You might be responsible for the holocaust if you support obama on the NSA

[Monkie]

i dont believe that any african-american, any arab, any asian, any south-american, in short anyone who's skin colour is not lily-white would accuse the people here of being racist for having objections to the scale and scope of NSA spying.
it is the vilest,most sick smear possible, the most hurtful thing you can say to people who are honestly concerned.
anyone who knows anything about history, or has any experience with racism in their lives knows that it is always people of colour that are disproportionately effected by intrusive governments.
the foreign policy of the US has for over a century disproportionally effected people who's skin was not lily-white.
the whole history of the US and its government is littered with examples of oppression against african americans, and native americans.

anyone who tries to make this issue about race is a vile coward, and a stain on democracy.
these are not the kind of tactics i expect to see from people who call themselves democrats.

and personally speaking, if anyone has noticed, i speak up for muslims here, my brothers and sisters, just like all people on earth, but i see some of the same supporters of the government on the issues surrounding the NSA also glibly excuse the killing with drones of arabs and pakistani people and at the same time these people dare to accuse ME of racism?
no normal human being with any empathy, with a soul, could at the same time laugh about droning muslims while accusing someone who is against the NSA spying of being a racist.

and yes i am angry.
how dare you.
cowards.

of course people who support obama are not responsible for the holocaust.
but i am not a racists, and i refuse to be called one.

[WovenGems]

1. Feel better now?

[Monkie]

3. a little

nobody has ever dared call me a racist to my face.
i can still remember my surprise as a child when someone said i should not talk to another child because they were black, i was really confused, that kid was my neighbour and best friend, and i said as much, i had no idea what they meant with black. my parents had to explain to me what racism was then.
i was always secretly a bit jealous of people with beautiful dark skin when i was a child, and wished i could grow up and be the same colour.

[MuseRider]

17. Sounds familiar.

My first, very best friend until they split us up in school and did not allow us to even talk to each other. I never understood why her black skin made her a bad person or why my white skin made me a bad person. Sadly both of our families agreed with the school. I have no idea what happened to her and I have always been sad about that.

You are not a racist. I am not a racist. We are allowed to disagree with people. Period. No matter who they are.

[Monkie]

33. i was lucky that my parents were as shocked as i was

and until we moved to another town we stayed best friends, it was just one child who had racist parents, not the school or the families involved.

[still_one]

2. You are making a valid point, but using the word holocaust before they read your substance will

Create a visceral negative reaction, which I understand was your point to counter the inane racists posts going on as of late, but personally think a different approach would suffice.

It is your thread though

[Monkie]

4. good, and not my problem

i explained what i meant and why, i am PISSED.

[sabrina 1]

8. Don't be pissed. You won't when you consider the sources. Same old 'we can't defend the indefensible

so let's distract from it'. That's ALL it is. So the way to combat these tactics to keep talking about what they want you to stop talking about, and we will.

They tried so many other things, and failed, this will too because the issue of this massive Surveillance program ongoing under the Obama Administration which has enhanced it rather than diminish it, is far more important than some poo flinging morons on the internet.

NSA spying affects minorities more than whites, so anyoned defending it a racist imho.

[Monkie]

10. true true, but i just cant accept it and not make a statement

i always was a angry pacifist, i just wont accept it, and i will have energy left afterward, i will not back down.

[sabrina 1]

11. I understand, you are an honest person so it's hard to accept this level of dishonesty, because

THEY know it's a lie, and they know that lying about decent people, many of them minorities themselves, will evoke a reaction. See Rush Limbaugh, they are using HIS tactics against Liberals, he knows he is lying when he calls Liberals 'racist' and he knows it will get them angry.

Maybe I've just seen it so often the only thing it does for me is to identify the phony 'dems' in our midst, but then they never fail to prove me right!

The best statement to make in response to such dishonesty is to talk even louder about what they are so desperately trying to distract from.

It's sort of like taking a weapon out of the hands of someone aiming it at you. It renders them ineffective, which they are anyhow.

[bunnies]

5. Godwins law.

Always a winner.

edit: typo.

[Lizzie Poppet]

39. There needs to be an equivalent for these idiotic accusations of racism.

They are, if anything, more fuckwitted (and intellectually lazy) than playing the Nazi card.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Well. there are a few other genocides that would apply here

but you are correct. As a child of the Holocaust, this is exactly how one starts...

And to be brutally honest, I will not be too shocked if we end up in state police territory, mostly we already are there.



I would not let them get under your skin though, just called them what they are... and it has none to do with democrats or republicans and all to do with true belief in a cause. We have seen this over and over and over the decades.

[Monkie]

9. you are right

but i really had to vent that frustration, i have family that served in the first world war, in the second world war in both theater's, in palestine, family that survived the japanese camps and then married a asian, so half my cousins are half asian, i will not be called a racist by anyone.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Dad was part of the resistance in Poland

fifty of my family members went up the stacks in Treblynka, so I get it... fully.

[Monkie]

13. if "they" really think this will make people like us bend they are wrong, so wrong

it just makes me more determined not to be silenced.
and i am sorry if i reminded you, although i am sure that honouring their memory and not forgetting means more to you.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. that hard bend to social justice

Comes from that never again means speaking out

[allin99]

7. It's pretty disgusting isn't.

[disidoro01]

15. Thank you monkie

There is a huge segment of DU that refuses to address the drone issue. I've posted on the american teenager who was droned and also what Gibbs said when he was asked about it. Others have posted about children being killed with drones, wedding parties being bombed yet it isn't discussed, it is shut down.
There is a moral cowardice in those who attack detractors of what the NSA is doing and also fall silent on the drone program. Innocent men, women and children are being killed regularly and with impunity and those rabid supporters of everything Obama attack those of us for criticizing the president. I think we are truly lost.

[ThoughtCriminal]

16. Do we sound like Michele Bachmann yet?

Remember her rant about the Census and internment camps?

[Katashi_itto]

23. No we don't sound like Michele Bachmann.

[NoPasaran]

18. First, they came for the uppercase letters. . .

[backscatter712]

19. +1 to the OP! I don't know why Skinner tolerates this shit here.

Basically, what we've got are bunches of griefers and shills, playing the "I'm a Democrat, but..." game.

They're not really Democratic or liberal. They're trolls. Plain and simple. If I was running this site, I'd bring the ban-hammer down on every single one of these fuckers.

But no, I'm the one who gets posts hidden for calling authoritarian shitbags "authoritarian shitbags." DU seems more and more like the junior high school that allows bullies to terrorize other kids at will, but instantly punishes the one kid who dares to fight back.

To the authoritarian shitbags, KISS MY ASS!!!

[Katashi_itto]

22. +1

[aquart]

28. Well, thank god you aren't running this site.

Nothing is more totalitarian than a purge. Banning everyone who disagrees with you is being a Democrat? A liberal? Like Hell it is.

[zeemike]

31. I think I know why.

They have two ways they can win...one is to make it such a miserable place that we leave and the other is to make this place into a witch hunt for trolls...and ether way works for them because the purpose it to disrupt.

As always sunlight is the best disinfectant....and I think they expose themselves when we fight back...

[Hydra]

20. Thanks for bringing up the issue of racial hate for Muslims

That may be an "acceptable target" and brown people supposedly count as non-people when it comes to people who are invaded, tortured or murdered, but that's not the sort of thing Democrats should be supporting.

[OnlinePoker]

25. It's not racism, it's anti-theism against a specific religion.

Of course, this site tolerates vitriol against Christianity so I don't see the difference.

[Hydra]

30. Functionally, it's both

Because we don't know if the people in question are actually Muslims or not when they are being targeted. It's an assumption. Sort of along the same lines of antisemitism being being both against a religious group and/or a racial group.

[frylock]

35. come back to us when christians are getting droned..

then we can talk.

[Katashi_itto]

21. +1000 to the OP. The vile crap being flung around is not to be tolerated

[Whisp]

24. of course there are racists here

just as there are rapists and who knows what other kinds of rot.

There were a couple posters a while back on Du Rape Weekend that pretty much admitted to rape. But they were not banned. I think one even got cheered for something or other. Anyway there was a whole long thread on that in the old Meta and many people were very upset that nothing was done about it.

To think just because we are so called liberals or democrats means we are free of isms and awful deeds is wrong.

There is plenty of racism towards Muslims here - truly disgusting things that are let go. Sexism is alive and thrives here as well.

Identifying them as racists is another matter tho. It's got to be pretty clear right in your face racist talk before I would accuse anyone of that, but I know they are out there - everywhere - and some give themselves pretty good cover until they are caught off guard.

[Monkie]

29. you are right of course whisp

i would never say there are no racists here, but i hope you understand why it is very upsetting when these "broad brush" accusations are thrown about and used to smear and in a attempt to silence dissent.
as a lilly white man i cant say i experience racism myself, but if you have, as i, been raised to not see race as a issue, or gender, then as a lilly-white male who is aware, i can see the institutional or systemic racism in a different way, same as the misogyny,when it is implied, or whispered behind peoples back, i have always rejected this myself, but i see it and wont deny it.
rape is another issue that is connected to this, and practically every woman i have gotten to know as a friend, has had some story to tell, of unwanted attention as a child, or abuse or rape as a adult, it is so common, much more common than is acknowledged by most men, or spoken about in public by most women.
so you wont hear me say it does not exist or is not the issue it is, the way some people might, but it is really unfair for the accusation to be used in this way.
it is toxic.
and the way i see things, the spying, the abuses of those in power, it is "all the same" as all the other abuses, the racism, the sexism, the root causes are the same from my point of view.
i hope i did not offend you personally in any way with what i said, and i hope you understand where i am coming from with my objection.

[sulphurdunn]

26. Most people who post here

do not identify themselves by race or ethnic origin. I'm lily white. Hell, I'm so white I shine in the dark, and I know what racism is and what it is not: Racism is prejudice backed by the power to harm those of another racial group and the will to do so. White Americans have the power to be particularly virulent racists, and have been historically so, but it is not a trait peculiar to us. People of color are as nasty a group of bigots as similar white folks. They just lack the power to harm the white power structure in the US. And anyone from an Arabian culture probably shouldn't be casting aspersions because there are a lot of other profitable forms of cultural bigotry and oppression that are not racist but are just about as damaging. By the way, except for this one point, I agree with everything you said.

[carolinayellowdog]

27. Propagandi$t has this whole community wrapped around her little finger

this place has the best-fed trolls in the world; why do people waste so much time and energy reacting to obvious provocations?

[noiretextatique]

32. well said, and agreed

total bullshit, offensive accusation.

[carolinayellowdog]

34. any effort to make this about Obama and not about the NSA

is in the interest of Republicans who hate Obama and love the NSA, as well as Democrats who love Obama and love the NSA. For the rest of us, a majority, it's about the NSA. Since Obama is out of office in 2017, and we're stuck with the NSA until the End of Time, Obama defenders are completely irrelevant to the national discussion that needs to occur. And is stirring right here and now.

[ucrdem]

36. Who specifically accused you of racism? And didn't you tell me you live in the UK?

That makes it hard for to me to understand why you're making such an outrageous and offensive accusation as this, which finds no support whatsoever in your OP:

"You might be responsible for the holocaust if you support obama on the NSA"

And this statement completely misses the point of the DU threads that have been posted this week focusing on race:

"anyone who tries to make this issue about race is a vile coward, and a stain on democracy."

So your accusations have no basis in fact and are not supported by any evidence in your OP. To me these claim looks like RW demagoguery. Can you please explain why they aren't?

[Monkie]

37. it was a broad brush smear, you know it, i know it, the whole of DU knows it

whats outrageous about what i said?
what is where i live have to do with anything?
that sounds to me like you plan some kind of nationalistic or racially based attack on me to say i have no right to participate in that discussion, the smear was broad, i am one of the people that is critical of this program, i am not the only one that feels this way, if you do not understand the point i was making, while everyone else who commented has, i think the problem lays with you and not me.

"to you the claim looks like", what am i to do with that, please dont waste my time with nonsense, if you cant comprehend or pretend not to comprehend to argue with me, your wasting your time.

oh and, RW demagoguery?
are you blind?
you find me one statement i make, one opinion i have, that is in any way right wing? i know you cant, or you would of been more specific, so that is just a very weak attempt, next time do better, i prefer it if the person attacking me at least makes a effort, its insulting if you dont.

[ucrdem]

38. Yes, your title and OP are very broad brush indeed.

And since you're not in the US you might explain why you feel so personally offended by discussions about US domestic surveillance.

[Monkie]

40. aaah, you do get my OP after all, why not say so in your previous post then?

and its not US domestic surveillance, every time your politicians say "dont worry we are only doing the warantless surveillance on foreigners" that is ME. what point is there in me discussing the US surveillance with people that cant do anything about it and have no responsiblity, thats a waste of breath.
why was i here when bush was in power? same reason? i was on "your side" then..
i shared hopes here.

i am personally offended that companies such as google and apple and microsoft, take data i produce in the EU ship it over to the US to store, and allow the NSA to rifle through that without a warrant, against the laws of the country i live in, and against the laws of the EU. and then lie "to my face" about it.
and we are allies, and in this case, supposed to be fellow progressives too.
how hard is it to understand?
humanity does not stop and start at the US border, that is racist or not?

[Katashi_itto]

41. You do such wonderful spins. Its like watching Rove in his heyday.