Violence and Hatred and our acceptance of it...

Forums: Violence, Hatred, Peter Hart
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“Once people become violent, any difference between the two sides is essentially eliminated. Both act the same. People always used the same excuses for murdering people.”

Peter Hart (1963 – 2010)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/newfoundland-historian-peter-hart-was-an-expert-on-the-ira/article1663823/

I'm not really sure where this thread will go, but I would be grateful if you would comment.

I grew up in one of the safest countries in the world. Violent crime was and is to some extent still a rarity, in some areas virtually non-extent. Day to day political strife centres around potholes, property development, jobs, education, healthcare, crime and the like.
My mother, however, grew up in a corner of the world that was a very racist environment where violence was normal, or an accepted way of life. She wasn't alone, or sadly the last person to grow up in these circumstances. We can find cities and countries across the world and across the ages that mirror her situation.
History has proven it doesn't take much for us to hate each other, or to start believing hateful things about one another but when does it become acceptable, or a societal norm?
At what point to do we turn a blind eye to these insidious thoughts and step to the next level and view violence with a shrug of the shoulders?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 12 • Views: 7,243 • Replies: 101

[+3] - Eorl - 11/09/2010[quote="Ceili"] ****.. do we really need you trolls. [/quote] Ironically enough, I think the answer is right there. Will we ever learn? No, it's not in our nature. It's not in...

@Ceili,

non-violence is a very recent concept of human civilization; it is a very very thin veneer.

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@Ceili,

Quote:

At what point to do we turn a blind eye to these insidious thoughts and step to the next level and view violence with a shrug of the shoulders

When we cook dinner.

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@Ceili,

Ceili wrote:

History has proven it doesn't take much for us to hate each other, or to start believing hateful things about one another but when does it become acceptable, or a societal norm?
At what point to do we turn a blind eye to these insidious thoughts and step to the next level and view violence with a shrug of the shoulders?

It become acceptable at that point at which any demagogue successfully appeals to tribal prejudices--and it can happen pretty damned quick, too. And we turn a blind eye just as soon as that is true. Witness the hysterical hatred of Muslims which was whipped up in the United States, literally within hours of the September 11th attacks. A man owning a convenience store in Los Angeles was murdered the very next day, and his killer stated he had done so because he hates "Muslims" who are our enemies. The man he killed was not an Arab or a Muslim--he was an immigrant from India and the cause of his death was the fact that he wore a turban.

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I agree with dys. Violence and tribalism is the norm. Civilization is a bizarre concept that requires constant self deception, distraction and mass delusion to maintain. Now excuse me while I go yell abuse at a football referee on TV.

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Doesnt anyone remember the TV shots of people leaping from the Twin Towers ? Or the sound of all the beepers going off after the collapse indicating where a fireman lay...........That had a fairly violent impact on a lot of people.

How about all the video of the Vietnam War whilst people ate dinner ? Or the First Gulf War and the birds eye view of smart bombs zeroing in on the target....

I feel a little surprised at times that people arent more violent. Any other animal would have wiped itself out by now. I cant imagine any other animal with so many nuclear weapons and not using them.

Perhaps it is our imagination/sympathy that prevents us from being even more violent.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

Perhaps it is our imagination/sympathy that prevents us from being even more violent.

How silly, it's just a matter of economics. Mankind has taken a but a few steps from "hunting and gathering."

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@dyslexia,

Yes, but there are many species that are more violent. Polar bear males will eat their own cubs. Chimpanzees engage in war where they destroy totally other tribes when there is no need to do so.

I dont think it is just economics.

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@dyslexia,

Yes, so true. However, if we as civilized people know this, why do we still return to our collective heathen ways?

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@Setanta,

When I was a kid, and I first heard about the holocaust or the japanese internment camps I was aghast. I couldn't understand how people could turn on their neighbours so quickly and so violently, without any apparent "humanity".
But I wonder, if that's too easy. It seems to me, in any area, if racist ideas are ignored or even encouraged, a certain amount of violence seems acceptable.

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@Eorl,

Maybe it is deception or delusion to want to get past hatred or violence, but should we not try regardless? Will we ever learn?

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@Ceili,

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holocaust or the japanese internment camps

There is something a little strange and off in your sentence containing the German 30s to 40s holocaust and it death camps and the Middle West WW2 internment camps as those both events was at the same moral level.

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@Ceili,

Yes, certainly, racism is too readily accepted--after all, the Americans and Canadians hustled their citizens of Japanese descent off into camps in World War Two. They didn't do that the the citizens of German or Italian descent, just the Japanese. Makes ya think, n'est-ce pas?

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Yes, certainly, racism is too readily accepted--after all, the Americans and Canadians hustled their citizens of Japanese descent off into camps in World War Two. They didn't do that the the citizens of German or Italian descent, just the Japanese. Makes ya think, n'est-ce pas?

The German naval other then some submarines activity was not a threat to the East Coast of the US during WW2 and the Japanese naval was indeed a far more possible threat to the West Coast at the time.

Short note people who had German blood and who loyalty was in question was not allow on the beaches especially at night on the East Coast for fear that they might aid the off shore submarines.

Japanese Military Forces however had in fact seized a numbers of US own islands off the Alaska coast.

Therefore having a large population of questionable loyalty on the West Coast was a bigger risk then on the East coast.

Claiming it was all due to racism is far too simple a position to take in this matter.

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Bullshit. There was a long history of anti-Japanese racism on the west coast, and particularly in California, dating back to the 1870s. In California, again and again, laws were passed to restrict the education and property ownership of not simply Japanese immigrants, but Americans of Japanese descent. No doubt there were Americans stupid enough and hysterical enough to have feared a Japanese invasion--they wouldn't have been, however, members of the Department of War, or the Departments of the Army and the Navy. It was racism, pure and simple, and it was bone-deep in the World War Two generation. Attu and Kiska were more than 500 miles from Dutch Harbor, more than a thousand miles from Anchorage, and almost 2000 miles from the west coast of the lower 48. It is laughable idiocy to suggest that those pathetic little invasions, coming as they did in a failed attempt at a tactical diversion during the Midway operation, ever presented a serious threat to North America. The Japanese in the United States and Canada were interned long before June, 1942, in fact, in February, 1942. Records released since that time reveal that neither FBI, the RCMP, nor the militay authorities of the United States or Canada considered the Japanese-Americans or -Canadians to be any threat to national security in either nation, nor that there was any credible threat of a Japanese invasion.

As usual, you just make **** up out of the depths of your ignorance.

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@Setanta,

Well **** for brains, you've done it again. Remember your argument that the only ones who could possibly know about the War in the Pacific were the fish because they lived there ? Surely that applies to internment camps. Have you ever lived in one ? It was not

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racism, pure and simple

as many Japanese were endangered by Pearl Harbour and the hysteria generated by the USA government to enable it politically to enter the war. How many Japanese would have been the new black and lynched?

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As usual, you just make **** up out of the depths of your ignorance.

Given your track record of arrogance and stupidity, that is a very ignorant thing to say.

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I was raised by my grandparents, who were seriously opposed to racism. When one of my brothers said "the n word" at the dinner table one evening, he was dragged from the room by his ear and had a bar of soap shoved in his mouth. My mother, when she was around, always spoke quietly and eloquently against racism, explaining not just that it was wrong, but why it was wrong.

So you can imagine my shock and dismay when, the last time i saw her before i was shipped overseas, my mother, with a nervous laugh, said to me: "Now don't bring back any slant-eyed bride, OK?" It was then that i realized how deeply ingrained the racism of the World War Two generation agains Asians truly was.

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Quote:

Violence and Hatred and our acceptance of it...

You want a living example ? You cant go past **** for brains and his blind belligerance . His lack of knowledge is so profound that whenever he feels is right (he rarely is) he must start posturing like the blowhard dickhead he is....yet in the same room he would be a coward. THIS is violence and hatred....it needs separation between people to work.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Bullshit. There was a long history of anti-Japanese racism on the west coast, and particularly in California, dating back to the 1870s. In California, again and again, laws were passed to restrict the education and property ownership of not simply Japanese immigrants, but Americans of Japanese descent. No doubt there were Americans stupid enough and hysterical enough to have feared a Japanese invasion--they wouldn't have been, however, members of the Department of War, or the Departments of the Army and the Navy

If it made you feel better to believe that there was no real military concern please go ahead.

Still, just because there was racism toward the Japanese American population does not however take away from the fact that we had damn little able to stop a massive move of the Japanese naval in the early 1942 period toward the West Coast.

Second are you claiming that we should just had assume that a population we had indeed not treated fairly would still be loyal to us?

I do also know that there was a very very real concern at least about defending Alaska and that is why the all weather military road was build in record time across Canada.

It would also had been very nasty if a few of the home fleet super battleships would had shell the main populations centers of the West Coast for a day or so for example.

Not a war winner but it would have been hell of a blow to the home front morale.

If such an event had indeed happen I do not see how the West Coast Japanese population could had been save from massive lynching right afterward.

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****.. do we really need you trolls.

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