Used with permission from the Islamic Center of Victoria.
A Texas mosque was set on fire just hours after Trump signed an executive order restricting migration from Muslim-majority countries.
The Islamic Center of Victoria was set on fire around 2 a.m. on Saturday, according to localreports.
Victoria Fire Marshal Tom Legler told the Victoria Advocate he had no theories about the cause of the fire, but he is seeking assistance from state and federal fire investigators.
[…]
On Sunday, the center plans to hold a public prayer service in the lawn to “pray for peace & safety for all.” The center said it will be rebuilt with love, and it has already started a GoFundMe fundraiser for financial support to do so.
[…]
Since the election in November, there has been an increase in hate crimes across the country. In the one month following the election, the Southern Poverty Law Center found over 1,000 reports of hate incidents. ThinkProgress is keeping a stricter record of targeted incidents, and we have still found almost 250 incidents of hate. A significant number of these are anti-Islam in nature.
The fire in Victoria comes just three weeks after an Islamic Center under construction in Austin was set on fire and destroyed.
The full story at Think Progress. I read this right after checking a conversation at Pharyngula, where people are still fiercely arguing against punching Nazis, and fully defending their right to speech, because talking about killing all black people, having a dreamy white state, or ethnic cleansing, well, it’s just talk, and that’s okay. Some people in that thread are still behaving as though ‘merica was still this great democracy, so it will be okay. No, it won’t be okay. There is no democracy, it’s gone. Oh, there’s still a partial skeleton of tattered and deliquescent bones, but they are falling fast. Nazism is being defended and normalised not just by all the Joe Q. Publics’, but liberals and lefties all over the place. We must be nice! We must be better! We must do this the right way! I have one thing to say to all that: Fuck No.
I am sick to death of this “we must be better” crap. I’m not better for refusing to stand up to nazis speechifying about the horrors of non-white, non-hetero people. I’m not better for turning my head away when I see someone targeted by nazis. I’m not better for defending the rights of nazis to talk about how wonderful nazism is, we just have to get rid of all those people. I will say this straight out: I am one hell of a fucktonne better than anyone who is being a handwringing milquetoast over the rights of fucking nazis. I will fight, openly, every inch of the way. I will not stand by along a road which will end up littered with bodies. I will not be complicit. I will not condone. I will shout down nazis at every opportunity. Fuck them. They do not have any right to speech as far as I’m concerned, because it’s all hate, and it’s incitement. A person in that thread stated that speech was not action. That’s not true. Of course speech is an action, it’s an attempt to communicate. Only an idiot would consider all speech benign. Speech, as wielded by nazis, is an incitement, an incitement to horrific actions.
We are past trouble here in the States. Everything you thought you knew, forget it. We are in a dark, lost age, and while this terrifies me personally, I refuse to shut my eyes to what is happening right in front of my face. I will stand, no matter how much I may tremble, and I will try to help and protect all those who are nothing more than fuel for the fire in the eyes of nazis and racists everywhere.
On my thread about Richard Spencer getting punched in the face, the first two comments are from people whining that I endorse said punching.
You’re fucking right I support said fucking punching. Punch them all in the goddamn face. As long as mosques are burning, people of color are being murdered, and a huge group of fascists are running our country, punching Nazis in the face is the least we can do.
Do you have a link to that Pharyngula thread?
Right on, Nathan. The time for nice is over.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/01/28/my-alma-mater-has-a-fascism-problem/
I saw this coming too. When shit truly starts hitting the fan is when the true colors show. It’s nothing more than enabling of white supremacy under the guise of FREE SPEECH!!!1
And the moral high ground argument is: if you punch someone who is doing work to organize your entire family’s extermination, you are as bad as them.
If someone turns to you and says something like “I will kill your family. I know where you live” and you punch them, that somehow makes you bad?
If the Democrats keep acting as if this is just an ordinary presidency and keep working (or at least trying to) with Trump then they deserve to burn in the flames they’re ignoring now. They will go down in history as traitors to humanity, though I’m afraid those messages will be chiselled into the ruins of NY.
Oh, and fuck all the hand wringers and their victim blaming, too.
Saad:
Apparently. I despair.
This morning I was listening to NPR talk about Bannon’s ascent to the National Security Council. How did they describe a fascist white supremacist who regularly uses his ‘news’ site to bash woman and minorities while sending out his goons to doxx, harass, and intimidate random targets among the undermensch?
As a ‘nationalist populist’. Not a national socialist, heavens no! A ‘nationalist populist’, which is completely different from a national socialist because they say it is.
The mainstream are spineless fucks who use ‘civility’ as an excuse for their cowardly refusal to confront the evil, yes evil, forces quickly taking over our country.
Saad
Just… *hugs*, iffen you accept ’em.
I too am sick and tired of this insistence on maintaining some magical moral high ground, as if being able to say “hey, at least we aren’t as bad as them” is consolation for the very real calamities being done to oppressed people and groups. When places of worship/community centers are being fucking burned to the ground and we’re hand-wringing over some poor, poor white man being punched in the face for saying very face-punch-worthy things it doesn’t seem like much of high ground at all.
I am actually still livid about this. I thought putting up that post would be cathartic. And yet I’m seriously considering posting yet another fucking rant because I am so goddamned pissed.
I think what bothers me about the moral high ground and appeals to keep to it, is that the phrase “at least we aren’t as bad as them” is often a snobbish way of letting yourself believe you’re better than that otehr guy, while simultaneously doing nothing productive about whatever it is that they’re doing. It’s an excuse for apathy and silence, because while that moral high ground is being maintained, people are being killed, and you’re doing nothing about it but yelling at the people using methods you don’t approve of to save lives. And standing by and being polite while that happens is being complicit, and that’s not a particularly moral high ground at all.
There is a thoughtful article at the Grauniad on The ‘punch a Nazi’ meme: what are the ethics of punching Nazis? (“An assault on ‘alt-right’ figure Richard Spencer sparked the ‘punch a Nazi’ meme. Violence is bad, but so is racism — so where do we stand ethically?”). It explores the issues (plural) from several different perspectives (plural).
I will not excerpt the article for two inter-related reasons: It is long, exploring multiple concepts, making excerpts prone to be misleading; and, in the past, people have only read the excerpts and consider them a full summation of the excerpted article.
Having said that, there is a quote in the article I quite like. Dr King, commenting on people who call for civility in the face of injustice: These people “[prefer] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
(This comment has been cross-posted elsewhere, so apologies if it seems familiar…)