10 ms·

Hate Radio (2011)

141 points by thomassmith65 1y ago

themgt 1y ago
Some related topics I find interesting to ponder in relation to the Rwandan genocide and more broadly: Accusation in a mirror: Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. The name was used by an anonymous Rwandan propagandist in Note Relative à la Propagande d'Expansion et de Recrutement ... he instructed colleagues to "impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do". By invoking collective self-defense, propaganda is used to justify genocide, just as self-defense is a defense for individual homicide. Susan Benesch remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary. Double-genocide or at least mass war crimes against Hutu by the RPF: Estimates of Hutu deaths from mass violence in the 1990s are much less precise than Tutsi death figures from the Rwandan genocide due to the greater timescale and geographic spread of the killings. Researcher Alison Des Forges estimated that the RPF killed 60,000 people in war crimes in 1994 and 1995. Historian Gérard Prunier estimated that 100,000 Hutu were killed by the RPF in 1994–1995. Historian Roland Tissot argued that there were around 400,000 Hutus killed by the RPF between 1994 and 1998 (excluding disease and excess mortality), while Omar Shahabudin McDoom estimated several hundred thousand Hutu victims during the 1990s. Demographer Marijke Verpoorten guesstimates 542,000 deaths of Rwandan Hutus (about 7.5 percent of the population), with "a very large uncertainty interval", from war-related causes in the 1990s, including battle deaths and excess mortality from poor conditions in refugee camps. Kagame, the leader of the RPF, has also had an ... interesting tenure as president, in power 25 years and most recently winning 99% of the vote: The highest-profile opposition figure for the 2017 election was local businesswoman Diane Rwigara. Although she acknowledged that "much has improved under Kagame", Rwigara was also critical of Kagame's government, saying that "people disappear, others get killed in unexplained circumstances and nobody speaks about this because of fear". Like Ingabire in 2010, Rwigara was barred from running in the election. Throughout Kagame's tenure as vice president and president, he has been linked with murders and disappearances of political opponents, both in Rwanda and abroad. In a 2014 report titled "Repression Across Borders", Human Rights Watch documents at least 10 cases involving attacks or threats against critics outside Rwanda since the late 1990s, citing their criticism of the Rwandan government, the RPF or Kagame My general impression is that Rwanda has been compressed down to a simplistic morality play when the reality seems a lot more complex and in many ways more unsettling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory_(Rwanda) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory_(Rwanda... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Blood#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Blood#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame#Assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame#Assassinations
- msgodel 1y ago
  I think the reality is groups of people that different just can't peacefully share a state.
  - SiempreViernes 1y ago
    Finally an opinion about emacs users I can get behind! /s
  - brazzy 1y ago
    What exactly do you mean with "that different"?
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    Did you read what the difference are? There aren’t any.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  I find the whole premise for the situation mind-boggling. Tutsi and Hutu were basically just categories for “someone who has cattle” and “someone who does not have cattle”. One could become the other quite readily. Then the Belgians came along, measured skulls, pronounced the Tutsis a separate (and superior) race, and the rest is… absolutely idiotic history.
  - thaumasiotes 1y ago
    > Tutsi and Hutu were basically just categories for “someone who has cattle” and “someone who does not have cattle”. One could become the other quite readily. But none of that is true.
    - madaxe_again 1y ago
      https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/rwanda/life-before-the-genocide/ https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/r... https://www.rwandanstories.org/origins/hutu_and_tutsi.html https://www.rwandanstories.org/origins/hutu_and_tutsi.html
thomassmith65 1y ago
Apparently the music of Simon Bikindi was a favorite of RTLMC. After the genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda indicted him. His details also make interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi
- dav_Oz 1y ago
  An interesting read on that topic an nyt-article from 2002 "killer songs" https://archive.ph/fy9SC https://archive.ph/fy9SC
copx 1y ago
Something more people should know about the Rwandan genocide is that the Tutsi were not innocent victims but had previously committed genocide themselves - against the Hutu [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza]. The hate of the Hutu was not artificially created by some "extremists" with a radio station, but was and is instead the result of the long and bloody history between these two peoples where neither side can claim to be the innocent victim.
- energy123 1y ago
  You're buying into a genocidal mindset of collectivizing an entire ethnic group and assigning collective blame.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  The dynamic here is the Tutsi were considered superior (taller, thinner noses, lighter skin) by the colonizers and made up most of the ruling class during and after colonialism. Pre-colonization these groups were genuinely fluid. The genocide was essentially an uprising.
  - mike-the-mikado 1y ago
    Rwanda was under German, then a Belgian rule. I don't believe Britain was involved.
    - dyauspitr 1y ago
      Yes you’re right.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - at-w 1y ago
    Rwanda was never colonized by the British.
throwanda 1y ago
Not constrained to Rwanda, the late '80s and early '90s saw the (re-)emergence of this flavor of broadcasting in many places around the world - especially in the US on the AM bands. Fortunately, the conditions weren't present in the US to speedrun to civil war and genocide. Still, I grew up in Limbaugh-lovin' country during those years and was exposed to this... stuff... for more hours of the day than I care to think about. (In public school! Literally, teachers having Rush and assorted fellow-travellers on in the background while we did our classwork.) I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different in the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even stopped.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  I never was a regular listener to Rush but if I were driving from Pt A to Pt B in rural America I might find the only thing Icould find reliably from noon to 2pm was an AM radio station that had The Rush Limbaugh Show. I tuned in deliberately on Jan 7, 2021, just a few days before Rush passed away, and found he was shocked and aghast at what had happened to the day before... but did not draw the connection to how the culture he created contributed to it. Korzybski and Van Vogt warned us of "A=A" thinking but today I'm aghast at thinking that can best be described as ∀x,y: x=y. Back in the 1960s you'd expect an article in a Trotskyite newspaper to start with "The Red Sox beat the Yankees" and to end with "... therefore we need a socialist revolution." Today teen girls read Man's Search For Meaning because they think their school is like a concentration camp, politicians of all stripes [1] are accused of being fascists, and people delude themselves that adding a stripe to a flag will magically transform people into allies. Glomming together all social causes into one big ball has a devastating effect on popular support https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-backfire.html https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-bac... across all demographics. I disagreed with Rush about most things and thought he had a harmful effect on the nation and the world but I'd never accuse him of advocating genocide. No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray than talking this way. [1] sci-fi writer Charlie Stross made the accusation against Keir Starmer
  - 1y ago
Barrin92 1y ago
One thing that seems underdiscussed to me is that oral culture compared to literary culture seems to have a strong impact on dissemination of hate or mass messaging. My pet theory is that the resurgence of the medium, that so much content is now again visual and audio dominated compared to textual, is responsible for a good amount of the increase in hate in recent years. There's a one-to-many and sort of fuzzy, conspiratorial and hearsay nature to radio, podcasting, preaching, that you don't have in a literary context. It's the ease of transmission and ephemerality of it that enables so much uncritical engagement.
- analog31 1y ago
  One thing about the radio is that it can be on while you're doing other things, if those things don't require much concentration.
- bloak 1y ago
  That's an interesting theory, but isn't it a different set of people consuming the audiovisual material? So, roughly speaking, in the past, an educated minority read The Times, while most of the population took no interest in politics and foreign affairs. Nowadays public opinion matters so various powers (often foreign powers not controlled by the local establishment) generate material designed to influence the general population, which isn't exactly literate, as you'll know if you've ever had to do jury service. Meanwhile, the educated minority continues to read The Economist or whatever (The Times is rubbish nowadays).
  - cogman10 1y ago
    > while most of the population took no interest in politics and foreign affairs Perhaps not foreign affairs so much, but I'd argue in the past politics was keenly important to a large percentage of the population in the past. Particularly local politics. The reason for that was simple, politics was a form of entertainment and local politics was both fun to talk and gossip about, more so than national politics. What I believe has changed is the internet and broadcasting in general has changed what's entertaining. People care less about the issues and more about the presenter. National broadcasting selected for the most entertaining presenters which have the opportunity to bend political opinions to their own. The internet has opened up access to presenters which has done the same thing as national broadcasting but allows for even more extreme positions. Interest in local politics died for pretty much the same reason why local theater is dead. It's simply not as entertaining as a large budget production (generally). Sure, someone could probably make local politics interesting, but that's inherently going to have a smaller audience draw. That's why national politics is easier to talk about. One other thing that's changed, though, is the options for presenters is now humongous. It's simply unlikely that you or your coworkers will have similar enough media diets to discuss at the water cooler. That's made everything a lot more private and isolated.
tonetheman 1y ago
[dead]
ge96 1y ago
Son Reebok o son Nike Ah serai serai! (Rhythm of the night plays)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
galacticaactual 1y ago
[flagged]
- tehjoker 1y ago
  When evaluating these sorts of things you need to pair (a) whether you actually understand what was being claimed and (b) capability. The middle east has no capability to “destroy the west” so you can’t take it seriously in that sense, but it does seem like the west does want to control and dominate the middle east and has destroyed and toppled the governments of many middle eastern countries.
  - galacticaactual 1y ago
    Really? Reference 9/11, Bataclan, Ariana Grande concert, various car ramming episodes, and - at minimum - they have destroyed our spirit as a stable society.
    - volleyball 1y ago
      Afghanistan , Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia. 15000 children (at least) killed in gaza alone since October 7. Thats like an Ariana Grande concert everyday for the last 2 years.
      - galacticaactual 1y ago
        Cool so you’re ok with a theater full of kids being shot up because of failed geopolitical policy?
    - MPSFounder 1y ago
      Curious about your response to the other dude's reply. It is irrefutable that over 10k children (lowest estimate) have been killed by the IDF. Btw I am very much western in my values and morals, but I think it would be foolish to state that the war in Iraq, which we know for a fact was based on lies, or Israel's occupation and genocide, constitute our western spirit. They are stains on every moral (western, religious, or ethical), and hate begets hate. Ghaza is very interesting as far as I am concerned. There is no world where the occupation and settlements imposed by Israel are aligned with our morals, but it is interesting how a diaspora of religious individuals, who ascribe to a devoted loyalty to a fictional nation (Israel, based on the Jewish Bible), can excuse genocides, curtailing the first amendment and free speech, and every western value you speak of, for its sake. This is but case A. Iraq is currently a mess (and for the last decade, was worse because of our invasion), while Afghanistan fell under an oppressive regime the moment we left. But I must come back to Ghaza. I think it is an abomination on every western society, and I am amazed at the stronghold Israel has over us. Western figures (like Ben Shapiro) call for wars against half of our country (leftists), and have no issue bullying refugees, LGBT members that are American, or preventing Americans from marrying who they wish or being themselves. Yet, any critique of Israel, and de facto our foreign policy, is a red line. I view these people, and those comments in the spirit of yours, as treacherous. Being critical of one's country is what makes America great, for if we do not hold ourselves accountable, then we might fall victims to those oppressions that made America a haven in the days of yore.
zahlman 1y ago
> David Rawson, the US ambassador, said that its euphemisms were open to interpretation. The US, he said, believed in freedom of speech. This is tossed in as if to imply that shutting down the radio station would have saved lives and that the US was therefore complicit in those deaths. I am never swayed by arguments like this. A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing a channel to express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly, and actions speak even louder. Not to mention, per the sidebar, the radio hosts were already disguising their meaning in places despite not experiencing a threat of censorship. "Talking in code" for something that has already become socially acceptable, has its own social purposes - it allows for the hateful to bond over their hatred more strongly than if they were explicit, because the "shared language" is a strong signal of in-group belonging.
- exceptione 1y ago
  > A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing > a channel to express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly, > and actions speak even louder. Culture... is the thing that prevents the enacting of our bestial urges. This channel normalizes the bestiality, and so it becomes culture. Every society have some people without a mic that are blatantly inhuman. A society becomes it when you give them a mic.
  - skrebbel 1y ago
    What does it mean to "give them the mic"? I feel like your comment makes sense in the abstract but when it gets more concrete it gets a lot fussy. Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts? Jailing people who send nasty tweets to all their 10 followers? Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
    - cameldrv 1y ago
      Prior to the eighties, if you put out something sufficiently noxious or unbalanced on broadcast media, you could have the FCC come visit you and threaten to revoke your broadcast license. The broadcast license was required to be used in the public interest. Then the 80s came and you had cable TV which didn’t require a broadcast license, you had video tape, and you had the repeal of the fairness doctrine. Prior to all that the only way you’d get your weird message out was through print, which reqires someone to pay for the printing and distribution, so it’s slower and more limited, and print doesn’t have the same emotional punch of TV or radio. Obviously the Internet has turbocharged this transition. If it were the 80s someone like Andrew Tate would have a very hard time getting an audience. He’d have to use print, and probably a lot of his material would be age restricted. The closest analogue I can think of is Hugh Hefner, and to read his stuff you had to be over 18, although obviously a lot of boys got their hands on a Playboy or two.

Hate Radio (2011)

141 points by thomassmith65 1y ago

Some related topics I find interesting to ponder in relation to the Rwandan genocide and more broadly: Accusation in a mirror: Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. The name was used by an anonymous Rwandan propagandist in Note Relative à la Propagande d'Expansion et de Recrutement ... he instructed colleagues to "impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do". By invoking collective self-defense, propaganda is used to justify genocide, just as self-defense is a defense for individual homicide. Susan Benesch remarked that while dehumanization "makes genocide seem acceptable", accusation in a mirror makes it seem necessary. Double-genocide or at least mass war crimes against Hutu by the RPF: Estimates of Hutu deaths from mass violence in the 1990s are much less precise than Tutsi death figures from the Rwandan genocide due to the greater timescale and geographic spread of the killings. Researcher Alison Des Forges estimated that the RPF killed 60,000 people in war crimes in 1994 and 1995. Historian Gérard Prunier estimated that 100,000 Hutu were killed by the RPF in 1994–1995. Historian Roland Tissot argued that there were around 400,000 Hutus killed by the RPF between 1994 and 1998 (excluding disease and excess mortality), while Omar Shahabudin McDoom estimated several hundred thousand Hutu victims during the 1990s. Demographer Marijke Verpoorten guesstimates 542,000 deaths of Rwandan Hutus (about 7.5 percent of the population), with "a very large uncertainty interval", from war-related causes in the 1990s, including battle deaths and excess mortality from poor conditions in refugee camps. Kagame, the leader of the RPF, has also had an ... interesting tenure as president, in power 25 years and most recently winning 99% of the vote: The highest-profile opposition figure for the 2017 election was local businesswoman Diane Rwigara. Although she acknowledged that "much has improved under Kagame", Rwigara was also critical of Kagame's government, saying that "people disappear, others get killed in unexplained circumstances and nobody speaks about this because of fear". Like Ingabire in 2010, Rwigara was barred from running in the election. Throughout Kagame's tenure as vice president and president, he has been linked with murders and disappearances of political opponents, both in Rwanda and abroad. In a 2014 report titled "Repression Across Borders", Human Rights Watch documents at least 10 cases involving attacks or threats against critics outside Rwanda since the late 1990s, citing their criticism of the Rwandan government, the RPF or Kagame My general impression is that Rwanda has been compressed down to a simplistic morality play when the reality seems a lot more complex and in many ways more unsettling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory_(Rwanda) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory_(Rwanda... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Blood#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Blood#Death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame#Assassinations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kagame#Assassinations

msgodel 1y ago
I think the reality is groups of people that different just can't peacefully share a state.
- SiempreViernes 1y ago
  Finally an opinion about emacs users I can get behind! /s
- brazzy 1y ago
  What exactly do you mean with "that different"?
- lostlogin 1y ago
  Did you read what the difference are? There aren’t any.
madaxe_again 1y ago
I find the whole premise for the situation mind-boggling. Tutsi and Hutu were basically just categories for “someone who has cattle” and “someone who does not have cattle”. One could become the other quite readily. Then the Belgians came along, measured skulls, pronounced the Tutsis a separate (and superior) race, and the rest is… absolutely idiotic history.
- thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > Tutsi and Hutu were basically just categories for “someone who has cattle” and “someone who does not have cattle”. One could become the other quite readily. But none of that is true.
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/rwanda/life-before-the-genocide/ https://hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/r... https://www.rwandanstories.org/origins/hutu_and_tutsi.html https://www.rwandanstories.org/origins/hutu_and_tutsi.html

thomassmith65 1y ago

Apparently the music of Simon Bikindi was a favorite of RTLMC. After the genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda indicted him. His details also make interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bikindi

dav_Oz 1y ago
An interesting read on that topic an nyt-article from 2002 "killer songs" https://archive.ph/fy9SC https://archive.ph/fy9SC

copx 1y ago

Something more people should know about the Rwandan genocide is that the Tutsi were not innocent victims but had previously committed genocide themselves - against the Hutu [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza]. The hate of the Hutu was not artificially created by some "extremists" with a radio station, but was and is instead the result of the long and bloody history between these two peoples where neither side can claim to be the innocent victim.

energy123 1y ago
You're buying into a genocidal mindset of collectivizing an entire ethnic group and assigning collective blame.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dyauspitr 1y ago
The dynamic here is the Tutsi were considered superior (taller, thinner noses, lighter skin) by the colonizers and made up most of the ruling class during and after colonialism. Pre-colonization these groups were genuinely fluid. The genocide was essentially an uprising.
- mike-the-mikado 1y ago
  Rwanda was under German, then a Belgian rule. I don't believe Britain was involved.
  - dyauspitr 1y ago
    Yes you’re right.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- at-w 1y ago
  Rwanda was never colonized by the British.

throwanda 1y ago

Not constrained to Rwanda, the late '80s and early '90s saw the (re-)emergence of this flavor of broadcasting in many places around the world - especially in the US on the AM bands. Fortunately, the conditions weren't present in the US to speedrun to civil war and genocide. Still, I grew up in Limbaugh-lovin' country during those years and was exposed to this... stuff... for more hours of the day than I care to think about. (In public school! Literally, teachers having Rush and assorted fellow-travellers on in the background while we did our classwork.) I do not believe for a second that the fact it went different in the US wasn't for lack of trying. The trying hasn't even stopped.

PaulHoule 1y ago
I never was a regular listener to Rush but if I were driving from Pt A to Pt B in rural America I might find the only thing Icould find reliably from noon to 2pm was an AM radio station that had The Rush Limbaugh Show. I tuned in deliberately on Jan 7, 2021, just a few days before Rush passed away, and found he was shocked and aghast at what had happened to the day before... but did not draw the connection to how the culture he created contributed to it. Korzybski and Van Vogt warned us of "A=A" thinking but today I'm aghast at thinking that can best be described as ∀x,y: x=y. Back in the 1960s you'd expect an article in a Trotskyite newspaper to start with "The Red Sox beat the Yankees" and to end with "... therefore we need a socialist revolution." Today teen girls read Man's Search For Meaning because they think their school is like a concentration camp, politicians of all stripes [1] are accused of being fascists, and people delude themselves that adding a stripe to a flag will magically transform people into allies. Glomming together all social causes into one big ball has a devastating effect on popular support https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-backfire.html https://phys.org/news/2025-06-social-issues-civil-rights-bac... across all demographics. I disagreed with Rush about most things and thought he had a harmful effect on the nation and the world but I'd never accuse him of advocating genocide. No, being against universal healthcare isn't the same thing as genocide and if you're interested in winning elections you'd be better off spraying random voters with pepper spray than talking this way. [1] sci-fi writer Charlie Stross made the accusation against Keir Starmer
- 1y ago

Barrin92 1y ago

One thing that seems underdiscussed to me is that oral culture compared to literary culture seems to have a strong impact on dissemination of hate or mass messaging. My pet theory is that the resurgence of the medium, that so much content is now again visual and audio dominated compared to textual, is responsible for a good amount of the increase in hate in recent years. There's a one-to-many and sort of fuzzy, conspiratorial and hearsay nature to radio, podcasting, preaching, that you don't have in a literary context. It's the ease of transmission and ephemerality of it that enables so much uncritical engagement.

analog31 1y ago
One thing about the radio is that it can be on while you're doing other things, if those things don't require much concentration.
bloak 1y ago
That's an interesting theory, but isn't it a different set of people consuming the audiovisual material? So, roughly speaking, in the past, an educated minority read The Times, while most of the population took no interest in politics and foreign affairs. Nowadays public opinion matters so various powers (often foreign powers not controlled by the local establishment) generate material designed to influence the general population, which isn't exactly literate, as you'll know if you've ever had to do jury service. Meanwhile, the educated minority continues to read The Economist or whatever (The Times is rubbish nowadays).
- cogman10 1y ago
  > while most of the population took no interest in politics and foreign affairs Perhaps not foreign affairs so much, but I'd argue in the past politics was keenly important to a large percentage of the population in the past. Particularly local politics. The reason for that was simple, politics was a form of entertainment and local politics was both fun to talk and gossip about, more so than national politics. What I believe has changed is the internet and broadcasting in general has changed what's entertaining. People care less about the issues and more about the presenter. National broadcasting selected for the most entertaining presenters which have the opportunity to bend political opinions to their own. The internet has opened up access to presenters which has done the same thing as national broadcasting but allows for even more extreme positions. Interest in local politics died for pretty much the same reason why local theater is dead. It's simply not as entertaining as a large budget production (generally). Sure, someone could probably make local politics interesting, but that's inherently going to have a smaller audience draw. That's why national politics is easier to talk about. One other thing that's changed, though, is the options for presenters is now humongous. It's simply unlikely that you or your coworkers will have similar enough media diets to discuss at the water cooler. That's made everything a lot more private and isolated.

tonetheman 1y ago

[dead]

ge96 1y ago

Son Reebok o son Nike Ah serai serai! (Rhythm of the night plays)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

galacticaactual 1y ago

[flagged]

tehjoker 1y ago
When evaluating these sorts of things you need to pair (a) whether you actually understand what was being claimed and (b) capability. The middle east has no capability to “destroy the west” so you can’t take it seriously in that sense, but it does seem like the west does want to control and dominate the middle east and has destroyed and toppled the governments of many middle eastern countries.
- galacticaactual 1y ago
  Really? Reference 9/11, Bataclan, Ariana Grande concert, various car ramming episodes, and - at minimum - they have destroyed our spirit as a stable society.
  - volleyball 1y ago
    Afghanistan , Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia. 15000 children (at least) killed in gaza alone since October 7. Thats like an Ariana Grande concert everyday for the last 2 years.
    - galacticaactual 1y ago
      Cool so you’re ok with a theater full of kids being shot up because of failed geopolitical policy?
  - MPSFounder 1y ago
    Curious about your response to the other dude's reply. It is irrefutable that over 10k children (lowest estimate) have been killed by the IDF. Btw I am very much western in my values and morals, but I think it would be foolish to state that the war in Iraq, which we know for a fact was based on lies, or Israel's occupation and genocide, constitute our western spirit. They are stains on every moral (western, religious, or ethical), and hate begets hate. Ghaza is very interesting as far as I am concerned. There is no world where the occupation and settlements imposed by Israel are aligned with our morals, but it is interesting how a diaspora of religious individuals, who ascribe to a devoted loyalty to a fictional nation (Israel, based on the Jewish Bible), can excuse genocides, curtailing the first amendment and free speech, and every western value you speak of, for its sake. This is but case A. Iraq is currently a mess (and for the last decade, was worse because of our invasion), while Afghanistan fell under an oppressive regime the moment we left. But I must come back to Ghaza. I think it is an abomination on every western society, and I am amazed at the stronghold Israel has over us. Western figures (like Ben Shapiro) call for wars against half of our country (leftists), and have no issue bullying refugees, LGBT members that are American, or preventing Americans from marrying who they wish or being themselves. Yet, any critique of Israel, and de facto our foreign policy, is a red line. I view these people, and those comments in the spirit of yours, as treacherous. Being critical of one's country is what makes America great, for if we do not hold ourselves accountable, then we might fall victims to those oppressions that made America a haven in the days of yore.

zahlman 1y ago

> David Rawson, the US ambassador, said that its euphemisms were open to interpretation. The US, he said, believed in freedom of speech. This is tossed in as if to imply that shutting down the radio station would have saved lives and that the US was therefore complicit in those deaths. I am never swayed by arguments like this. A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing a channel to express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly, and actions speak even louder. Not to mention, per the sidebar, the radio hosts were already disguising their meaning in places despite not experiencing a threat of censorship. "Talking in code" for something that has already become socially acceptable, has its own social purposes - it allows for the hateful to bond over their hatred more strongly than if they were explicit, because the "shared language" is a strong signal of in-group belonging.

exceptione 1y ago
> A culture that produces that kind of hatred will not be stopped by losing > a channel to express it. Word of mouth spreads quickly, > and actions speak even louder. Culture... is the thing that prevents the enacting of our bestial urges. This channel normalizes the bestiality, and so it becomes culture. Every society have some people without a mic that are blatantly inhuman. A society becomes it when you give them a mic.
- skrebbel 1y ago
  What does it mean to "give them the mic"? I feel like your comment makes sense in the abstract but when it gets more concrete it gets a lot fussy. Do you mean disallowing people who make nasty radio broadcasts? Jailing people who send nasty tweets to all their 10 followers? Most people aren't "given the mic" by some benevolent all-powerful force, they just grab a mic and use it.
  - cameldrv 1y ago
    Prior to the eighties, if you put out something sufficiently noxious or unbalanced on broadcast media, you could have the FCC come visit you and threaten to revoke your broadcast license. The broadcast license was required to be used in the public interest. Then the 80s came and you had cable TV which didn’t require a broadcast license, you had video tape, and you had the repeal of the fairness doctrine. Prior to all that the only way you’d get your weird message out was through print, which reqires someone to pay for the printing and distribution, so it’s slower and more limited, and print doesn’t have the same emotional punch of TV or radio. Obviously the Internet has turbocharged this transition. If it were the 80s someone like Andrew Tate would have a very hard time getting an audience. He’d have to use print, and probably a lot of his material would be age restricted. The closest analogue I can think of is Hugh Hefner, and to read his stuff you had to be over 18, although obviously a lot of boys got their hands on a Playboy or two.