The New Tolerance Campaign is a weird little right-wing organization founded by Log Cabin Republicans who are claiming to be “tolerant”, but their entire raison d’etre is to hate Muslims and anything “woke”. They are also hating on gay people who think Palestinians don’t deserve to be killed.
They have a Hate Map page that lists all the organizations across the country that they hate. Antifa, they hate. Muslim student associations, they hate. Socialists, they hate. Multiple chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, they hate (because they’re anti-Semitic, obviously). You get the idea. This organization is run by people so twisted by hatred for Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular that they have put every faintly left-wing organization on a List.
They’ve also come up with a stunt.
The New Tolerance Campaign has secured $1,000,000 to underwrite expenses for an LGBTQ Pride Parade in Gaza or the West Bank!
Oh, wait. It’s not a publicity stunt. We know this because they say so.
This isn’t a joke. It’s not a publicity stunt. Our offer is real.
It’s absolutely insane, though, and reflects a lack of understanding and empathy on the part of the New Tolerance Campaign. They are incapable of comprehending the idea that people can simultaneously recognize that people living in a conservative, patriarchal culture or following a religion that is antithetical to LGBTQ values are not on their side, and that those people don’t deserve to die for their beliefs. You can believe that the best approach to dealing with a group that contains many misogynists and homophobes is education, coexistence, and, you know, tolerance, while recognizing that they do not share your goals.
I don’t know what the New Tolerance Campaign expects to demonstrate with this PR stunt (which is what it actually is). That LGBTQ people are actually aware that some people have ideological values that harm LGBTQ people? I think they’re already very aware of that. But maybe, just maybe, they’re capable of empathizing with other groups that are being oppressed and persecuted, and are able to allow them to live.
Maybe they’re also smart enough to realize that the West Bank and Gaza are free-fire zones for the IDF, and taking a walk with banners and flags is a good way to get a bomb dropped on you. Also maybe they can see that this is a relatively trivial cause to throw in the face of people who are being bombed, who might resent a stupid parade through the ruins of their homes.
The balancing act is this:
No, being a Muslim should not be a death penalty offense; and
At least some Muslims are attempting to export radical Islam to the rest of the world, and willing to use terrorism to make it happen, and it’s not Islamophobia to recognize that reality; and
Such people are immune to sweet reason and education, just as radical Christianists are immune to sweet reason and education. Same dynamic, different religious crackpottery; and
A certain amount of brute force is going to be necessary in self defense against such people; and
No more brute force than is necessary should actually be used.
Now, that’s one hell of a balancing act, so it’s hardly surprising that hardly anybody does it well.
It’s like when people like Dawkins “Dear Muslima” or tell you to go “over there” to fix a problem that one is working on here. But it’s combined with associating Palestinians with bigotry here.
So they can simultaneously try to tell you to shut up about bigotry against LGBT+ people here, and make Palestinians look bad.
This isn’t JUST a publicity stunt; it’s just one more tentacle of plutocratic-Republicans’ long-running propaganda campaign to keep their enemies/intended victims divided against each other and thus unable to unite against them. “LGBT+ people vs. Palestinians” is just the latest of MANY wedges they’re trying to drive into the rest of us, along with “gays vs. trans”, “Blacks vs. Jews”, “Jews vs. liberals”, “women’s rights vs. trans”, “abused women vs. abused transwomen”, “Whites vs. Hatians”, etc. etc.
I suggest someone take a good look at who the Log Cabin Boys have been hobnobbing with lately, and maybe where their money is coming from. Notice how they reappeared out of relative obscurity to start flogging this idea? Offhand, I suspect we’d find some significant contributions from AIPAC or adjacent pressure-groups.
Not it will ever happen, but It’d be a win-win regardless of the outcome.
If violence does break out the right will claim “See libs, your precious Muslim savages hate LGBTQ folks, you hypocrites!”
If violence doesn’t’ break out the right will claim “See libs, your precious degenerate queermosexuals are disrespecting the Islamic faith and their traditions, you hypocrites!
As Roy Cohen taught Trump “No matter what the outcome, always claim victory.”
LGBTQ Palestinians exist and are equally vulnerable to bombs and bullets
which is to say, i don’t appreciate queerwashing genocide, and i don’t appreciate any claim or implication that queer liberation is a goal of the israeli state. try being openly queer anywhere in israel other than tel aviv, go ahead
Whenever I see one of these shit for brains takes it makes me think of the comic if the two Muslim coded people being bombed by a drone saying “did you hear the next one will be sent by a woman?!? We live in such wonderful times!”
This doesn’t even make sense as a PR stunt.
Let hold a parade in Gaza and try to get killed? Let’s ignore the actual violence being committed by Israel because har-har, is it funny to mock those clearly inferior brown people?
If any of them survive Gaza, they could go hold a parade in Kursk too, just to demonstrate their tolerance and their racial superiority over all those bombs.
This stunt falls is merely a slightly more elaborate iteration of a tired old right wing Xtian trope which basically boils down to them confessing how envious they are of the Islamists who (they imagine) have the power to murder every single queer person in every single Muslim-majority country. It’s death threats with plausible deniability. “See these guys want to kill you, which is why you should fall in line with OUR rules!”
@Sally Strange:
Yeah. “We don’t want to kill you, we just want to beat you up until you’re willing to pretend to not exist so we can continue to feel morally superior without having to face the fact that we actually do want to kill you, we just don’t want to go to jail for it.”
@10: Or maybe “We want to kill you, but we’re good civilized Christians, which means we need an excuse to kill you, so that makes us better than those swarthy heathen savages who don’t need any excuse to kill you, so you better support us ‘cuz we’re more tolerant than they are…just as long as you don’t give us any excuses to kill you!”