Whine, whine, whine. That’s all minorities ever do. Steve King (Racist, IA) would like you all to man up, act white, and join a church.
I went to the Iowa State website and […] I typed in “multicultural” and it came back to me, at the time, 59 different multicultural groups listed to operate on campus at Iowa State. It started with Asians and it ended with Zeitgeist, so from A to Z, and most of them were victims’ groups, victimology, people that feel sorry for themselves and they’re out there recruiting our young people to be part of the group that feels sorry for themselves. […]
And then, you’re brought into a group of people that are–have a grievance against society rather than understand there’s a tremendous blessing in this society.
Multiculturalism is a dirty word. There is but One True Culture, and you will shut up and be assimilated. There’s something wrong with you if you have any grievances against Steve King’s society.
Hey, Iowans, how do you keep electing this moron? And as long as you’re doing that anyway, can we send all of our Bachmann supporters south to live in his district?
With lawmakers like that, it is indeed a wonder how anyone could possibly feel victimized.
Surprised?
Do you know that the only True Victim (TM) are middle-aged white heterosexual upper class males? We have to watch as for the first time in our history, not all of the three branches of government are completely dominated by our kind. We are being demonized for not paying our fair share of taxes (I say to those whiny people, if you don’t like your tax rate, incorporate, hire a lobbyist, and donate thousands of dollars of a variety of political people.) We are living in a time when women, and minorities are demanding the same privilege. How will we intrinsically know we’re better than them if we can’t keep them from enjoying the same privileges that give us the advantage?
FSM and midlife crisis
How is the Asian Students’ Association a victims’ group?
So I wonder if he thinks that the myriad Christian support groups and social gropes, or the Young Republicans, in colleges and universities are also professional victim’s groups? Or does this definition just apply to the cultural ‘others’ in the world — those not like me?
“…as long as you’re a straight white dude.”
Aliens are the only ones whose nutcases-in-office don’t like the word or concept. Recently in the UK: Olympics opening ceremony was ‘multicultural crap’, Tory MP tweets.
Another attack on multiculturism (perhaps in several senses): Back in USAlienstan, one of Rmoney’s advisors was reported (at about the same time as the above) as “[accusing] President Barack Obama of not understanding the shared ‘Anglo-Saxon heritage’ of Britain and the United States.”
Collectively speaking, nobody is whinier in modern U.S. society than straight white cisgendered men, especially those who are middle-class or above. Nobody.
Just the shit that’s gone down in the last year on this website bears my assertion out.
@Ogvorbis #5 – MOST of them were victims groups. Although, I’m sure he’d be happy to make the case that the mere existince of a Black Student Union or a Pagan campus group victimized the Young Republicans and the Christian groups.
Just to agument a bit.
.. as long as you’re a straight white rich male American. That’s what I call “omnipriviledged”.
Define ‘victims groups’. Seriously. People getting together because of shared culture, experiences, history, means they are victims?
What is the tea party except a bunch of scared people who get together to whine and try to force their fears and insecurities on a nation?
Its
funnynauseating reading that when you know in the next breath he could just as easily rant about how Christians are under attack in America.The university has about 800 clubs. Now, let’s see if the Dean of Multicultural Studies and the University President have any stones, and set this bozo straight. It’s asking a lot for students to travel to DC to meet with him, but perhaps students from DC branches of the various organizations could pay him a visit.
Jasper, being rich might make such a man “omniprivileged,” as you put it, but I feel obliged to point out (and I know you know this) that not being rich does not negate his other privileges. He’s still quite a bit ahead of those unlike himself who are also not rich, and he even enjoys some privileges that rich people who are unlike him in other ways may not (e.g., not being pulled over in his own neighborhood under the assumption he stole his sports car).
Juliet, “stones” = “balls” = testicles as symbols of courage. Cut that shit out.
@Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being, #16:
I had taken to using “stones” instead of “balls” consciously as I took it as being less genital-dominance-related. Behavior shall be modified in future.
What is a church but a victims’ group, wronged by god?
My college was in a deep blue state and had a very vocal Republican Club. And yes, they whined. Oh how they whined. Far more than any other group, considering that barely any other group got a blip on the radar, while Republican Club members were whining about a new something or other in student newspaper columns every semester or so. Because libruls are so mean to them and their perfectly reasonable guest speakers who defend hate speech and blame libruls for 9/11. Kampus Krusade was meek by comparison.
So, are Republicans the ur-example of a “victims’ group”? I would say so, yes.
It’s worse than that for me. With redistricting, he’s now running for reelection in my district. He’s an embarrassment to the state. The good news is that he now has to run in the center of the state which is more liberal and higher population. Hopefully we can vote his ass out of there.
White guy feeling sorry for himself and white privilege (so put upon by things and people who aren’t white enough) tells other groups to stop feeling sorry for themselves after projecting this self-pity onto them. Film at eleven.
How are the Young Republicans not a whiny minority group?
Well, any student group other than the Association of American Individuals for America must be subversive somehow, and not being white is the new communism.
“Multiculturalism” is just a scary ‘-ism’ for racial equality and religious freedom. That’s all there is to it. It’s a very accurate barometer of someone’s bigotry when you hear them ragging on the “evil” of “multiculturalism”.
DaveL
I want to know how a group calling itself Zeitgeist is a victims’ group. Seriously.
How, exactly, does Zeitgeist, a German student club, threaten Mr. King? Also, having just done the same search, the first group on the list is an African student group, not an Asian one. Most of the groups appear to be for foreign students – perhaps we could figure out how to plunk King down as a student at a university in Bangladesh and see how long it takes him to want to form a group for white Christian midwesterners…
(Someone should point out to this maliciously ignorant bully that foreign student bring in bucket loads of tuition payments to his state’s university system and economy.)
It’s already been said but I’ll repeat it.
No one loves to claim persecution more than the xians.
They will make it up if they can’t find a reason to be persecuted.
Then again, no one actually loves to persecute people more than fundie xians.
Their hates are legendary and ever going. Gays, women, scientists, Fake Xians, Moslems, Pagans, nonwhites, Democrats, atheists, most of the human species. The latest addition to the collection of hate targets is…rape victims.
If there weren’t victim’s groups at Iowa, the fundies would cheerfully create some victims to group together. They also hate college students and public education.
I find complaints about “minorities” whining to be rather ironic these days. Generally these complaints are from people who never stop whining themselves about how vivtimized they are. What is esspecially amusing is the now 20+ years old whining about “Political Correctness”, from so-called “Consertvatives”, whining about how victimized they are.
There exist things like Fox news an institution whose whole reason for existence is injustice collecting and whining about victimhood. From Clarence Thomas to rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck etc., the whinning is 10 decible level. Oh and these people complain repeatidly behind their megaphones how the “Liberal” media shuts them out.
Because if they weren’t a victims’ group, then they would have given the group’s name in God’s own language: American.
One of the many hates of some fundies is education, especially public education. And above all universities. A public university like Iowa State must be deep in their version of hell.
It’s quite possible that Steven King really just hates Iowa State for being Iowa State. The fact that women, gays, nonwhites, Fake Xians, rape victims, and normal people go there is just icing on his cake.
Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign was just him listing his hates. Which notably included colleges and universities. Santorum also has three degrees from public universities including a law degree and makes several million dollars a year thanks in part to his education. I suppose they don’t let their hypocrisy get in the way of their hates.
Martin Luther: Reason is a whore. It is the enemy of faith.
Exactly so.
Foreign students are a critical resource highly sought after. Because they pay full tuition. Veritable gold mines. One state U. I know is struggling right now. The reason. Not able to attract enough foreign students.
Oddly enough, in most of the world an American university degree is a huge prize, sought after, and prized. 30 of the 40 of the world’s top research universities are in the USA.
Rather sadly, we are likely running on momentum here, and one day will wake up and notice that the foreign students are going elsewhere.
Does Steve King think Christians should stop complaining about their “persecution”?
And if you think that state universities, which allow students from all walks of life to get a college education, are a good thing, then foreign students bringing in bucket loads of tuition payments is a good thing.
What has Steve King said or done to make you think he sees state universities as a good thing?
It’s all the crazy people in the northwest side of the state, I swear!!! Please don’t judge all of us Iowans by that loon. (Oh, wait, I was just inducing vomiting two days ago from coworkers talking about how awesome Fox News is…never mind. Iowa is a pretty messed up state!)
On a more serious note, I hope he’ll at least have more of a challenge this year with redistricting. Ames, where ISU is located, is fairly liberal, being a college town, from what I hear. Will this be enough to balance out all the evangelicals from the northwest? I fear the answer to that may be “No.”
We can conclude that Steve King never fucking thinks about people who don’t resemble him extremely closely except for when their anger gets loud enough to penetrate the fog of his privilege.
Thus, it seems to him that all they do is whine.
Hey, go back far enough, and every group of any imaginable description going to be a victim of something.
Even the group of 5’11” white freckled red-haired males who live at house addresses ending in -3 who stubbed their toes on misplaced manhole covers between 6:15 and 6:30pm on a Tuesday in the Spring are victims of bad zoning and inadequate manhole construction standards laws.
The fundies have always hated public universities.
It was the same in the 1970’s, during and after the Vietnam war, opposed mostly by college students.
It dates back at least to Martin Luther who despised “reason” as the enemy of faith.
There is really nothing new in Steven King’s gibberish except he seems to have discovered that not everyone at Iowa State is a white fundie xian moron.
I had a joking debate with a co-worker regarding special interest or groups based on race and gender. e.g. you can start a Woman’s group and likely get members and support, but if you tried to start a “White Male Club”, you’d be accused of racism, sexism etc even if it was open to anyone (as most special interest groups are). Is this a form of reverse racism, or would the person starting such a group just be a jackass since White Males in american society don’t suffer much descrimination?
@ #6
“…as long as you’re a straight white dude.”
Or a “wide stancer” posing as a straight white dude with impeccable Xian credentials (except for those occasional “Sandusky” moments”).
Me oh my…did I say that?
A Xian/Fundie meme-virus has been let loose upon our land and right-wing talk radio/Fox News is the vector. Where, oh where, is the antidote?
you can start a Woman’s group and likely get members and support, but if you tried to start a “White Male Club”, you’d be accused of racism, sexism etc even if it was open to anyone
There are already lots of White Male Clubs. They’re just usually called things like the Lodge, the Legion, the Masons, et cetera…
The Tea Party
The GOP
The Mormons
The Catholics
The Fundie death cult xians.
Some of them do let women in though. Someone has to do the menial work.
Mattir:
The question is: is he the type of racist to view Asian people as an “ideal minority” and black people as [insert any and all negative stereotypes here] or does not know the alphabet song?
@40
or Augusta National, or the GOP, or the Mormon and Catholic churches (don’t you just love the fancy gold head pieces on these catholic bishop dudes? The finery on just one would feed dozens of starving Sudanese kids for weeks. Or buy thousands of malaria mosquito nets. What a fecal pile of hypocrites!) I probably shouldn’t single out the Augusta Club. I know a few local country clubs that even today restrict the number of Jews, Italians and, yes, people of brown skin.
*Insert the required “he” in my post, plz. Thx.
I wish people would either use the word “multiculturalism” correctly, or tell me where I have it wrong.
Culture is different from race (just as religion is). So lots of different coloured faces isn’t multiculturism, it is simply lots of races (assuming we accept that the concept of race applies to humans at all). And race, in this sense, says nothing about values or behaviours or anything really important. It is really a set of aesthetic properties.
So (#7, blf) that twit who said “Olympics opening ceremony was ‘multicultural crap’” was really talking about multiple races, because there was no real variety of cultures in the opening ceremony. He presumably objected to different coloured faces.
Multiculturalism can work well or work badly. At its worst it can lead to ghettos. At its best it can lead to a variety of cultures that are integrated constructively so that they can peacefully coexist.
Constructive signs include some of: use of a common language; geographic dispersal; inter-trading; inter-partnering. (Every time a mixed-race baby is born, a racist dies of apoplexy!)
Destructive signs include: women with little ability to act outside their narrow society; children growing up without the language and education to get jobs; a parallel legal system such as Sharia (law).
Speaking from the UK, we see some of the best and worst. Perhaps a third of my meals arise from incoming cultures. But there are also worrying regions where Sharia appears to becoming routine, and women are becoming disenfranchised because of the status of women in some cultures.
Which groups are the victim ones? Name names, Steve King! I went to ISU in 1999 and 2000. I actually would have complaints about a couple of the groups at that time. I get the impression this isn’t based on any analysis of their actual club missions, though.
Also, your not in the state legislature anymore. Ames isn’t even in your congressional district. Do your job and leave the rest of us alone.
@blf,
Thanks for that post about Aiden Burley. He would fit right in with our own American T’Bagger Republicans. Love that he attended a Nazi party where he saluted the Nazi flag, and then in an apology tour fell asleep during a Holocaust survivor’s speech! Nice fellow.
And, had to laugh that he objected to all those rappers in the opening ceremony for the Olympics.
“And then we had all these rappers – that is what got me to the point about multiculturalism.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19025518
Good to know the crazies are not all here in the US.
@46 Ace, isn’t Ames going to be in his district due to redistricting?
You know what else leads to ghettos even more?
Not having multiculturalism.
@48. Just looked it up and you’re right. Maybe with Sioux City’s votes diluted by some more sensible areas, he’ll get voted out.
Ewe and yer gawdh-damnuh Mul-tie-cultrrism can just go cram it up Satan’s A$$ where it Belongs! Damn miserable Atheist Scumbags! I hope you all die Horrible Deaths that You all Deserve, Damn Baby-killing Women-allowing trash bastard gheysex havin bastards!
I’ll pray for your souls.
/Head-Exploding-Stupidity.
Steve King serves one purpose: he settles all debates about who the most absolutely shitty, worthless, most repulsive human being ever born is.
Also, we now can be certain, even in this dark period of vain stupidity, where the dumbest, most heartless district in America is: the one that voted King in, more than once.
There is no excuse to be a “Republican” any longer. Voting “Republican” shows you to be stupid, ignorant, insane and/or evil.
When what goes around finally comes around on Steve King, I will nod solemnly and never think about him again. And may it be both appropriately twisted and poetic, and today.
I disagree with your inclusion of ‘insane’ in this short list. As someone who suffers from PTSD and depression (one (unsuccessful) suicide attempt, two weeks in a hospital), I resent the implication that my chemical imbalances and/or experiences somehow put me in the same category as those who support the GOP. The term is ‘ableism’. Using mental health issues, or mental retardation, physical disabilities, weight, etc, as an insult is right up there with homophobic and gender-based insults.
@53: Insane isn’t a medical term. It’s a legal term meaning someone isn’t able to understand the difference or doesn’t understand what they are doing. When a person is called insane, they are being compared to David Berkowitz, not you.
Dear Rep. King,
Thank you for warning about the dangers of these university groups.
I struggled with zeitgeist attraction all through high school. Faith, family, and friends kept me on the right track. Unfortunately, I attended a statist university which actively encouraged perversions such as this. At freshman orientation, I was ambushed by a zeitgeist student group armed with a folding card table and brochures. My defenses were overwhelmed. (Those handouts were trifold AND color—my bible learning was no match.)
Eventually, I “came out” and publically identified as a zeitgeistual. I spent many years mistaking an empty, amoral lifestyle for joyful self-expression. My family fortunately intervened and hired Black Pond operatives who snatched me from a life of depravity and delivered me to the Marc Buckman Deprogramming Centre. The Centre’s patented 220v electrotherapy showed me the error of my ways.
Thanks to the therapy—and a high dosage of forcibly administered thorazine—I can proudly declare myself a (quasi)functioning ex-zeitgeist!
What the hell does zeitgeist have to do with victims groups? Unless, he was being super clever and suggesting a culture of victimization is the new zeitgeist? Oh now I get it he didn’t know what that word meant and assumed it must be bad… he’s a moron.
Oh yeah, and schweinhundt is pretty damn funny.
i can’t seem to be able to reproduce the results. typing “multicultural” into the search engine on the Iowa State University website doesn’t produce a list of multicultural organizations, and doing so on the “student organizations” page produces 15 results only. what am I doing wrong?
nvm, found it. it’s the 13th result in the general search: http://sodb.stuorg.iastate.edu/list-type.php?id=15
note that “zeitgeist” is an organization for german students. And then there are several language-clubs (clubs for students of a particular foreign language). I have no idea how that even fits into the “victimology” narrative.
All clubs are bad unless they are for People Like Me. They must be dedicated towards oppressing People Like Me (after all, my clubs are dedicated to oppressing all the People Not Like Me), so they must be whiny, subversive, unAmerican and evil.
I’m at a super-liberal, pretty well known university, so we of course have a gigantic East Asian population and a gigantic Indian and Southeast Asian population, including people actually from another country.
I have not seen ANYTHING which could really be described as a victim’s group organized around racial lines. There does seem to be something that you could call a victim culture here, but it’s not racial or ethnic, and when it is, it’s not from these organizations. The organizations seem to spend time on 1. their own activism and 2. holding holiday (holi – day? Holi is a pretty prominent one) celebrations with practices that seem strange and foreign to people like me but not to them. Most people pulling the Victim card I have encountered are the massively annoying, often white, tactless socialist radical types. I think they are trying to relive the glory days, and I suspect that the glory days were not the way they think they were.
“but if you tried to start a “White Male Club”, you’d be accused of racism, sexism etc even if it was open to anyone (as most special interest groups are). ”
“White Male Clubs already exist, they are ”
One issue here is that, at least in America (not sure about Europe. Oh, that we could return to Europe!) ‘white’ is a very wide mixed-up category which, at least from the inside, seems to have culture indistinguishable from the American Culture At Large. One would wonder what they would do that would be any different from what unaffiliated white men would do. On the other hand it DOES have boundaries that seem to consist of something other than racism.
Still, it does bother me that my identity cannot be expressed explicitly or proudly without being seen as a racist attack on other people’s identities. It also incenses me that a majority of the people who try to defend my identity are racist douchebags who do so solely by attacking people with other identities. Occasionally, one runs into people (often people who are also white) who seem dedicated to deconstructing everything my people have EVER done, but who would be appalled if someone analyzed away someone else’s triumphs.
I’ve actually been starting thinking about some fool’s errand of redeeming Europe. Of course, the main point of this is 1. not hating on or hurting people who are no part of Europe and 2. Not using these hypocritical White Victim cards.
There are of course Zeitgeist, etc, various national subsets of ‘white’ which actually have more defined OLD cultures, but I am not sure about new cultures, and I suspect that I, who am mostly Austrian by descent and perhaps some culture, might not fit in very much in Austria.
What I am really interested in is creating a new Europe, which will reclaim all of the glory of our past years, and none of their terrors, and which will be able to respect other cultures without having to resort to the various absurdities of cultural relativism.
@im
That’s exactly he point. There is no such thing as ‘white people’s culture.’ In the U.S. there is American culture, which white people dominate, but that is not really ‘white culture’ per se. There is German-American culture, which can be celebrated that the German American Bund. There is Irish-American culture, Polish-American culture, Italian-American culture, etc, all of which are usually counted as ‘white people’ and all of which have heritage associations or something similar. For you, I’m certain there are Austrian heritage associations around if you care to look, but a ‘white people’s’ organization cannot help but be racist in nature.
lol
actually, what you’re describing is the phenomenon of treating WASP+ culture as the American default, despite the fact that a large minority (and if we include some white ethnic groups that still have a recognizable subculture, probably a majority) doesn’t actually share this “mainstream” culture. Kinda the same way that “mens” interests are often considered generic people-interests, while women’s interests are considered special-interest.
unless you’re talking about some sort of anarcho-primitivists, I cannot imagine what that could possibly mean.
what “glories of the past” are there that are neither present in modern Europe nor tied to European Imperialism/colonialsm?
also, what precisely do you think is wrong with the current Europe, anyway? (I have my own ideas on this topic, but something tells me they won’t be the same ones as yours)
well, by this line of reasoning, there’s no Asian American culture, no Native American culture, no Latin@ culture, etc. either.
That depends on what you mean by “multiculturalism”! And that is largely the point of my comment. See this from Wikipedia:
Communities containing multiple cultures, (hence multicultural in the descriptive sense), without policies that lead to peaceful coexistence, (hence not multicultural in the normative sense), can lead to ghettos.
I suspect from your response that you were talking about the normative sense. But those policies can’t be taken for granted. I was trying to identify some of the characteristics of societies with multiple cultures that do coexist, such as perhaps 2 of: common language, dispersal, inter-trading and inter-partnering. I consider common language the most important.
why one? Switzerland is a kind of multicultural society, and they have three official languages of equal weight, and people manage just fine.
From a BBC article:
A major government department (DWP) provides material in the following languages, apart from the official languages (English and Welsh plus Braille): Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Somali, Urdu, Vietnamese
Think of it from the viewpoint of people who need those translations. (Such people do exist). While they can get official help on request from major departments, much of UK discourse is confined to the official languages. In a patriarchal community, the barrier to communication is most likely to be experienced by women, and sometimes initially by children. How can true democracy work in such cases? Add postal voting, and there is a recipe for disenfranchisement of women.
This isn’t a good way of achieving “a society at ease with the rich tapestry of human life and the desire amongst people to express their own identity in the manner they see fit”.
that in no way answers my question as to why it has to be one language.
The wasp America myth is really annoying. The US has always been far more diverse than the bland narrative that US culture was wasp until recent corruptIon by hippies and foreigners. Just because rich white men have been the politicians and the history book writers for so long doesn’t mean their revisionist vision of America is real. Are country was certainly never as ethnically and ideologically homogeneous as morons like King have tricked themselves in to believing. He probably thinks America was all white and Protestant before 1970. I blame it all on crappy television.
I joined this discussion at #45 really to comment from a UK viewpoint. We have two official languages: English everywhere in the UK, plus Welsh in Wales. So there is only one language that could serve as a common language across the UK.
I accept that in Switzerland there are four official languages. I’m not qualified to say which are suitable as common languages to achieve the aims of successful multiculturalism. (I don’t believe that every official language is necessarily suitable. There is a practical aspect to the choice). Perhaps you know?
But I take your point: in some countries there may be more than one language that would serve the purpose. I should have made it clearer that I was primarily concerned with the considerable language problems of the UK.
@Jadehawk
im @ 61,
You may have let the cat out of the bag with the use of the phrase “everything my people have EVER done”
You do realize that this is how most racists see the world, right? That even though these racists themselves usually have made no accomplishments to tout, by virtue of being white, they are just as amazing as all those white people who contributed to world culture. e.g: When Pat Buchanan says white people built ‘Murrica, he’s saying that as a white person he should get to bask in the glory of building ‘Murrica since he’s white, just like the founding fathers were white. He’s saying, “see? aren’t white people amazing? they freakin built this country” (note: they didn’t really) although he himself has accomplished nothing of value. (Also, sorry if I just dismantled the idea of “your people” building ‘Murrica.)
So, im, tell us what you have added to the pile of “white people’s contributions to the world”.