Son of Mathonwy wrote:Puja wrote:Son of Mathonwy wrote:
Guys, it's paranoid, xenophobic, not fit for purpose, populist and dumb, but any country can build a wall at its border if it wants. No doubt it has great appeal to racists and is the project of a racist, but unless it's a barrier which only functions according to race, I still don't see how it's anything more than nationalistic. What you're saying is not that different to saying that ALL Brexiteers are racist - it's tempting but it's not true. And it creates divisions.
I'm confused at to why you're keen to draw this distinction. Any country can build a wall on its border, that's true, but if they're very openly building a wall expressly for the purpose of keeping out the brown people, I don't see how it can be anything but racist.
Puja
I want to draw the distinction because I want to stick the truth. I want to be even-handed, even to people I don't agree with. If we don't do this we can't expect them to be fair to us.
Was the wall built for the express purpose of keeping brown people out? I don't remember Trump saying that. As far as I'm aware it was to keep Mexicans out, and was done on the back of disgraceful generalisations of them as rapists, drug-dealers, criminals etc. That's nationalism, which
is a bad thing, but it's not racism.
So although Trump is definitely a racist, and I've no doubt part of his reasoning for the wall was racist, the wall will have
some supporters who are not racist (eg people who are afraid of their jobs being taken by illegal immigrants). Calling the wall racist is equivalent to calling such people racist, and this, not surprisingly will get their backs up and make conversation impossible.
This is a bad thing - we need to connect and find common ground.
I was having a conversation about this with a friend. I asked him about the government here being fascist. He didn't like labelling another group, which is completely fair and it's something I've agreed with all my life.
However, we have lost the last 3 elections while not calling names, while trying to find compromises and trying to talk to government supporters about their actual wants and needs. All the while, the government has been name calling, labelling us as Communists and saying we want to bring the country back to the dark ages, take the country into recession, and allow the Muslims to Islamicise our good Christian country.
So I say fuck 'em. Being reasonable has not gained us power. In fact, it has led to us being further from power than ever before.
And what country am I talking about? It could be any of them, ffs!
So fuck 'em, label them. Call them out for what they are, do not be reasonable.
You're not going to convince hardcore Trump, Brexiteers, Fidesz, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Duda, Patrick Bateman (seriously, look at fucking Kurtz, the psycho-looking chancellor of Austria) fans that they should turn their back on their "saviour". We need to start getting the people who are not voting and those on the fence. And you do that by making them so goddamn uncomfortable with the idea of being labeled a fascist for supporting this cum bucket pieces of shit that they do not vote for them.
Don't be reasonable. Call it out and be fucking unreasonable.
They are racist. They are fascist. We do not want them leading the world. You do not want to be associated with them. They're labelling us as paedos? They're the ones attending fucking Epstein parties and being given "massages" by 14 year olds.
So yeah. It's racist.