While I am generally optimistic about humanity’s capacity to do the right thing in general and over long time scales, one thing that I have been disillusioned by over shorter time scales is how people who have been subjected to discrimination and persecution when they are are in the minority, discriminate against other minorities when they gain political power. You would think that their own experience of being treated badly would make them feel empathy for other discriminated minority groups. But not so. One sees this switching from being the victim of discrimination to the perpetrators in many different contexts, be it religion, ethnicity, or nationality.
One recent example is that of the city of Hamtramck, Michigan where Muslims, who are often discriminated against in the US, became the dominant group in the city council. Now they have turned against the LGBTQ+ community, banning the pride flag on city properties.
In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.
They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.
This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.
…“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”
For about a century, Polish and Ukrainian Catholics dominated politics in Hamtramck, a city of 28,000 surrounded by Detroit. By 2013, largely Muslim Bangladeshi and Yemeni immigrants supplanted the white eastern Europeans, though the city remains home to significant populations of those groups, as well as African Americans, whites and Bosnian and Albanian Americans. According to the 2020 census some 30% to 38% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Yemeni descent, and 24% are of Asian descent, largely Bangladeshi.
After several years of diversity on the council, some see irony in an all-male, Muslim elected government that does not reflect the city’s makeup.
We are seeing how anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has become a driving factor in Republican and right-wing Christian circles in the US. Anti-LGBTQ+ views are also common in Islamic communities and thus this issue forms a fertile ground for forming an alliance between these reactionary groups.
Now isn’t this nice? Although I don’t live in the US myself, I would often feel some sympathy for American Muslims, who, as a tiny minority in the country as a whole, were often subjected to unwarranted harassment. I would also listen to Muslim community leaders who emphasized that American Muslims were after all Americans and wanted to live in peace with their fellow citizens.
So what am I to think now? Not only do they move against us, but then they taunt us for that. There have been a lot of taunts aimed at LGBT people in recent times, and I for one am sick to death of them.
The members of this city council are very foolish and short-sighted people. They may have gained ascendancy for the moment in this very small city, but in the country as a whole they remain a tiny minority at a time when right-wingers are becoming more and more threatening. Do they really think they can thrive without support from outside their own community? Do they really think that an alliance with right-wing groups based on hostility towards LGBT people is their best way forward?
I cannot fathom why people are surprised here. Did people really elect members of a famously conservative religion and just hope they were all moderates? Did no one ask the councillors where their policy inclinations lay?
“many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated”
What a bunch of fucking morons. How’s that “diversity” working out for ya? Have you learned anything here?
I’m all for diversity of backgrounds when it comes to sorting out things in community/government, but yeah, how can anyone be surprised at this outcome? Fundamentalist religion is not your friend. Ever. And especially when it gets majority power.
My only question is how the christian conservatives feel about this, seeing that the actual policy is one that they agree with. I sincerely doubt that they see the Muslims on the council as allies in the larger sense.
And as others have indicated, I find this to be an extraordinarily dumb move, politically. You just knifed your major supporting group in the back. I can’t imagine that they’ll hold onto control at the next election, unless they do some serious backtracking.
I agree with Holms @#2, although I think the phrase “conservative religion” is a redundancy. There are no liberal religions, with the exception of a few storefront churches that usually die after a few years.
“You would think that their own experience of being treated badly would make them feel empathy for other discriminated minority groups.”
A naive person might think that, but the conservative mind is inherently lacking in empathy. They see the world only through the lens of their own comfort/familiarity vs. their discomfort/unfamiliarity. That is their barometer for good vs. bad and no appeals to fairness or empathy is going to change that.
The one ray of hope is that their children are going to be exposed to LGBTQ people all their lives and those children born with the conservative mental illness (as I view it) will not be discomfited by them. Their conservative parents though, are a lost cause IMO.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” has never really worked.
Last guys don’t necessarily finish nice.
A casually homophobic religion with homicidal policies wherever it holds power starts using its newfound powers against gay people. Shocking, I know.
Well, at least it should be shocking to the cafeteria interfaith types who have COEXIST bumper stickers and think any criticism of Islam is automatically Islamophobia. We all know they aren’t really paying attention to this.
Part of the excerpts from the OP:
Not in the OP, but in the original (my emphasis):
Whence this “we” and “you”? She is one of them.
[ah, never mind. My bad. Not even that similar, the names]
Also, one of the women is a Karen.
Attempt two to bypass your spam filter:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/19/tory-mayor-resigns-after-apologising-for-attending-lgbtq-event
@Morales, 11 -- yes, your bad. Apostrophe and e implied. Why not just admit that all them furrin names, and by extension all them furriners, are the same as far as you’re concerned? We all can see that’s what you mean.
@7 -- the enemy of my enemy is… still a c**t.
Not any more than all Polish-American members of that city council are the same.
More to the point, if they were all the same as far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t have posted my apologetic correction, would I?
What a stupid conceit — in what sense do you imagine I imagine they’re “furriners”? They’re USAnians, else they would not get elected to city council.
(Anyway, it’s good to see Mano quoting a Karen with implicit approval)
PS I had a look: https://hamtramck.us/city-council/
For completeness: https://hamtramck.us/mayor/
@ 13 sonofrojblake
What the fuck is this? There’s plenty of real stuff to criticise Morales for -- you don’t have to make shit up. He’s never shown any hint of a problem with “foreigners” (unlike yourself. As soon as I read the OP I thought “sonofroj going off about Muslims in 5, 4, 3…”. And I called it). If my understanding is correct he’s an immigrant himself from a non-English speaking background.
Completely baseless accusation, for shame.
[utterly OT but twice meta]
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuffySpeak
(Sense preserved)
@17 -- given your recent record on anti-Semitism (remember when you blamed all homopobia in world history on the Jews? I do…) I think you’re probably not on solid ground throwing “that’s racist” stones.
Apart from anything else, you have unsurprisingly not understood what I wrote. If you think the “morons” comment was aimed at Muslims, well… yeah, sure cupcake, whatever. Suffice to say, so far, there’s absolutely no criticism from me in this thread directed at the Muslims on that council. They’re doing what they do, what anyone with any sense would know they’d do, and the only people I’ve criticised are the ones who’ve taken to their fainting couches shocked, shocked I tell you that these people have acted entirely in character, instead of gratefully accepting the support they got from the bleeding hearts and getting in line for the woke parade.
Unfortunately, this is an old story. There are many examples in history of persecuted groups turning around and becoming persecutors as soon as they got the power to do so. I’m sure that sometimes people who have suffered persecution and discrimination develop a greater sense of empathy and fairness towards others, but often this does not happen.
@20: absolutely; it’s a matter of feeling they have the power to abuse. There are several neighborhoods in Brooklyn (most notably Williamsburg) where ultra-Orthodox Jews have settled and harass non-Orthodox women in particular, but men as well. Live in the neighborhood and want to go out for breakfast/a drink/see a show? If you’re a woman and not dressed frumpily enough, you will be harassed by the ultra-Orthodox men who feel they have the right to dictate to all women who they must appear in public. If you’re on the sidewalk and won’t give way, they’ll shove you right off. Want to catch the bus? Woman, your place is on the back of the bus and the ultra-Orthodox men will throw a fit if they think you’re too far forward.
“While I am generally optimistic about humanity’s capacity to do the right thing in general and over long time scales”
you mean glacial? sure. eventually we might get our shit sorted. say, over the next ten thousand years.
anything shorter than that? nah.
“I cannot fathom why people are surprised here. Did people really elect members of a famously conservative religion and just hope they were all moderates? Did no one ask the councillors where their policy inclinations lay?”
interestingly, the Muslim community here in NZ is about as liberal as it gets. They do not protest against gay people or rights here. that’s done by ignorant rural CHRISTIANS. go figure.
“The members of this city council are very foolish and short-sighted people.”
well, that sounds like a reasonable conclusion. wasn’t that hard after all.
There are well over a billion Muslims. they aren’t going to all be the same.
What degree of political representation have they procured?
@23; I remember the Christchurch Mosque Massacre and the 28-year-old white supremacist (Christian) man who committed the crime. In the aftermath, Ardern stood up and condemned the murderer and assured the Muslims that New Zealand was their home. A local school did a haka for them. Everyday people demonstrated their support for the victims.
Culture in the USA--particularly rural culture--is far more racist and murderous. “Clinging to guns and god” as one person once put it, but didn’t go far enough to describe the mindset. Non-white, non-Christian immigrants tend to be abused by that group. If their children work hard in academics in school, well, the resentment and persecution complex kicks into high gear.
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan covered this the other day.
It’s high school all over again. When a group that has been hated and bullied feels they are no part of the “in crowd”, they’ll hate on others to “show they belong”.
Over 50% of white gay males voted for Cheetolini in both 2016 and 2020.
News flash: The oppressed can be jackasses.
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Muslims are not jackasses: Muslims are NOT pushing Islamic Ideology, NOT pushing the Koran onto pre-teens in public schools.
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LGBTQ are jackasses: LGBTQ are pushing Sexual Deviancy Ideology onto pre-teens in public schools.
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God knows (pun intended) the American Left fought to get rid of prayer and bible from public schools.
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Are Muslims in the USA pushing for polygamy? No. They observed that Mormons had to disavow polygamy in order for Utah to join the Union of States.
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Proposition: teach in the public school only the elements that are COMMON to ALL cultures. Common to Urban Culture, Rural Culture, Black Culture, Jewish Culture, GLBTQ Culture, Hispanic Culture, Nudist Culture, Amish Culture, Atheist Culture, Leftist Culture, Conservative Culture, etc.. Sexual Deviancy is absent in many cultures. A fact remains standing for all cultures: all members of all cultures are offspring of hetero-sexual cultures of all types. Leave it to the home and private schools to teach elements particular and peculiar to a given culture.
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If a “P” is to join the “LGBTQIA+++” alphabet it will be Pedophilia, not Polygamy. Already there is a movement to normalize Pedophilia by rebranding pedophiles as MAP (= Minor Attracted Person).
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A San Francisco 1980’s poster that I deem evil: “We do not want to be tolerated, we demand to be loved!”. In the land of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, tolerance is the minimum courtesy, not love. Demanding love makes one a stalker, is the driving force of a rapist; reminds me of the movie “Fatal Attraction”. Are the GLBTQ advocates into placing pet rabbits into pots of boiling water in non-GLBTQ homes?
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Now, in 2023 AD, I see ads stating “we do not want to be tolerated, we want to be accepted”. Accepted as good? Accepted as bad? Same wickedness as in the 1980’s SF poster. Yes, be my neighbor (and I welcome you as a neighbor) but I have the right NOT to be forced to merge into your life and I have the right not to have you intrude into my home.
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Jordan Peterson states that compelled speech is evil. Correct. Compelled love is evil. GLBTQ advocacy is much more about HATE than about LOVE, much more about Revenge than it is about Forgiveness, rarely (if ever) about TOLERANCE.
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Even the title of the essay, “When victims of bigotry are bigoted towards others”, oozes with HATE.
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In a multicultural society, tolerance is the glue, not love. With many cultures within a society, within a nation, there are always areas of irreconcilable differences within which love is impossible but which tolerance is possible. Tolerance damps down passions which can explode. Yes, there are irreconcilable differences amongst “oppressed” groups.
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The Left abhors tolerance and their views on tolerance take on a childish, immature tone. Take Herbert Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance”, where he writes about “Pure Tolerance” (in contrast to plain tolerance) which allows for evil. Such “Pure Tolerance” is just blind, foolish tolerance. Empathy without knowledge leads to foolishness. Tolerance without knowledge leads to foolishness. Tolerance of everything is just stupid. Informed tolerance is common-sense tolerance.
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The aim of the Left is to sow chaos, hatred, jealousy, envy, anger, resentment, fear amongst the societal elements in order to dismantle society and then “rebuild” society. Tolerance damps down the volatile passions, encourages societal stability, and thus is an impediment to the Leftist aims.
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LGBTQ activists should imitate Jehovah’s Witnesses: leave the children alone and go knock on doors and preach to adults the joys of sodomy and tribadism.
friedfishe, for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses%27_handling_of_child_sex_abuse
I love how these idiots’ conspiracy theories never have any point to them. It’s always just bad people are doing bad things to be bad and we should be very concerned 🙁