TCD students cheer islamist Asghar Bukhari and his defence of the Charlie Hebdo k

Nick Griffin should have stuck a tea cosy on his head and brandished a holy book - they'd have rolled out the red carpet then.

Hatless wrote: »

Possibly (also it's ironic of him to say people should be able to say what they like no matter who it offends... and then get offended himself by how those students expressed themselves; "free speech" is an illusion - it does not exist in an absolute form, no matter where or what or who) but he is describing what actually happened, and it's a fair point that he makes:
There are moronic liberals (and I'd be pretty liberal myself) who will just latch on to any view that is the "correct" one for their ilk. Can you just IMAGINE if it was a white man on a campus making similar points about a massacre in which people "deserved" to be killed? You could only imagine, because it just would not happen.

These eejits would be very supportive of gay rights and feminism too, yet also islamic fundamentalism. Eh...

There is a concerted effort (and I mean that literally - a unified effort among a very wide variety of right-wing publications/authors) to slur 'the left' as acting in that way (and particularly in colleges), by cherry-picking the craziest-of-the-crazy minority of 'left' people, and painting them as representing the whole.

Most of that kind of writing, and bleating on about 'free speech' (as if being criticized for saying something offensive, makes the offensive person a 'victim' - and this is exactly what that O'Neill does, as you correctly allude to - which is nothing to do with free speech), is just propaganda used to try and whip up a controversy out of nothing, to generate more support for right-wing views.

Sure, you will get some loons on the left, spouting regressive/censoring views, but it's pretty much a 'storm in a teacup' type situation, where the views of a tiny minority are grossly disproportionately focused on.
It's my view, that the entire college-campus free-speech issue, is a mostly manufactured myth - that only exists among a tiny minority, and is not this big controversy that people make it out to be - it's just a handy talking-point.


What you never hear these people talk about, is how the financial funding of colleges affects what actually gets taught in these colleges, and itself has a chilling effect not just on free speech, but on the range of what people get taught.

The real controversy, is how financial control of colleges is corrupting what actually gets taught in them - and on how student access to college in many places, is increasingly becoming limited due to finances.

Saipanne wrote: »

Except apostasy.

Real hornet's nest that one, but there have been many liberal interpretations over the years by highly-regarded Islamic scholars:

http://apostasyandislam.blogspot.ie/

Unfortunately they still have a fair bit of convincing to do among the faithful.

(Boards randomly disappearing posts today is annoying - deleted this as I thought the post I replied to was deleted.)

Ya when you find people trying to rebrand anyone on the 'left' as Communists - which virtually nobody is these days (I think I've only ever seen one actual Communist on Boards, ever...), then you know they are either talking nonsense, or are themselves a 'useful idiot' who has bought into right-wing propaganda, which portrays anyone remotely on 'the left' as supporting Communism.

If you look at the US, the groups who commit the most frequent terrorist attacks, and are the greatest danger to people in the US, are actually home-grown right-wing extremists.
Prior to 2001, it was Timothy McVeigh - a right wing extremist - who had committed the worst terrorist attack in the countries history, killing 168 people in the Oklahoma bombing.

I mean, just compare the two, to see which set of extremists is more dangerous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_terrorism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_terrorism#United_States

Boring username wrote: »

I would have to politely disagree with you. You see, in my experience, lefties come in two basic flavours:

• Clueless but well meaning half wits who don't fully realise what they are getting themselves into (the classic 'useful idiots' as coined by Stalin). They usually grow out of the phase by their mid twenties when they realise the workers paradise ™ is the greatest scam perpetrated in the history of mankind, and it's just an excuse to replace one group of brutal bastards with an even worse group. Meet the new boss etc.....
  
• Then you have the other group, the slick bloodthirsty cut throats who will happily defend each and every atrocity committed in the name of socialism and the state. Their fanaticism is practically indistinguishable from that of religious fanatics, in that their sense of extremist logical and rationality can excuse all sorts of barbarity and violence in the name of the, ahem, 'greater good'.

Either way, both groups are dangerous either because of their lack of the bigger picture, or their greater understanding of it. Just look at how the high priest of socialism Eric Hobesbawn was fawned over by the mainstream media when he died. This is the same 'intellectual' who argued that all the murders, the cutting of throats,
the brutal rapes,
the state surveillance,
the show trials,
the torture of innocents,
the brutal oppression by the jackboot of the state,
the massacre of civilians in Hungary,
the disappearing of intellectuals,
the assassination of artists etc

"would have been worth it if a genuine Communist society had been the result". :eek:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/arts/eric-hobsbawm-british-historian-dies-at-95.html?_r=0

Make no mistake about it, these people are the most dangerous elements in society today, as their bloodthirsty ideology is carefully packaged and presented with a smiling, friendly appearance. Not to mention being tolerated by a drooling media that play along, instead of rightly telling them to fcuk off back to the abattoirs and killing fields of Russia and North Korea.

Can you imagine if a right wing group was given actually given airtime to argue that the holocaust or KKK lynchings would have been justified if 'only they had won'?

Top drawer. Well fücking said.

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I don't trust O'Neill necessarily but they either cheered the killings or they didn't. If they did then they are, indeed a disgrace.

As we have no 3rd party at the moment, we can say nothing with certainity.

This is a big site. Was anybody who posts here there? I don't trust O'Neill at all.

Noblong wrote: »

So who's taking the horse to France?

The left have kidnapped the horse, France has been eaten by the muslims, cats have sex with dogs in the street, civilisation is ended.

Herb Powell wrote: »

Wtf is up with all the vanishing posts??

Liberal left shot them. Tis sad.

Diceicle wrote: »

Trinity Audio:
https://soundcloud.com/tlrhub/after-charlie-hebdo-a-public-forum-on-religion-freedom-and-human-rights

That was from February - don't think that's it.

Nodin wrote: »

Liberal left shot them. Tis sad.

There's nothing remotely liberal about students attending a university in a social democracy such as Ireland agreeing with a hatemonger who defends acts of terrorism against a satirical magazine.

There's nothing of the old left about it either.

Stop being so flippant when you post.

It doesn't matter if it was Richard Dawkins, Ian O'Doherty, Chris Hitchens (or the brother) giving the speech. The crux of the argument remains valid. The right to be offended is something we should all hold dear. You can be angered and riled about it. I'd even suggest it's a healthy thing to experience.

walshyn93 wrote: »

Agree strongly on the influence of big firms in dictating curriculum.

However , I disagree on your downplaying of the influence of this small minority of extreme leftists. Most students have little time to spend associating with such types and as a result tend to avoid these societies. Said types are the ones who flock to these societies. The rest of the society will be made up of unassertive types who let a small belligerent minority set the agenda. Or worse still, careerists who avoid controversy by sharing their real opinions. Nick Griffin not allowed appear yet Islamists are. Banning songs. Banning unpopular debates from occurring. These are things that a majority of students would be against but since they're so disenfranchised by the set up amd content provided by these organisations they don't bother to get involved. The problem is when the ones involved in the societies have the better CVs and connections and get into top positions as a result. They are then able to dictate public policy.

You're making a huge stretch from students and student/college debates, all the way up to public policy - there is pretty much nothing to show a significant connection there at all.

It really is just a few crackpots, in a tiny minority of college's, that just receive hyper-intensive attention, because the Internet makes it easy to hype-up tiny events (especially if there's money thrown at that effort) that are completely insignificant in the large scale of things, and are not actually representative of colleges or students as a whole.

What does have a significant effect on public policy? Money - including from the same groups influencing what is taught in college (the real dangers to free speech and range of education - not the students who are victims of that) - when those same groups lobby/influence/corrupt government.

It's pretty obvious that right-leaning publications just try to blow the whole crackpot-students issue way out of proportion, to distract from the actual corruption of college/teaching and politics, from right-wing-dominated economic/financial/banking/business sources.

walshyn93 wrote: »

Considering graduates of Trinity, in particlar members of debating societies will make up a significant proportion of future senior civil servants and politicians I'd say there is a well established connection between current students and future public policy. Too obvious for me to even outline that connection in my original post.

Sorry but "it's obvious shurly" isn't an argument that establishes any more of a connection there.