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[bryant]

Popular right-wing comment of the week: “look what the left has been defending.”

Well… OK. If we’re responsible for the horrors of Saddam’s rule, I’d like the reasonable sensible right wing bloggers to stand up and take responsibility for this:

Osama is a pathetic little bitch. I swear, if I run into his sorry little ass in an alley somewhere, I’m gonna turn that turd into my own personal sex toy.

And I’m not even gay. I’ll still get an orgasm just thinking about the humiliation I’m laying down on his murderous stinking ass.

I’ll come the second time while I murder that prissy little buttfuck.

And this:

I’m not religious though I do remember some of the tales from the book of Revelations. I have to say that I believe if there is an end of time as described in that book, if this is it, then Mohammed is the false prophet spoken of and Muslims are the evil followers who have to be defeated.

Just words? Sure. But words that lead to actions — so how’s about you take responsibility for this:

Several male students, one wielding a wooden plank, broke into the suite of an anti-war activist in Calhoun College March 27 and wrote a hateful note on her bedroom message board, said the victim, Katherine Lo ‘05. Lo said the incident occurred a day after she hung an American flag upside-down from her bedroom window to protest the war in Iraq.

Tut tuts after the fact don’t do much for me on this, frankly. The left has been pointing out that the kind of virulent racist sentiment we see in Little Green Footballs leads to violent action for well over a year now. How’s about a simple admission that the left was right?

It is essential that outlets such as LGF exist. I mean that very sincerely. Everyone, no matter how vicious and vile their views, should have a platform. One of the reasons why is so that they can see how others react to those views. Free speech is pretty meaningless if nobody is listening; ideally, free speech creates a climate in which ideas can be discussed, criticized, analyzed, and otherwise dissected.

Failure to engage something like LGF in a critical fashion, however, is gonna be perceived as approval. Even if you don’t think Charles Johnson is a racist (and honestly, I wouldn’t say he is based on his posts), he has built a site that supports and encourages racism. If he doesn’t take a hose to the stables, he deserves criticism for his failure to act.

Comments

[gwenix.livejournal.com]

One of the bumper stickers of Anti-Flag features an upside down flag with a lot of words such as "racism exploitation sexism globalisation" written in the lines. People with these stickers on their cars, or anti-war stickers non-related to Anti-Flag, around town have found their cars keyed in their absence.

This has not been reported in the media, of course, only the "terrible" actions of the protesters (which amount to mostly tying up traffic for a total of five minutes at a time if left to their own devices, occasional running into Starbucks to yell "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" for 30 seconds, and one unfortunate incident where a car was damaged by protesters after he -- this part also not reported by the media -- hit a protester). The result is a view of the protesters in this city being viewed as destructive people who need to be contained, why can't they be good upstanding citizens like the rest of the city?

I've heard people insisting that protesting "forces" businesses to close when a protest is occurring in their area for fear of looting and damages; causing untold harm to their business. When I pointed out that protesters really don't do much harm to one of the people telling me this in shock and dismay, her response was, "But protesters are potential riots! What if they get out of control??" This is coming from someone dating a guy who tried to *start* a riot at Y2K by running around a neighborhood causing damage to public property et al, by the way, but she insists that's different, he's good, we're bad. Later, after I pointed out that my arrest was the result of my yelling at a police officer for kicking a kid on the sidewalk, she said, "He should have kicked the kid more. Protesters suck, and people who suck deserve to be beaten up."