Gal
Cuz i lived n d US.
Did you live in an orthodox Jewish community, involved in a synagogue, having the neighbors spying and gossiping about your every move, and threatening you if you stepped out of line?
Did you live with my psychotic fucking parents and their religious zealotry that defies all categorization besides "criminally insane"?
Living in America does not equal living through my experiences. And that is the point. You cannot demonize or glorify everyone in a country, in a religion, in a geographical area based on your personal experiences. There are bad apples in every single barrel. You will always have people who will use any religion, use nationalism, use racism, use something, anything, to justify their anti-social behavior. You will also always have people who do pro-social or neutral things and credit it to their religion, to their nationality, to their race, to a particular political ideology, something, anything. That does not make them representatives of millions of people who happen to share that characteristic.
If you want to hate people for the evils that they have done (and I would never try to take that away from you), hate the specific people responsible. Don't hate everyone who happens to look like them, speak the same language as them, etc. That is just as ignorant and wrong as saying "a redhead once stole my purse; all redheads are thieves and should be thrown in jail" or "a person with blue eyes once saved my cat from drowning, all people with blue eyes must be respected and trusted." That kind of blanket racism is literally the cause of genocide.
I am not using hyperbole when I say that. I'm not saying it because "you = nazi" is the only argument I can think of.
I am saying it as someone whose family was personally effected by the holocaust. I'm saying it as a person whose grandmother lost her faith after losing so many family members to so violent a death. I'm saying it as a person who has seen people glorify violence and justify it using their religious views, their racist ideologies, etc. I'm saying it as a person whose parents were children during McCarthyism and whose views of the world were shaped by the blind xenophobia that ensued. I'm saying it as a person who has been the victim of plenty of violence, some of which I myself instigated. I'm saying it as a person who lived through 9/11. I'm saying it as a person who has studied psychology, sociology, history.
Blind hatred, hatred of entire groups of people for the actions of the few, dehumanizing millions of people, saying they are all equal, they are all inherently evil, inherently inferior, leads to genocide. It leads, perhaps inexorably, to violence. Even if you yourself do not commit that violence, you are justifying it and those who will commit it; you are laying the groundwork of blind hatred, of ignorance, of irrational fear and violence for them. And that makes you no better than the people you seek to condemn. That is why, instead of condemning millions of people, you need to condemn those who have committed the specific acts that you abhor.
I am not saying to stop viewing the atrocities as wrong. I am not saying to stop condemning those actions and those who commit them. I am not saying that you should stop campaigning against "honor killings", against beheadings, against crucifixion, against chopping off people's hands and feet...I am saying not to condemn millions of people for the actions of the few people responsible. Of course most people you will speak to who live under a tyrant will praise the tyrant if you ask them questions. What kind of idiot would you have to be to fail to understand most of them are only saying that because they don't want to be killed? Of course a lot of Sunni Iraqi soldiers are dropping their guns and surrendering to ISIS while the Shiites are still fighting them. If the Sunni soldiers surrender, they might not be executed, but if they fight and lose, they will be; whereas the Shiites will be executed whether they surrender or lose, so they have more motivation to fight to win. It doesn't mean that those who surrender or those who do not revolt are happy or are supporting the leaders. Doesn't even mean that they are cowards. It means they want to live. And would you condemn them to death for that?
Topic: Worood introduction