When I first came to Finland over twenty years ago, there was still a fair amount of foreigner fear around. That is, for non-white foreigners. Every time there was some kind of negative event involving foreigners, the change in attitudes was noticeable on the streets, and in the way people spoke to me. This escalated at different times, for instance, during the Syrian war where refugees were arriving across Europe. However, in general, I remember the feeling of hearing about a story in the news where someone was stabbed, and just hoping it wasn't a foreigner who did it, because of the personal backlash. Times have changed.
Now I have a different feeling when I read such stories.
I assume a foreigner was stabbed.
I don't think it has actually happened that often, but there have been several this year, where white power extremists have stabbed "foreign-looking" people in the streets. Because, there is nothing like showing how unworthy a foreign person is of being in the country, by a born citizen committing a hate crime in the street.
Hate crime
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political or ideological aims.
For those paying attention.
That is the definition of terrorism, not a hate crime. The actual definition is:
Hate crime
a crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.
I have always wondered, why the kinds of hate crimes that target randomly based on a group marker aren't considered as terrorism legally. What is the difference? If someone stabs a person because they are brown, with the reasoning based on ideological beliefs, with the aim to kill or strike fear into others of the same or similar group, doesn't that fall into the first definition? Shouldn't they be punished under the same laws that an attempted suicide bomber would?
Out of the 30 men at Guantanamo Bay still, how many are Klan members?
The conversation seems silly and obvious perhaps, but as someone who has grown up facing a fair amount of prejudice since childhood, I have often questioned the behavior of people in these areas. It is around the same question I asked yesterday, are you comparing yourself to the worst, or the best of the other group?
If you are going to hate a group based on their worst, all groups are going to be hated. However, if one compares oneself to the average or better of that group, and fails to come in on top, what does that say about the person judging? If the response to crime of the worst, is to commit similar crimes, does that put a person in the better half, or the worse half of whatever group they are claiming to belong?
You might not want to live next door to a foreigner, like my neighbors have to. However, would you rather live next door to a white supremist who believes that stabbing someone will make your country a better place? And for the record, I get along well with the neighbors, who are in their mid-eighties. We take them pies occasionally, and they give us tomatoes from their garden in the summer. They openly like us better than the people who lived here for the twenty years prior to us.
What I have noticed over the last decade or so, is that nationalists have become increasingly emboldened, where even those in politics are able to spit vitriol that wouldn't have been acceptable just out of civility twenty years ago. The populist approach, driven by loud voices in digital silos, has increased the separation between people, at the same time those same networks have isolated individuals, and provided them with on-demand, unchecked support for their belief system.
It saddens me.
It takes me back to when I was a child and facing other children who had been raised in family culture silos, speaking words and holding attitudes that they didn't even understand, yet applied as if it was part of them, part of their identity. But, as we should know, this is the power of conditioning, and it is the same process used to train the suicide bomber terrorist.
Yet, no matter how strong their beliefs may be, most people don't actually spend time reflecting on the how they got them, or why they have them. They just believe that it is the way they are. But, in reality, they are conditioned like sheep, trained like fleas, taught who and what to follow, and how high to jump. And they will defend what they have been taught to the death, even though they never chose the lessons to learn.
If you could start again from scratch and choose all your beliefs,
What kind of person would you choose to become?
The best you can be, or the best of your group?
Where are you now?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]