To think the world has a big white supremacy problem?

[GardenVariety]

Is anyone actually surprised that this has happened? It is shocking and sickening, but let’s face it, it has been so acceptable for so long to vilify muslims, to abuse muslims, to attack muslims - politicians have made careers out of this. Is it any wonder that yet another white supremacist has murdered muslims and has received praise for doing so by keyboard warriors on various platforms.

I (and most muslims in the West) have been dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 by being held responsible for every terrorist atrocity. Dealing with knee-jerk reactions and responses became the norm for me since then. Every terror attack, grooming ring, extremist preacher became my responsibility to explain, condemn and apologise for. I was asked why muslims don’t put double-page ads in the paper to apologise and condemn. I was told that I shouldn’t be surprised at the hostility towards muslims because the few give everyone a bad name.

So here I am, wondering if those people (all white) who were quick to vilify my religion and me and demanded an apology and explanation for the latest newspaper headline will now explain today’s headlines to me. Will they explain why white people do this? Will they give me a full breakdown of his manifesto, explain each name listed on the white terrorist’s guns, explain the choice of music on the video, explain why he filmed it, explain why he had so much support (white terrorist supported by other whites, therefore all whites must be terrorists) and take out ads in national papers apologising for being white. After all it was a white person who did this and just like all muslims were held accountable, will all whites be held accountable too?

Yes posts have been removed. My apologies for spelling Muslim with an o. I had no idea a that this was offensive. I must admit, I have no idea why it would be, but if it is it is I guess. I am obviously it seems an unhinged member of a right wing hate group. I will head off to find one and take my unhinged self out of the conversation. My apology is sincere by the way. I never intended to hurt or offend anyone.

Appreciate your comments Garden-!thankyoum. I think it best though.

Squeekums,

What an awesome article you have linked to. Australia is white supremacy in motion.

It is also well known world wide, despite denials in UK that brexit was driven by white anti-immigrant, nationalism.

The irony is that number of EU migrant numbers have gone down but the numbers of non-EU migrants has gone up. So many non-white faces - that is what irked the NZ terrorist and it irks so many in UK too, but apparently white supremacy is on the fringes

"GreenPea,most of those attacks have happened in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria which we know are not a bastion of peace and we know how majority of the issues started"

Well maybe most in number, but in fact:

Mali
Somalia
Mozambique
Syria
Philippines
Indonesia (not in that list jakartaglobe.id/context/wife-of-terror-suspect-blows-herself-up-and-her-children-in-sibolga but here)
Israel
Pakistan
India
Yemen
Thailand
Tunisia
Iraq
Afghanistan
France
Spain
Burkina Faso

Which is quite a collection of different countries - not one conflict at all.

"Out of all th terror attacks that you painstakingly put together, your white supremacist (who you have tried to put in the teeny tiny category) inflicted the most damage in terms of numbes. He killed the most people. "

No, that's not what happened. Someone said

"No other form of terrorism gets such a definitive label denoting the race/ apprentice religion of the terrorist involved ."

and I explained why that label exists, namely because the same ideology inspired dozens of terrorist attacks in at least seventeen countries in one month alone.

It's nothing to do with trying to minimise it, it's explaining why the label exists at all, for someone who was trying to claim it was an invalid definition.

I have no idea the total death count from 'right wing terror' versus 'Islamist terror'. Clearly you would not make such a count in a single month in any case, and nor would you say 'A killed 50 people in 1 incident', 'B killed 10 people in each of 10 separate incidents', so A is worse. It wasn't the issue I was addressing.

"You have constantly tried to pitch the problem to be Islam and not white supremacy by declaring somewhere upthread how some far right bigots have no issue with blacks, just muslims"

I didn't say that. Let me quote myself, since you seem to be determined to pervert my words.

"I had a look at Paul Golding's FB page. I think he is a probably what you would call an identikit white racist, one on a long line of fascist leaders.

But everything he is saying is about Islam."

"I don't think he's very different from a 1960s racist in his motivations, but the focus is only on Islam."

That's not at all, even in the slightest, implying that the problem is Muslims. It's saying that white racists are focused on Islam.

And that's why as I said in my first post

"Surely the term is 'Islamophobia'. This bloke might be a white supremacist, but he didn't go to a gurdwara, did he?"

And then today we have some other bloke ranting about Muslims and stabbing someone.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-47605547

As I said, in the 1960s it would have been blacks, now it's Muslims that are the targets of these people's ideology. I'm not sure how you could possibly confuse that with thinking that blacks were the problem in the 1960s and Muslims are the problem now.

"You brought out some Jakarta facebook page highlighting the ideology of the muslim who was murdered for being muslim because some white guy didn’t like him. I bet you if someone took a look at your facebook page, it would be full of islamophobic hysteria. "

It's not 'some Jakarta facebook page', it's the Jakarta Post, which is the main English language newspaper in Indonesia. There is nothing on my Facebook page about Islam, because I know perfectly well that people like you would be apt to misconstrue what I said.

"You painstakingly listed a load of stuff that whips up anti muslim hysteria, would you care to list the bile from the racist white murderer’s facebook page or the bloke in surrey perhaps? Do vile views on muslims not matter as much? does that just not fit your agenda of trying to pitch islam to be the root of the problem. "

Hang on a minute, you started the thread saying 'the world has a big white supremacy problem', in AIBU. So you are asking people to disagree with you.

I explained that white supremacy and Islamist ideology are two sides of the same coin - they are similar in that they violently reject the other. I also pointed out countries outside the West (not limited to Muslim ones) are more likely to be overtly racist and instead of having, say, anti-racial discrimination laws as we do in the UK, they have laws enforcing racial discrimination.

It's not my job to prove your argument!

@GardenVariety Sadly you're absolutely right about Brexit. And shamefully, the referendum campaign led to a white supremacist committing a murder against a sitting MP, who had done so much to help refugees and work for peace.

I remember when Lee Righy was tragically killed by those Muslim converts who happened to be black
My black work colleague told me that people asked her what ‘her community ‘intended to do about these young men.
Obviously, by dint of the fact that she had black skin, she was ‘responsible ‘ for that terrorist atrocity .The irony was that my colleague was a staunch Christian
I am white and no one has asked the ‘white ‘ community ‘ to explain why a terrorist entered a Mosque and killed fifty people .
Totally agree with you Op.

White privilege is real and anyone who denies this is being disingenuous at the very least

"It is also well known world wide, despite denials in UK that brexit was driven by white anti-immigrant, nationalism."

The idea that 'white' is the operative factor in this is bizarre. The people supporting Brexit are obviously white, but the driving force in Brexit was the 2 million+ white EU migrants who arrived post-expansion, and the obvious social change that resulted (like Pret a Manger with 65% EU non-British staff. www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/08/pret-a-manger-one-in-50-job-applicants-british-brexit)

You get pamphlets through the door advertising 'Polish builder' because there's a popular stereotype that Polish people work harder.

Some people perceive that they have lost out as a result of this competition for labour. It's not exactly something specific to the UK. Literally every country in the world will complain about foreign labour, and 'they took our jobs' arguments.

Such arguments are nuanced - but it's hardly the point, when you have 2 million people arriving who weren't there before, then that's going to cause tensions.

PeaGreen, a murder victim, murdered because he was a muslim, a grave injustice was done to him and you decide to start listing hs facebook page entries trying to portray him as somehow deserving of being murdered. Insensitive and crass.

There is nothing on my Facebook page about Islam, because I know perfectly well that people like you would be apt to misconstrue what I said.

Interesting choice of words people like you
So your facebook would get misconstrued, by a brown muslim like me, but a murder victim’s facebook entries were investigated and analysed in a whitewashed scientific way by white people like you. Do you tend to look up and scrutinise white terror victims facebook pages too in a similar way?

Then you go on to list majority countries highlighting various conflicts but making muslims the common denominator. I put to you that most of those countries, if not all, have had some level of heinous white meddling in their history.

I also pointed out countries outside the West (not limited to Muslim ones) are more likely to be overtly racist and instead of having, say, anti-racial discrimination laws as we do in the UK, they have laws enforcing racial discrimination.

Tell that to the aborigines, the Maoris, the polynesians, the First Nations and a number of other POC and they will tell you all about the equal policies of the West.

Areyoubeingserviced, I feel so bad for your colleague.

It is soul destroying when you are held to account for someone else’s crime because you happen to share the same religion/colour.

It just goes to show how thick and thoughtless the racists are. They have a superiority complex coupled with a fragile ego, blinded by white privilege.

"It is also well known world wide, despite denials in UK that brexit was driven by white anti-immigrant, nationalism."

Can you actually back this up with anything solid? I think it’s completely untrue that it is ‘well known worldwide that Brexit brexit was driven by white anti-immigrant, nationalism‘.

The only people I’ve seen pushing that view are British remainers. It wouldn’t make any sense anyway because EU migrants are mostly white. Even UKIP took the position that Brexit would lead to more non-EU migration. They said this was a positive because it meant we could select the best, highest skilled workers as opposed to lots of low paid, low skill workers.

"PeaGreen, a murder victim, murdered because he was a muslim, a grave injustice was done to him and you decide to start listing hs facebook page entries trying to portray him as somehow deserving of being murdered. "

No I didn't, that's an outrageous lie.

"So your facebook would get misconstrued, by a brown muslim like me,"

How am I supposed to know you are brown from your typing? What a ridiculous statement you are making.

I'm talking about, to be clear, people like you, that is to say people that deliberately twist and distort things.

" but a murder victim’s facebook entries were investigated and analysed in a whitewashed scientific way by white people like you.""

bollocks again.

The murder victim was national news in Indonesia, because obviously an Indonesian man being murdered in a massacre is big news.

Some one posted the news story on Reddit /r/indonesia, saying 'Indonesian man dies in NZ', and the Indonesian people looked him up on FB, because that's what people do when someone dies, they want to know a bit more about them.

There wasn't some sort of organised conspiracy by white racists to defame a murder victim, it was Indonesian people (not white people at all) reading about an Indonesian murder victim and looking for some sort of detail on him from his social media like 'oh I have a cousin from his town' or 'he had two kids' or whatever. Not 'let's look up this guy on FB on the off-chance he's got dodgy views'.

" Do you tend to look up and scrutinise white terror victims facebook pages too in a similar way?"

I didn't do any scrutinising, brown people did that . And it wasn't something I was looking for, it was in my FB feed because I'm subscribed to the Jakarta Post.

"Then you go on to list majority countries highlighting various conflicts but making muslims the common denominator. I put to you that most of those countries, if not all, have had some level of heinous white meddling in their history."

?

You're bringing up 'heinous white meddling' because you want to 'white' the common denominator in everything.

When I point out that people are Islamophobic you say 'but white supremacy'.

When we have 2 million white immigrants from EU in a short space of time and people voting for Brexit following that, your chosen narrative is 'now there are more non-whites, whom they hate'

I didn't 'make Muslims the common denominator', it's right there in black and white on Wikipedia, neatly categorised.

If you want to try to say 'whites fucked up all those countries, that's why we have Islamist insurgencies', that's up to you.

But it's no use trying to say that they are not Islamist insurgencies.

"Tell that to the aborigines, the Maoris, the polynesians, the First Nations and a number of other POC and they will tell you all about the equal policies of the West."

That was the point I was making, which you've been trying to reject and obfuscate over and over again. Racist and colonial attitudes are universal.

However some countries still pursue them actively, and unabashedly, whereas others have repudiated them and now pass anti-discrimination legislation.

One interesting factor is social media in that for example in Burma a lot of anti-Muslim content was being posted on Facebook and Facebook don't delete it I think because it is difficult to get local censors who 'share Facebook's values'

The Instagram account of the Mayor of Banda Aceh had a picture of her with a gun and the caption that she would 'drive out LGBT', and there were comments to it about slaughtering LGBT people with AK47s. That content remained online for more than a year even after it was reported in international media.

Garden.. Strange how you’re so dismissive of all the terrorist incidents posted by PeaGreen? I find that quite shocking.

And Brexit was largely voted for by working class people who felt their concerns weren’t listened to by mainstream politicians. Including legitimate or not so legitimate concerns about immigration. As most polls only cared what London thought the mainstream politicians didn’t even see it coming...

We have seen ‘racist’ label being bandied around on these posts. One poster has felt forced to leave because she was attacked.

Can you see IRL people can’t voice their concerns, feel frustrated and then Brexit happens...

and btw I wasn't trying to condemn the murder victim at all.

I'm not a relativist exactly, but I find the sort of person who is so certain in their views that they believe everyone who holds views that they find to bigoted must be an evil person to be a bit thick.

The people who 'like' Britain First, or Trump, or support Islamist hate preachers, or whatever, aren't some sort of binary 'bad person' to be punched or murdered, they are people who are the product of their environment and influences.

If your reaction to everything is 'you must be a white bigot trying to stir up hatred' then you are not going to very far at all.

Fgs1, not dismissive at all. It is the muslims who die in those terrorist incidents too. So no, not dismissive at all.

Peagreen, I find your views and denials quite telling and I am sure your facebook feeds are also very telling. I refuse to engage with you any further.

well there's a relief.

I haven't read every post on the thread, but I completely agree with you, OP.

There is a massive white supremacy problem. Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK seem to have brought this disgusting underbelly out into the open, and some people now feel legitimized in their abhorrent views.

Prior to the referendum, I had an argument with my then MIL, who said we should leave the EU as the British are "special" and "unique". She couldn't identify exactly why she believed this, but it was to do with her belief that British colonisation made white British people exceptional.

This view is really pervasive. The words of Rule Britannia exemplify this. And the British who colonised others were white.

Our entire country is based upon a history of White supremacy. It is absolutely sickening.

Comments made on this thread about Muslim women wearing "normal" clothes instead of the Burqua. The Burqua IS normal FFS!

No one expects all white people to apologise for the actions of the Ku Klux Klan (a Christian, white supremacist organisation), so why are Muslims expected to apologise for the actions of ISIS?

White privilege is real. We need to acknowledge it. White supremacy is real and growing. We need to acknowledge that too. Sure, there are interconnected issues such as male violence. But here, on this thread, the subject matter is white supremacy. I am sick to death of hearing white people deny it, or engage in the whataboutary of their own experiences of racism. Start threads about these things, but don't minimise the OP's point.

White supremacy is rising again. Because it never truly went away. When laws and society change to reflect the ethnic and religious backgrounds of all their citizens, and attempt to clamp down on racism, many white people seem to feel that these changes are at their expense. This is bollocks, obviously, but indicative that many white people feel they are inherently superior, and attempts to level the playing field threatens their superiority. Iy is a pathetic yet dangerous mentality.

I hear you OP.

I hope I havent offended anyone with this post. If I have got terminology wrong, I apologise. As a white person, I am horrified at where we are as a society.

Fascinating that a list of world-wide events have been used to assert that "Islamist" extremist terrorism is the only real issue but not the same attention to detail when listing white supremacist terrorism. What happened to:

Anders Breivik in Norway

Dylann Roof in Charleston

Jo Cox’s murderer

Ian Davison in the UK

Wade Michael Page in Wisconsin

Christopher Paul Hasson in Maryland

James A Field in Ohio

American politicians have been raising concerns about this rise in white supremacist terrorism for some time:

"Radical right wing terrorism is on the rise in our great country. And since 2008, terrorist attacks on the U.S. soil carried out by right-wing extremist groups, including white supremacists, outnumber those by Islamic jihadists by two to one. That is a statistical fact." California State Senate Leader Kevin de León

Interestingly De Leon’s statement becomes more or less true depending on how an event is labelled i.e. terror incident versus terrorist attack versus hate crime

Similarly there are huge concerns - and these are coming from sources considerably more reliable than Wikipedia - about issues in Europe:

Europe has experienced a revival of militant right-wing extremist groups, networks, and incidents in recent years, with a surge of anti-immigration and Islamophobic violence, as well as anti-government attacks and assaults on political opponents, ethnic minorities, and homosexuals. Although not as significant as in Europe, the United States has also seen an upsurge in political violence considered to be “right-wing extremist” in nature (for example, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, racist, or anti-government sovereign citizen). For the international audience, only a few of these incidents gained broad media attention; right-wing extremist attacks are seen mostly as isolated events when compared with other attacks, such as those by Islamist extremist terrorists.

"In Germany, a right-wing terrorist group calling itself the National Socialist Underground was discovered in 2011. Despite having assassinated at least 10 people and committed 2 bombings over the course of almost 14 years, it had gone undetected. That same year, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in a bomb attack in Oslo and a mass shooting in Utøya, Norway. In the United States, white supremacist Michael Page shot and killed six people and wounded four others in an attack against a Wisconsin Sikh temple in August 2012. Only one day after Charles Kurzman had argued in the New York Times that right-wing terrorism might be the most severe security threat in the United States, Dylann Roof killed nine people in his shooting rampage at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015.1 Similar events have been recorded in many Western European countries, as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe. However, the public debate has not ascribed the same level of importance to the threat from the extreme right as it has regularly with Islamist extremism.
Nevertheless, statistics clearly show the significant risk posed by violent right-wing extremists in Western countries."
Daniel Koehler is the Director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization Studies (GIRDS) and a Fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.cco.ndu.edu/PRISM/PRISM-Volume-6-no-2/Article/839011/right-wing-extremism-and-terrorism-in-europe-current-developments-and-issues-fo/.

"Fascinating that a list of world-wide events have been used to assert that "Islamist" extremist terrorism is the only real issue but not the same attention to detail when listing white supremacist terrorism. What happened to: "

They didn't happen in March 2019?

And again, please pay attention to context, which was a user trying to say 'Islamist terror' is not a valid term.

But MsLucy, by simply saying oh they’re so racist you’re ignoring or dismissing the views and experiences of a significant number of people.

We’ve seen what ignoring people achieves... either them going against the mainstream system which has huge consequences for everyone, e.g. Brexit or in more extreme examples turning to the dark web where much more extremist and dangerous views are held and encouraged and then we get the attacks which stir up further hatred on all sides.

What I’m trying to say is that by taking away a voice of people who have personal concerns over immigration, jobs, loss of national identity etc. then yes you can simply say how racist Britain is and condem these people as racists with nothing of use to say, but you are simply causing the issue and views to go underground not go away. Whether that’s chatting with their mates in the local pub, or whether it’s going on the Internet and being radicalised.

The fact is there was a huge inward influx of immigration which has had a whole range of consequences. Yes some positive as well as some negative. How does stating that make someone a racist? It doesn’t mean they believe white people are better. Just that immigration needs to be managed.

I didnt mention concerns about immigration in my post.

I dont think everyone who voted leave was racist. I do believe that racists voted leave.

MsLucyLastic, your post is very thought provoking, especially this bit:

When laws and society change to reflect the ethnic and religious backgrounds of all their citizens, and attempt to clamp down on racism, many white people seem to feel that these changes are at their expense. This is bollocks, obviously, but indicative that many white people feel they are inherently superior, and attempts to level the playing field threatens their superiority. Iy is a pathetic yet dangerous mentality.

I have read this statement a few times because it resonates. It brings back memories of reading pre brexit DM type comments full of resentment for EU and minorities, where white bigots were complaining of ‘special treatment’ ‘special protection’ ‘what about myyyy human rights’. They just could not bear the thought of ‘others’ having the same rights. I think UK laws are very good, however, more needs to be done though to tackle the wave of islamophobia, anti semitism and racism.

Also, I wouldn't dismiss the valid concerns of others. I would say that their concerns belong on their own thread.

Your post seems to imply that if we don't listen to the concerns of white people, they will go underground and become more entrenched racists. But they would only do that if they were racist to begin with.

I won't hear racism in a bid to stop it getting worse. Racism is the responsibility of the racist. I wont pretend that racism is a valid concern.

Oops, my posts were directed to Fgs1.

Gardenvariety - I agree with you. Totally.