A Light Among Nations
Thomas L Friedman of the NY Times wants Western Civilizations to “shine a spotlight” on hate speech wherever it occurs. He sites a London Islamic bookstore as evidence for such action.
What he fails to address is the rampant hatred occurring within our own culture. The kind of hidden hatred that elects demagogues and that fosters parochial views and archaic politics. Yes, I’m talking about America of the twenty-first century. I’m talking about the new American Century built upon the colonial era mentality of slave-owner privilege and puritanical suppression, of the sanctity of land ownership at gunpoint, and a winner-take-all approach to world politics. All are symptoms of a wider stance of self-and-other that breeds habits of dehumanization, hatred, greed, and lust for controlling others that has so marred the so-called “advance” of Western societies.
Mr. Friedman has a valid point. Let us shine a light of reason upon all haters and show the world how the poison of prejudice spreads: Indeed. But let us start in our own houses, before we look in another’s. Unless and until we clean up our own acts of racial profiling, bigotry, intolerance and unbalanced privilege, before we attempt to clean our neighbor’s home, or all we become are hypocrites.
July 22nd, 2005 at 11:12 pm
Indeed, all you need to do to hear hate speech in the United States is turn on your AM Radio, and hear the screechings of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael “Savage” Weiner, and the rest of the right-wing Hate Radio bunch as they howl that anybody who disagrees with them is evil and needs to be exterminated. If you want to read hate speech, all you need to do is read the writings of Ann Coulter as she declares that anybody who disagrees with her is evil and should be exterminated, or go to stormfront.org if you want to read the White Power kinda hate speech, or go to some of the USENET newsgroups that deal with the Southwest and see the haters calling Mexicans “cockroaches” and saying that they should be “exterminated”.
Jesus warned that we be reluctant to point out the splinter in others’ eyes, lest we miss the plank in our own. This is a case where, while pointing out the splinter in Islam’s eye, we completely overlook the plank in our own, or excuse it under the rubrik of “free speech” (which, apparently, applies only if you’re a good god-fearin’ white male American, not one of them furrin heathens that, like, don’t even speak Amurrican).
- Badtux the Jesus-following Penguin
July 23rd, 2005 at 11:27 am
All I need do to hear hate speech is to sit on a bench in a crowded mall, restaurant, amusment park, etc. and listen to the snatches of conversations as the flow of humanity passes. Hate is endemic to our culture and is not limited to the extremists of political persuasion.
Families regulalry speak to each other in tones of intolerance and disdain. They often speak to each other of their biases toward strangers nearby, passing their opinionated judgements to offspring, who are all-too-glad to emulate their parents. Add to this the subliminal attitudes of television personalities and characters, as well as the hidden assumption that buying more is the only path to happiness (thereby decreasing net self-esteem) and multiply by 20 years.
The end product is a staggering number of incidences of dehumaization at every level of human interaction. No wonder it’s so easy to kill brown children in a foreign land, hitherto unknown to the uncultured (and uneducated) masses until TV News began repeating its name every few seconds for the past four years. No wonder its easy for politicians to commit attrocities, lie to the American people, and still be re-elected.
No wonder the world flings their hatred right back.