Danish Politician Convicted of Racism For Offending Muslims

[Imran Siddiqui]

This is one degree removed from thoughtcrime, makes a mockery of the idea of freedom of conscience, and is only relatively benign insofar as the bullying is pointed at people you don't like. I submit to you that you would disapprove quite harshly if precisely the same tactic were used against groups you don't disapprove of--that is, you would disapprove of the tactic itself, not just that the gun was aimed at the wrong people. Say if the thing were reversed, and anyone voicing approval of Islam or Islamic immigrants faced boycotts and ostracism?

Oh please. Approval of a certain group of people is a very different thing that agitating for the legal discrimination of a group of people. As pointed out, the later can cause massive harm to the group being ostracized. I sometimes wonder why people who tend to agitate for unmitigated free speech don't realize that means that folks can use that free speech to voice collective disapproval of unacceptable things. In fact, I'd argue that unrestrained free speech can't work without social organizing against unacceptable speech.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Being an ******* is not a crime. And what you're doing is both pathologizing dissent and claiming that you have the right to threaten someone else's livelihood and well-being for having opinions out of step with the majority's. Assuming that by "associate with" you mean "do business with."

I'm not sure how this works together. Being an ******* is not a crime, as you said. So neither is threatening someone else's livelihood and well being for having opinions out of step with the majority.

Freedom of speech is a double edged sword. It's not only the weapon of bigoted but also the defender of the minority.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Triple post, but I have to say it's ironic that you decry social stigma for bigotry, Elok, yet you were full of schadenfreude and even gloating for the social stigma of users of Ashley Madison getting their personal information revealed on the internet. So social stigma only for sexual issues, but not racism?

[Sava]

it's a slippery slope

first thing, you tell the nazis that they can't march down the street

next thing, death panels

[Egbert]

If you want a thread to not degenerate so quickly, start it with a [CIVIL] tag in the title.

Threads usually degenerate instantly.

The "civil" tag slows the degeneration, a bit.

[Bereta_Eder]

they use "culture" or "religion" to justify their racism because after germanohitler using race to do so is frwoned upon.

what's changed?

nothing

besides anything with the word "volk" in it should make one instantly suspicious (that goes for cars too)

[Bereta_Eder]

"you know in passage 34:43572 of the koran it says that a catterpillar has the right to pluck out the eyes of a butterfly if it has rained recently and the ground is wet"

volkchoir: that's it! muslims are dangerous!

[Bereta_Eder]

btw just yesterday slovakia said that it will not receive muslim immigrants (as if they were even going to ask ) because "they will not integrate in our society so we'll take only christians to protect our social cohesion"

that EU construct is getting more ridiculous by the hour

[Dinner]

Imran, Niko is obviously not endorsing genocide in any way, shape, or form so can we please despense with the claims that he is a Nazi? That is just childish.

[Elok]

Triple post, but I have to say it's ironic that you decry social stigma for bigotry, Elok, yet you were full of schadenfreude and even gloating for the social stigma of users of Ashley Madison getting their personal information revealed on the internet. So social stigma only for sexual issues, but not racism?

This argument is going in circles so I'm just going to answer this last one. Actually, no, I don't need to, b/c I already explained at length in the AM thread that I don't believe anything much will come of the AM nonsense. Mostly AM will start hurting for business for a while. I should add that the nature of the stigma attached is entirely different; your spouse finding out you were unfaithful is very different from the dogpile that happens every time anyone says something offensive. Odd as it is, the latter earns you much more hostility from the public, at least today, because it is considered a public offense rather than a private transgression.

If this Dane had been caught humping someone on the side this thread wouldn't even exist, because a politician being a pervert is a well-worn trope. Even in the nineties when the moralistic wing of the GOP was much stronger, I remember they had to really push to keep the Lewinsky thing going, and they could only do it by holding up the thin pretense that it was really somehow about perjury. Instead of cheating on his wife, the guy in the OP made a nasty tweet, and people from the other side of the planet are rushing to condemn him. But like I said, he's a politician, he more or less ought to expect it.

And yet the same thing happens to, for example, that pizza parlor answering a purely hypothetical question about hypothetical cheap-ass gay people having their weddings catered with pizza. It was a complete non-issue, but they still got swamped by angry ****wits. IIRC they also got a certain amount of financial support from conservative well-wishers--but they still shut down their business. That's ridiculous.

[Elok]

By nature the AM thing has to be different, since there are about 40 million users. We can't very well throw our poop at all of them simultaneously.

[Bereta_Eder]

Hitler didn't instantly start killing jews. He first talked about it.

[Elok]

And marijuana is a "gateway drug." How about we stick to penalizing actually harmful stuff, not stuff that might eventually lead to harmful stuff? We have a "clear and present danger" standard in the U.S. that's worked pretty well for the grey areas.

[Nikolai]

Imran, Niko is obviously not endorsing genocide in any way, shape, or form so can we please despense with the claims that he is a Nazi? That is just childish.

Thanks.

[Bereta_Eder]

Marijuana can serve as a gateway drug, yes.
But given your criminality rate and/or police brutality I don't see how you can say "it's worked good so far".