here was a post shared by a Facebook [ex-]friend a few months ago. I found it super-racist, to the extent that I chose to block him rather than try to engage. I will however address it here because it contains a lot of important+useful details about the Australian variation of this particular strain of racism. Plus he hits almost all the fallacies. Here’s the text of the post (original), which has had 100,000+ Facebook shares in the last 5 months:
They’re not happy in Gaza ..
They’re not happy in Egypt ..
They’re not happy in Libya ..
They’re not happy in Morocco ..
They’re not happy in Iran ..
They’re not happy in Iraq ..
They’re not happy in Yemen …
They’re not happy in Afghanistan …
They’re not happy in Pakistan ..
They’re not happy in Syria ..
They’re not happy in Lebanon …
SO.. WHERE ARE THEY HAPPY?
They’re happy in Australia ..
They’re happy in Canada ..
They’re happy in England ..
They’re happy in France ..
They’re happy in Italy ..
They’re happy in Germany ..
They’re happy in Sweden ..
They’re happy in the USA ..
They’re happy in Norway ..
They’re happy in Holland ..
They’re happy in Denmark ..
Basically, they’re happy in every country that is not Muslim and unhappy in every country that is!
AND WHO DO THEY BLAME?
Not Islam.
Not their leadership.
Not themselves
THEY BLAME THE COUNTRIES THEY ARE HAPPY IN !
AND THEN- They want to change those countries to be like, THE COUNTRY THEY CAME FROM WHERE THEY WERE UNHAPPY!
Excuse me, but I can’t help wondering…
How frigging dumb can you get?
Everyone seems to be wondering why Muslim Terrorists are so quick to commit suicide.
Lets have a look at the evidence:
– No Christmas
– No television
– No nude women
– No football
– No pork chops
– No hot dogs
– No burgers
– No beer
– No bacon
– Rags for clothes
– Towels for hats
– Constant wailing from some bloke in a tower
– More than one wife
– More than one mother-in-law
– You can’t shave
– Your wife can’t shave
– You can’t wash off the smell of donkeys
– You cook over burning camel shit
– Your wife is picked by someone else for you
– and your wife smells worse than your donkey
– Then they tell them that “when they die, it all gets better”???
Well No Shit Sherlock!….
It’s not like it could get much worse!
Ok, let’s examine the meatiest parts (which is most of the post).
They’re not happy in Gaza ..
This is a particularly ironic way to start the piece, given Amnesty’s recent findings that the IDF’s bombing of Gaza’s multi-storey buildings was extensive, wanton and unjustified. Especially given that he thinks two of the major reasons for the Gazans’ unhappiness are Islam and themselves.
SO.. WHERE ARE THEY HAPPY?
The question of happiness studies is an interesting one. On the one hand, they can be an important metric for comparing well-being across countries if done well. On the other hand, it’s really hard to do well given confounding factors. If they rely on self-reporting, they can be more a measure of how happy someone is expected to say they are, in their culture. At worst, they can be a club with which further demean entire populations, as if happiness levels tell the whole story. Guess which way this guy is using them?
They’re happy in Australia ..
Assuming people are relatively happy in Australia, this leads to two questions. Is everyone happy or do some “segments” of the Australian population miss out? And is it a deserved happiness, a happiness that is the result of moral progress or something else like luck, theft or worse crimes? The same questions could be asked for almost all countries including every country he lists as happiness. What a great opportunity for some healthy introspection…not.
Basically, they’re happy in every country that is not Muslim and unhappy in every country that is!
Well yes, if you take those categorisations at face value and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist then sure. But even for someone who’s not doing a detailed analysis of countries, it still takes an amazing amount of innumeracy and immappancy to jump to the conclusion that being a “Muslim country” is the main (only?) determinant in happiness. Here’s a map from an actual happiness study:
Why, it’s almost like there are a host of factors (like economic opportunities, healthcare, conflict or lack thereof and the cultural milieu) contribute to happiness instead of the bullshit he talked of! It’s almost like there’s a giant patch of blue in the Middle East (and SE Asia) that disproves this “idea”. Oh well.
Not Islam.
Reform movements don’t exist in this guy’s world. Not because they’re not smaller than they should be (I think there should be way more). No, he didn’t Google them because he doesn’t need to. The White Rational Man already KnowsTM what Islam is, so doing further research is a waste of valuable time.
Not their leadership.
Nope, because it’s not like people in Muslim-majority countries have ever expressed dissatisfaction with their leadership in the last 10 years!
Not themselves
I’ve never seen a better case of the Just World Theory. Because people basically get what they deserve, right? If something’s going wrong in your personal life (or your society), you have no-one to blame but yourself. Because nobody’s ever wronged a person. And again, people in Muslim-majority countries just don’t criticise their own societies or call for any social report. Does. Not. Happen. But thank goodness we have this poster to enlighten us.
THEY BLAME THE COUNTRIES THEY ARE HAPPY IN !
Because it’s not like the governments of the Happy Countries have ever killed people in those Unhappy Countries he lists. Right? Maybe people in the US who should be angry at Yemen because people from Yemen keep going into the USA to shoot up weddings.
AND THEN- They want to change those countries to be like, THE COUNTRY THEY CAME FROM WHERE THEY WERE UNHAPPY!
Like many a fractally wrong rant, this has a kernel of a point. I think there’s solid evidence that happiness and well-being of a society ruled by fundamentalists is lower than that society under a more open system. So if it’s happiness of its people that organisations like ISIS are after, they would do well to look at a different model. But that’s of course NOT what groups like ISIS are after. But note this interesting “they” that he keeps using. He seems not to be talking about members of ISIS but the entire populations of Gaza, Egypt, Libya etc.
Everyone seems to be wondering why Muslim Terrorists are so quick to commit suicide.
Until Muslim terrorism, no person has ever signed up to participate in military action that will almost certainly kill them. Nope, it’s all mysterious and shit.
No Christmas…No football…No pork chops…No hot dogs…No burgers…No beer…No bacon…You can’t shave
Ok, finally the covert racism ends and the overt racism begins. This guy seems to genuinely lack the understanding that more than one culture exists; that there may be entire societies with no football, pork chops or shaving that are perfectly happy and fine and are not actually missing anything or in need of having Christmas imposed on them Mr Garrison-style. And there’s no better way to dehumanise societies than to talk about their eating habits as abnormal.
No television
Nope, because people in MENA live in caves, ride Flintstones-style cars around and don’t have any technology whatsoever. This reminds me of being asked if I saw things like roads in Iran (more here). Super condescending. Also ironically, at least one of the countries he lists has the technological capacity to have developed nuclear arms!
No nude women
Is he – gasp – only talking about the [hetero] men in those countries? Is he suggesting that women just walk around naked in the Happy Countries? Again, there is a genuine point in restrictive regimes being a source of sexual frustration (eg. see this article about region-based porn searches). But if he thinks the solution is for people in countries like Australia to feel smug about how sexually liberated we are, he hasn’t been watching the news.
Rags for clothes…Towels for hats…Constant wailing from some bloke in a tower…You can’t wash off the smell of donkeys…You cook over burning camel shit
They’re finally here! Nothing like casually racist stereotypes that 1930s Disney might blush at.
More than one wife…More than one mother-in-law…Your wife can’t shave…Your wife is picked by someone else for you…and your wife smells worse than your donkey
I’m shocked – SHOCKED – that this ends in the most vile misogynist racism. Note that he’s been building up to this as the climax of the rant. Because having one wife is bad enough, amirite? And while accusations of bad smell are some of the most overt, primeval and dehumanising racism out there, rarely is it so explicit that the aim is to make people out to be like animals.
Then they tell them that “when they die, it all gets better”???
Well No Shit Sherlock!….
It’s not like it could get much worse!
There are many things in MENA are not great. And it’s not controversial that if those countries had more of some elements of countries where people are more happy (eg. less dying, a better standard of living, more equality, more democracy) the happiness will improve. You might find this opinion amongst some people in MENA if you fucking ask them. But naturally the solution is NOT to outlaw Islam, start eating bacon, celebrate Christmas or invest millions in more perfume to cater to this guy’s misogynoir obsessions. There you go.
And yet, I thank this guy. Because whereas others dog-whistle, he actually spells out his vile opinions in detail – so it’s instructive. When people make statements like parts of this rant, you have a good idea of what they might be thinking.
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