or whatever… But the one girl followed the group and said that’s not ok. Yeah she called them out, but there’s consequences to stuff like that. Either way hope they catch those pricks
The point was that those men weren’t supposed to harass them in the first place.
“Weren’t supposed to”
Yeah the real world with it’s infinite variables doesn’t work like that.
Are you saying she provoked them somehow, and they didn’t even know she was gay? I am just trying to clarify the point here
According to the article it started with them insulting one of the girls due to appearance, then the girlfriend defended and followed the group. According to the group of guys the women got violent first but who knows who’s telling the truth.
I dunno man, it’s really hard to make a judgment just based on an article. Who knows what facts were left out. But if a group of men are talking shit, yeah maybe it’ll make your blood boil and you could say “fuck off bully” or something as just a counter, but to actively follow them? Just escalating and not the hill you wanna die on just to stand up… my opinion is colored though from my interactions with other female sex couples and found they argumentative and just crazy in general. Whatever logical fallacy or argument rule I broke I don’t know, just stating my opinions here.
Yes there is being right but also being stupid.
Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way— He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.
A guy I worked with would pull shit like this on the road all the fucking time. I remember once my wife was dropping me off at work, she starts complaining that the guy in the right lane is deliberately not letting her merge, look over and sure enough it’s the guy I work with.
He is going to get someone killed one day
Exactly, gotta pick your battles and be wise about shit
Remember incidents like these are a direct result from republican politics.
The thugs are being enabled by the politicians.
Edit: I thought Halifax is in the USA.
Nova Scotia is not a US state.
Hey man don’t push your politics on me
-Christopher Walkens
Let’s hope it stays that way. I feel like Trump would pull something.
There are, in fact, 7 states with cities called Halifax. And if others aren’t aware, that republican authoritarianism is spreading around the globe - enabled by their same corporate/elite backers and think tanks. I believe your point still stands.
Must suck to be Canadian and just be a passive intellectual vessel that ideas are poured into.
Not only did this happen in Canada, these men who assaulted these women…are not Republicans, they’re a completely different kind of authoritarian and they’re already at the violence level.
To be honest they are the role model of republicans, they are everything republicans dream to become
Islamic?
no.
Nothing to do with Islam, right. Hey thanks for giving us Canada btw, it’s like New England but more so.
have books become too heavy for men?
If you beat someone with a book that would be considered assault with a weapon.
Pigs being pigs in klanada, what a shocker
Removed by mod
What does this have to do with Muslims? The article doesn’t even mention Islam. Did you respond to the wrong article?
