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The New Romantics
by Denis MacEoin
• August 14, 2014 at 5:00 am
"Because
perfect democracy does not exist anywhere, the imperfect democracies of the
West can be damned and the worst forms of political power legitimated."
— Pascal Bruckner, The Tears of the White Man.
What sort
of pink-tinted spectacles do you need to march while chanting, "Hamas,
Hamas, Jews to the Gas"? Or to march alongside the black flags of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria? It is not just the new Romantics that bow
down to the myth of Islam as the path to peace. Governments, church-leaders,
do-gooders of every stripe accommodate every demand made by Muslim
minorities. "Shari'a law? No problem." "Islamic Banking? Why
not?'
What
answer can there be to explain such wished-for self- defeat?
It is terribly easy to romanticize. Human beings do it all the time. But
romanticizing can get out of hand. Think of all those millions of German
women who swooned as Hitler drove past; the groupies of Stalin, the steadfast
admirers of Osama bin Laden, or the women who offer to marry murderers on
death row. Charisma, as Max Weber told us, is not so much an innate
characteristic of a leader or guru as something brought to him by others. [1]
Hitler was not a good-looking man, not tall, not prepossessing, not
particularly intelligent, not a great orator -- more a strident tub-thumper
-- yet millions of Germans loved him and died for him. In the end, Germany
itself all but died for him.
Today, the romanticizing of sociopaths has not ended. However much we
know about the clay-footed idols of the past, or the enormities committed by
those demagogues and rabble-rousers and charlatans, many of us just transfer
our allegiance to the next monster-in-waiting.
Facebook, Google Censor Human Rights Activists
by Shabnam Assadollahi
• August 14, 2014 at 4:30 am
The
closing down of social media accounts appears to follow false and
unsubstantiated claims, in this instance most likely because supporters of
Iran's regime are trying to silence our exposing their abuses — sham trials,
brutal treatment of prisoners, hanging of people from cranes.
Serious
questions really should be asked about the censorship procedures of Facebook,
YouTube, Google and other social media.
Those who
wish to suppress having their human rights violations exposed should not be
allowed to prevail.
There are, not surprisingly, times when those who persecute others
attempt to stop people from exposing their actions and informing the world
about what they are doing. Over the years, this has varied from personal
insults, hate posts and even "internet response teams" which create
many Twitter "bots" or fake profiles on Facebook with the aim of
discrediting genuine human rights activists. Although this has at times also
been an issue with Twitter, at least Twitter's response has been reasonable
and the accounts of activists have never been suspended. This is not the case
with Facebook, and often with other social media.
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Thursday, August 14, 2014
The New Romantics
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