Extremist rhetoric on Trump threads

dudara wrote: »

I've asked all posters to stop discussing Trump himself, it just so happened that yours was the one that made me do it. Fair point that I missed the previous one, so I've gone back to edit my warning.

To be clear - my comment was in no way intended to shut down one side of the argument, and I'm disappointed that it was interpreted as such.

Memnoch wrote: »

I would like to ask the question of how extremist speech is defined? There has been a growing and dangerous trend over the last few years of oppressors adopting the language of victimhood even as they abuse and exploit.

If a man says that he likes to exploit his position of power to 'grab women by the pussy'. This to me, and it would seem the majority of reasonable minded people and commentators, is a description of sexual assault. This is an extreme act. It is extreme language. And it has been roundly condemned as such from all spheres of the public and political spectrum.

Making fun of a woman's physical appearance in public in order to undermine her criticism of you is verbal abuse. It should be defined as such and condemned as such.

Saying that this behaviour is deeply misogynistic is the correct way to describe it. There are those who would like to normalise such attitudes and behaviours and the first step in doing so is to adopt convenient euphemisms and play down what has been done and said as simply "banter".

Generalising people as rapists on the basis of their ethnicity is racism. And it should be called a such. I don't see how it is using extremist language to say that this is a racist attitude. Discriminating against people on the basis of their religion is racism.

My point is this. To accurately describe abhorrent behaviour as such is not extremist and it takes a profound twist of logic, dishonesty and immorality to attempt to describe it as such.

We are seeing a rise of the far right throughout the world. In Russia, domestic violence is being decriminalised. In the US, the next Justice of the Supreme Court is someone who founded a club called 'Fascism Forever.' The chief of the president's staff, who now sits on the National Security Council in place of the representative of the joint chiefs of the military is a man who seems to have a problem with Jews - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election/trump-campaign-ceo-bannon-complained-jews-daughters-school-article-1.2767615 and of course Muslims.

Extremist and Draconian measures are being proposed and implemented around the world.

Censoring legitimate criticism of such behaviour and attitudes by defining it as extremist rhetoric is the first step in enabling and facilitating such behaviour.

The right want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be able to demean women and not have it called misogyny. They want discriminate against and generalise ethnic groups and not have it be called racism.

They want to be sexist. They want to be racist. They just don't like feeling bad when it is pointed out that this is what they are doing.

In all of this what gets lost are the innocent people who are the real victims of such extremist behaviour and rhetoric. Such as refugees fleeing war-torn countries who are labelled as economic migrants so that we need not trouble our consciences when they sink by the boatload in the Mediterranean. Or Muslim refugees from failed states in the Middle East who are generalised as potential terrorists. Or the women who are being domestically abused in the United States that will have nowhere to turn when the current administration cuts funding to programs that provide assistance to victims of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and stalking.

The far right complain constantly about political correctness. Yet they are the ones clamouring loudest for a safe space on boards where there extremist ideology should not be pointed out for what it is and the damage that it does and is doing to countless innocent people.