Tuesday 28 July 2020

Discrimination against any group matters

When the "Black Lives Matter" movement first came to international prominence, I felt like joining the "All Lives Matter" movement. I recalled being annoyed at the publicity surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day which tended to obscure the fact that not only Jews, but also homosexuals, Slavs, communists and the mentally-handicapped were swept up in the Nazis' elimination of "Untermenschen". (Indeed, it was the latter group which was the first target of German genocide.) I felt like pointing out that Latino, Korean and South Asian lives did not matter to the race rioters of 1990s America. There has also been a streak of Antisemitism in some militant "black" movements - admittedly matched by racism on the part of some better-off Jews in the States.

So it was no surprise when some person named Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. (trading as "Wiley" in the popular entertainment business) gave further evidence that being discriminated against does not cure one of racism or religious discrimination oneself. (Priti Patel in relation to Muslims is another example.) It was not a surprise that he was allowed to spout his noxious bile on Twitter, which is remarkably laisser-faire when it comes to expressions of race hatred, and of perverted history and science, (with the sole exception of the Trump family, it appears). So to give a slap on the wrist to Twitter over this particular effusion smacks of virtue signalling. Why not boycott the platform altogether?


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