VelvetCat wrote:If Anne_666 and her fan club have taken over the Berlin thread, probably best to avoid reading it as my language will get worse and worse.
I wish there was a way we could all live peacefully together, and of course most of us do, I'm sure we all know people of different religions and colours who are friends, neighbours, workmates etc, but there is a growing minority who want to pick and choose what parts of Western life they use and are not scared to use extreme violence to change things to how they want.
Moderate Muslims do need to come out against acts of violence and the media need to show that they are, because such groups and marches are not well publicised, people just don't know they are happening.
The most important thing thathas to happen though, is that we are allowed to discuss such happenings without the fear of being called racist or Islamphobia, many people are not, they are just scared about what is happening in the world, people like Anne do us no favours by not allowing the discussion to take place, it is an important discussion and one that needs to be made. People like Anne don't realise just how important it is.
A very good post.
That's where you have to end up questioning the motivations of the people involved though.
I would assume that anybody truly intent on advocating a thing would welcome an opportunity for discussion (be it on race, religion, sexism or whatever).
After all, the only way you're ever going to get more people to embrace an ideology is by convincing them of it's merit.
When all you do is accuse people of being racists or sexists or whatever, all you're doing is shutting the discussion down by suggesting anybody who doesn't agree with you has something to be ashamed of.
And, when you do that, people are going to wonder if it's because you can't actually support your opinions and whether they actually stand up to scrutiny.
Basically, a lot of ideologues want nothing more than to be right. They want to "win".