Via the LSESU ASH Facebook page and later via Alex Gabriel, a poster advertising an event put on by the LSE Socialist Worker Student Society. It reads:
Religious discrimination is irrefutably on the rise at LSE. Both the Atheist Society’s efforts to publish inflammatory “satirical” cartoons in a deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, and the ‘Nazi themed’ drinking games serve to highlight a festering undercurrent of racism.
What does really lie behind the claim that religious communities cannot be the target of racists?
Is atheism the road to social progress?
Why do Marxists defend religion?
That’s illiterate. “Religious discrimination” is somehow related to Nazism, and then it turns out to be a matter of racism, but then whoops it’s back to religion again – and all the wheels fall off with a resounding clatter.
But more to the point, notice the vicious language about the LSE ASH. Note the “efforts to publish” when the site of “publication” was the group’s Facebook page. Note the malevolent paranoia of “inflammatory.” Note above all the (one could say “inflammatory”) accusation that that was a “deliberate attempt to offend Muslims.” Note, in short, the frothing hatred of secularism, free speech and discussion, and failure to grovel before religious taboos.
In the next paragraph, note the “religious communities,” which sweeps all Muslims into the group “invariably outraged by even the most anodyne criticism of or jokes about their religion.”
Note it all, and hope they learn to think better soon.
Jesus and Mo is inflammatory in the same way hemorrhoids are inflammatory: It hurts because it’s what the entire body (of literature in the case of Islam) is sitting on all day long.
The SWP although it calls itself Marxist actually has no coherent political philosophy at all. They seem to just pick up on issues and run with them at which point they become like puppies shaking a rag doll that they just won’t put down even if something much better is on offer.
I was a trade union official for over a decade and had a lot of dealings with the SWP. The poster you quoted from is typical of their paranoia, their hatred of anyone who they see as enemies and the torturous way they attempt to justify themselves.
And why the scare quotes around satirical?
Because it wasn’t really satirical at all it was racisssssssssssss
Well…
The reality is that theists are angry that atheists are no longer afraid to be openly not religious. They take that incoherent, irrational anger, attach negatives to it, and call it “taking offense” in order to try to silence by appeals to “decency” when their appeals to burning people at the stake are no longer acceptable.
Nice how they slip in the Nazi drinking game as if it were part and parcel of “things the Atheist Society does”, not identifying the group involved by name (Ski Club or what?).
What kind of Marxist are you?
Oh, wait. SWP are Marxists in the same way the ASH are racists. I get it now!
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
Improbable Joe, what you say is true, but the SWP are officially atheist. They are quite happy to make fun of the Archbishop of Canterbury themselves. What they have in common with the religious fundamentalists is that they think have the absolute truth. They won’t admit to this if you ask them but they act as if it were true. They also like to think they are completely consistent but so once a decision is made it can’t be undone. So once they get entangled in some cause there is no way out
That’s… gibberish.
Alex Gabriel’s post was quite brilliant. When I lived in Britain, I got the impression that the SWP was ready to support anyone from the third world, no matter how retrograde and obnoxious their policies were. A kind of positive discrimination, if you like, which in fact hid an ugly undercurrent of paternalism.
Bernard Hurley,
Yeah, I get that… sort of chopped off my comment when the phone rang. 🙂
But that’s the scam, isn’t it? The theists hate atheists and secularism, link both to Hitler and Stalin and the KKK and whatever other negatives they can find, and dimwits like the SWP throw freedom of speech under the bus to distance themselves from those negatives.
Why think when you can do what he’s doing? Reasoning is hard and reasoning and adhering to reality, well, like I said…
But he’s has a future as a politician.
Idiots like this actually help to foster the perception that ALL muslims are offended by these things. One snotty little oik makes a vexatious complaint, and suddenly everyone of the faith is presumed to share their idiocy. This organisation is guilty of precisely the kind of prejudice they are (or want to be seen to be) against. Hypocritical bastards.
Sadly, this is all too familiar to me. A friend and I were loudly and publicly abused in our University square as racists, because I had inquired of the socialists (at one of their omnipresent information stalls) how they felt comfortable supporting gay rights and Islam at the same time. Previously, I had also dared to put up posters which included an image of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
I ended up publishing a piece in the student paper titled “Why Secularism is Not Racist.” I wonder if it did any good.
emily, I would have thought that a better title would have been “Why do some Twats think Secularism is Racist?”
[cough] In the US “twat” is a milder word for “cunt” – it’s not a synonym for “twit.”
That’s what comes of being divided by a common language.
This is a Jesus AND Mo cartoon, but I haven’t been hearing from any outraged Christians.
So what is the socialist Student Worker Society talking about?
Related, probably
http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2822/british-muslims-negative-reporting-islam
Well John, doesn’t that just go to show that they must have been targeting Muslims?