Charles Blow on the ill-aimed rhetoric and misplaced goals of the current bigotry.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Charles Blow on the ill-aimed rhetoric and misplaced goals of the current bigotry.
His argument is vile – the reason that Americans should oppose Islamophobia is not because that bigotry will make the “weak-minded” “animals” attack “us.”
I really hate the term, “political correctness.” It’s tossed around so frequently among commentators, and without a concrete definition it is used as cover for those on the wrong side of history. There is either “factually correct,” or “factually-incorrect.” Politics don’t enter into the equation until after that has been resolved.
Trump is showing his irrational and paranoid overreaction to the attack, and jumping to ridiculous conclusions based on his own bigotry.
This doesn’t appear to be an organized terrorist attack. As Charles Blow mentioned, I have seen reports that the shooter was a regular at Pulse and had his profile out on gay dating sites. The real story and probable motive will soon come out.
The language used by rational people should not lump all of Islam into the terrorist factions. Most Muslims hate the fanatics. Trump’s inability to moderate his language, and understand why Obama and Clinton do keep their remarks tempered, is telling about why he should never be elected president.
Paralleling the Republicans’ slide into conspiracy-theory territory, is their growing belief in magic words. If we all say “radical Islamic terrorism” three times in front of a mirror, it will go away. Likewise, if I start off any sentence with “At the risk of being called politically incorrect…” then you can finish the sentence with any insult you care to use, such as “… you smell bad and so does your mother,” and the person you’re talking to has no defense.
There are news reports which suggest that the guy (Omar Mateen) was a closeted gay man. Would the talk be about religion if this was a white male who was found out to be closeted?
Brucegee1962:
As I noted over at my place, if this had been committed by a Christian, the one thing you can guarantee would not be heard is “Radical Christian Terrorism!”
It certainly was when the truth came out about Ted Haggard. (Come to think of it, isn’t religion among the most significant talking points when we’re talking about self-hating gays?)
Regardless, these reports certainly complicate the story. Toxic masculinity may emerge as an even more significant factor than religion in Mateen’s hatred of LGBT*s. For instance, there are some reports that he was a steroid abuser, at least during the time when he was beating his wife.
It could be both that Mateen was a closeted gay man who took out his self-hatred on patrons of a gay nightclub and that he was radicalized and a supporter of IS. Even if he was the latter, this would not justify Trump’s call for banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. This country has a history of Christians committing violence yet the Right would balk at holding all Christians accountable for such behavior.
@kayden, I sincerely doubt that he was radicalized at all, as he claimed to be affiliated with hezbollah and ISIL, two groups that hate one another.
He essentially claimed a relationship with both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, for an analogy.
Honestly, he sounds like an angry young man, who wanted control in all things in his life, but was utterly incapable of controlling any part of his life.
Honestly, the only thing I wonder about this entire mess is, how we managed to have such a low number of people injured and killed. Three hours is a long time, should he have continued shooting, thousands of rounds could have been fired.
methos-
We know the answer to that. And that answer is no. Hell, even if he was just an angry white straight Christian man, this would have been brushed off as “lone wolf”, “random crazy”, and so on. Marginalized folks who commit violence get to represent every single person who shares their identity and are seen as interchangeable with all of them. Dominant group folks get to have their murderers erased and the purpose of their terrorism excused and whitewashed.
And it is most glaring here, because as the right tries to make the homophobic slaughter of mostly queer men of color into an “Islamic” attack on “Americans” and tries to say that these actions are emblematic and the personal responsibility of every muslim person who exists in the world, there was a guy who was arrested who had brought supplies from Indiana to bomb the LA Pride Festival.
But he was white and his homophobic hatred had Christian origins rather than Islamic ones. So, these two homophobic attacks are not frequently linked, this attempt was not considered attempted terrorism, and that bomber is not seen as at all emblematic of whiteness or Christianity.
But for queer people, what is clear no matter what is that this Pride season, the haters are circling and are trying to kill us and when we go to events, when we are out with loved ones, when we are marching to say we are here and we are not going away, that every moment, no matter how private and seemingly safe carries this implicit threat of violence by someone who has been carefully taught by their religion or a toxic masculinity culture to hate us. To kill us.
I’m baffled by the white male host at the beginning of the video who thought that this was out of nowhere and not a common experience for queer folk to face violence, despite the fact that not a month goes by without the murder of a queer individual for being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (sadly most frequently transgender). But that’s the price of only the brown and Islamic terrorists getting any attention. White straight people can act like this is some rare anomaly rather than what every queer person knows is the risk when they hold a partner’s hand or go out dressed as themselves in the world.
The only novel thing about this attack is the religion of its perpetrator and the fact that those fucking assault rifles allowed the body count to be so goddamn high.
@wzrd1
A better analogy would be claiming a relationship with both the IRA and the UVF: Both terrorist groups in Northern Ireland but very much not on the same side.
@Rick, thanks, I was drawing a blank on UVF at the time, as I did want to use them in the analogy.