Having observed Canada’s radical left for the past year, I am continually astounded how they have perverted the causes of human rights. Instead of working to stop abuse and profiling, it seems the me that they spend more time using the causes of racism, sexism, ableism & homophobia as blunt weapons to attack people who disagree with their lefty plans. Over time, it has become obvious to me that the left has failed these causes and is becoming more damaging to them than they are helping…
Accusing someone of being a bigot, particularly in Canada, is often a very effective way of discrediting their political beliefs- even if the person being accused has never expressed any forms of bigotry. As soon as the trap has been set, third parties will automatically withdraw support from the person who has been accused for fear of being accused of supporting hateful behaviour. We Canadians are very sensitive in this area.
But as time passes, and the accusations become more absurd, this tactic has begun to backfire on the left. Increasingly, they are looking like fools as their tactics are exposed. But, with this exposure, they not only destroy their own credibility but they’re also eroding at the credibility of genuine instances of bigotry and hate. The cycle is now running out of control- this will no doubt result in innocent people being hurt.
Last night i saw one of the most disturbing examples of this trend I’ve come across. It was on a video by Curtis Nixon of The Indignants, a group connected to Occupy in London Ontario. I’ve written about Nixon before after he was discovered making Nazi death slurs to a Jewish woman on Occupy Toronto’s Facebook page.
The video is called “Drive By Rally”, and Nixon wrote the following description on his YouTube page:
“On our way to show our support and solidarity for the people who are currently being incarcerated in the Elgin Middlesex Detention Centre in deplorable conditions, we passed by some religious nuts practising their version of bigotry and discrimination.”
Here, have a look at the video- it’s only two minutes, and it says a lot:
So, the people in the bus are driving by a group of people who were protesting against abortion. I don’t agree with anti-abortionists, and would probably approach them myself- but, to yell out at them that they’re “racist, sexist and anti-gay” is the height of ignorance. Nowhere is there any indication that these people are that way, this was only an ignorant assumption. And it wasn’t a sound assumption either- there are many people who are opposed to abortion who are nowhere near being bigoted like this. I even know a couple of Occupiers who fit into this mould.
When accusations of bigotry become the norm. without any evidence of them having occurred, it results in people being desensitised to them. This is perhaps more damaging than actual occurrences of bigotry because, when real incidents occur, desensitised people are less likely to respond.
Radicals on the Left need to grow-up and stop using this damaging tactic. If they truly care about stopping hate, they need to stop hating….
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The only racists and bigots were the people on the bus who seem to have a problem with the religious beliefs of the protesters. Shame on that bus load of idiots.
Author
Indeed…
Average age of person on bus = 18… average age of person holding sign on the street= 45…… there’s hope that people get smarter with age…
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Having attended Occupy makes me question this happens…
unfortunately agree’d, but “both” sides do this crap, not only the left.
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I’ve seen it done by people of both sides. That said, making accusations of racism, sexism & homophobia seems to happen much more often in the Lefty world- from my experience, it is endemic…
Ill never forget Viccy Teows calling those opposed to c 30 child molesters. Hell he even has “some” sway.
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Touche, you’ve got a good point there…
The common denominator in “both” sides is University Education. The way these “norms” re: antiracism, etc. were introduced was by the rooting and subversion of the University system. First these norms and policies designed to turf out anyone who spoke against them were instituted on University campuses, then once they’d run that for a few years, they unleashed a cohort of public school teachers that would actively front this nonsense.
Of course, in BC it has a bigger backstory, the removal of local schoolboard autonomy. They used to have local taxation powers and ability to set curriculum to a degree. Under the Socreds, that was centralized in Victoria. One United Church Minister in the Hansard, through his MLA, compares it to what was fought against in WWII, the centralization of educational power in a single ministry. So once that trick was done, it enabled this monolithic politically correct garbage to be foisted upon cohort after cohort of schoolchildren.
And I hate that such is how it was done, because I did not get that treatment, and I still support the rights of all genders, sexual orientations and races. There was no need to play dirty pool. And now that we have a politicized education system, that’s incredibly dangerous—the pendulum could swing the other way.
Broadly, these antiracist, antihomophobic, antisexist attitudes are the “New Theology” designed by people who don’t like all of the freedom that the “Old Theology” gave. Theology is the study of incorporeal things, like spirits, rights, laws, duties, etc. etc, or at least that is one way of looking at it that doesn’t make it quite so silly-sounding.
So I agree with you on this, I think—and given how bad the public school kids produced by the radical left are, I’d hate to see what could happen if some truly radical right wingers (i.e. BC Conservatives, not tory-liberals) got ahold of the education system.
He refers to them as “religeous nuts” which is quite ironic. He then assumes they are racist and “homophobic” because they are religeous. More evidence that the radical left and radical right have more in common than differences. Both have a severe and irrational hatred of anyone who might be different than they are.
It appears to me and to many others as well that the use of accusations of bigotry, homophobia, racist, sexist and a plethora of other ‘ists , is a last resort to attempt to discredit a person or group who has consistently made sound , viable and accurate argument about a subject that the ” other side ‘ opposes. This appears to be standard practice for many fringe groups as their last line of defense. Frankly, I think they use it because they are, well, to be be blunt , they lack any intellectual capacity for reasoning and sound arguments to support what ever position they seemingly wish to cling to. Rather than provide an argument for a position, these groups will simply call a person a racist or bigot or sexist , and then, other followers will latch onto these words as well and further perpetuate the lies and accusation.
Occupy is the prime example of how this works as these leaders, in this so called leaderless movement , who are trained cult leaders simply use this as a means of trying to discredit facts presented that do not support the occupy mentality. Accusations fly about faster than the speed of light, yet, no proof is ever provided and these leaders cleverly divert the subject to avoid answering questions when confronted . Frankly, they are skilled liars , fraud artists and con artists, nothing more.
Now, do you think Occupy is any different than how every Government in history got going?
Standing Water, I do not know the answer to that , however, if I were to speculate, I might summize by saying that for the most part, many governments may have have evolved in some similar fashion. I think what stands out as being vastly different, however, is that at least governments, to some extent have evolved, learned from mistakes made( although not every time ) and at least made some legitimate attempt to be at least seemingly open. Once again, I say for the most part, keeping in mind that there are real exceptions to this with all government.
Occupy has done and continues to do the exact opposite. They intentionally alienate anyone and everyone who has the ability to think rationally and logically. They accept only those who are willing to be as radical as these leaders , going so far as to embrace the use of violence and property destruction , and those who employ these tactics.
Occupy had real potential as a movement that could have effected some good positive change that we are all looking for . Instead, they decided to sell out to union interests, sell out to communism and embrace the very acts of violence they are seemingly protesting against.
Occypy did have a great movement. When it started I loved it. However, being a realist I was pessamistic about its long term potential. Living where I do and having seen the work of extremists like Julian Ichim, Alex Hundert, Kelly Pflug-Back, Sterling Stutz and Amanda Hiscocks drove that pessamism. I knew they would see this movement as an opportunity to advance their narrow minded agenda and would take over the movement. Much the same way the Tea Party movement was hyjacked by the big government right (Michelle Bachman, etc.) and the anti-immigrant crowd. I also knew that if there were that many extremist leaders in my small area there must be a whole lot more around the country.
Unfortunately I was correct. Pretty soon the whole “99%” slogan became just that, a slogan. Instead of being a statistic. And pretty soon there were very stringent requirements to consider yourself part of the so called 99%. People who drive SUVs, own guns, vote Conservative, are religeous (especially if they are Christian), use a bank, hunt, live in a rural area, work for a corporation, own a business, and my personal favorite–work in law enforcement, then you cannot be part of the “99%”.
If this movement was even to go anywhere then all these groups needed to be embraced. They could have embraced the police (much the same way Anonymous did when protesting the Church of Scientology) but instead chose to alienate the police and make them an enemy. They could have embraced the church. Instead they actuall protested the church.
You will not get anywhere alienating these groups. You might hate religeon but it is far too important to way too many people. The Soviets tried to end it. Go to Russia or any former Soviet republic today. See how religeon is doing.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
~Desmond Tutu
I am a witness to this form of abuse. If you are not with them, you are against them, and they will wait for you to have an argument with a female and accuse you of “targeting females”. LOL! Then they will call you racist if you don’t wish to beg indians for permission for everything. I’ve never heard the right-wing abuse these labels as readily or widespread as I observed in occupy and there is a very good reason for that. These tactics are basically part of their communist shill handbook. Occupy was an inside job right from hour zero, there was no “infiltration” of something so obviously set up to keep people busy doing nothing productive while the government furtherly consolidates it’s tyranny. These lefty zombies have no idea that they are just being used as puppets to recruit people into continuing to support a rigged feudalistic system while their fake democracy pendulum swings away from right. Either way, at the end of the day, it is still our nation being completely gutted by globalists, and it will still be a hellish nightmare that my generation and future generations will be forced to endure — because I am definitely starting to believe that people are TOO stupid to learn to avoid these pitfalls. They just let things happen and whine about their health care and free doles, the government has something over too many people’s heads and I’m sorry but the vast majority of them are nothing but beta’s. People that say yes sir, may I have another when faced with tyranny and drag the rest of us down with them.
Hammer, I agree. They could not even define who or what constituted being part of the so called 1%, yet they opposed them anyway. I was barely able to control my laughter as people like Sakura Saunders who is one the main leaders of occupy is a very wealthy young lady and her job is to hon knob the world for fun I had another great laugh as one of the other occupy leaders proclaimed their utter dislike for the rich, but forgot to leave his Rolex watch at home. If you walked around the camp long enough and knew who the leaders where, you pretty soon knew they lived in swanky homes in forest hill and thornhill , loved their designer cloths, always wore the good perfumes, and somehow , alw2ays managed to have well maniquired nails and trendy hairdos ….. not bad for people who hated the rich and wanted to prese3nt themselves as ordinary regular people.
Hammer, sorry for the second reply, this thought just came to me as well.
These same occupy leaders claimed to hate everything corporate , yet, I’ll bet you didn’t know what some did for a living did you ? Taylor Chelsea as one example, claims to hate everything corporate but she forgets to tell you that she works as an assistant director in the film industry and has for the past ten or so years. . I’ll bet you didn’t know Dave Vasey worked in the Nuclear industry for a few years did you ? did you know that most of the main leaders are in Grad school at either U of T, york and Ryerson? Are you aware that these same leaders got all expense paid trips plus CASH to go to New York City , paid for by the UNIONS ? There is a very great deal about occupy that many don’t know , things their ” leaders don’t want them to know .
Give me a break… I realize this is a really old comment, but it’s ludicrously ignorant (as are plenty of the others here… and the original article).
If you live in the modern world, it’s pretty much impossible not to have some sort of dependence on corporations. That’s how things work. Claiming anyone who opposes corporate influence is hypocrite because of this is like saying anyone in favour of privatizing, say, road work and construction is a hypocrite for driving on roads built by government employees.
Also, I’m astonished at how many people buy into the nonsense idea that any mention of racism, sexism, or homophobia is a “last ditch attempt to discredit” people. When people on the left talk about those things, they aren’t accusing anyone of being secret white supremacists who want to lynch people (aside from the obvious exceptions).
Everyone has subconscious racist thoughts and biases. Everyone occasionally says something ignorant or hurtful. I’ve had people point out to me that I’ve said something racist or sexist, and I didn’t storm out of the room, or have my reputation ruined. Every single time it led to a conversation where I actually learned something.
Perhaps you should try not getting so offended. Discussions of racism only shut down the conversation when you get overly emotional as a result.
…even though most have decided not to live outside of society, would the occupy movement have been given any credit if it was just nomads, wasters, “freemen” (figuratively speaking). Most will try and claim anyway just like the weather underground that they are using the system, to fund the resistance?!? (i could be wrong)