(As far as the anti-bigotry part of this blog, I decided at some point early on that I wanted to work around the edges of battling bigotry, offering ideas and information that most people are unaware of but which might help them here and there with anti-bigotry work. So that’s why there are a lot of posts that seem a little weird, including this one)
I might start participating in some on-line forums now, probably the comments sections of newspapers and blogs. In some cases I might tie this blog into that, as I'm going to now.
I read an interesting column by Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. He's pretty solidly liberal and even did one column expressing a lot of support for Single-Payer (canadian style) health-care. His column is here, you'll probably have to register.
Below is the comment I just posted. I wonder if I am exaggerating some things (how much the far-right associates Jews with bankers, how much damage will be done), but I have decided to offer any suggestions I can for stopping the spread of hatred. UPDATE4/3/09: The Southern Poverty Law Center has frequently talked about how Obama's presidency combined with the economy could fuel racism, their is a stereotype about bankers and Jews, there is a glaring gap in Obama's approach, and a mostly white workforce will probably be hurt. Anyway, here's my comment:
"I haven't followed American current events much lately, so almost all of my info about this comes from Robinson's column (can't imagine a much better source, roughly as good as Krugman, Meyerson, etc.); and I'm not much on economics or finance, but there are a few things about this I understand. First, the double standard is amazing, the banks should be getting it as least as much as the auto-makers, since they ARE responsible for starting it. Also, in general, this won't be good for auto-workers, although I'm open-minded about how avoidable that is considering that the economy IS a mess and Obama is not going to take some kind of socialist approach.
But recently I've become very interested in the spread of hatred, primarily the sort we associate with the right. It seems to me that a black President connected to destroying the lives of auto-workers (probably mostly/overwhlemingly white) and going easy on the bankers (I have no freaking idea how many of them are Jews, they could all be Hindus for all I care, but there's a semi-popular image of the banker) will fuel the racist right, especially considering Obama's support from Jews (once again, I don't care, my blog is chock full of stuff against anti-semitism). It just seems like, besides being unbalanced and bad for working people and the tax-payer, it will also fuel the far-right.
I say this mostly because unless I've got an exaggerated sense of the damage that can be done, it's one more reason for Obama to change his mind and get tough on the banks."
This blog is mostly about 3 themes- Irish Republicanism, Star Trek, and opposition to bigotry, primarily in America (racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, etc.). It is mostly about Northern Ireland. It will mostly be about these issues in general and past events and will only sometimes touch on current events. Feel free to comment on the earlier posts.
About My Blog
My blog is about history, popular culture, politics and current events from a democratic socialist and Irish republican perspective. The two main topics are Northern Ireland on one hand and fighting anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia on the other. The third topic is supporting the Palestinians, and there are several minor topics. The three main topics overlap quite a bit. I have to admit that it’s not going to help me get a graduate degree, especially because it’s almost always written very casually. But there are some high-quality essays, some posts that come close to being high-quality essays, political reviews of Sci-Fi TV episodes (Star Trek and Babylon 5), and a unique kind of political, progressive poetry you won't find anywhere else. (there are also reviews of episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and reviews of Roseanne)
(my old blog was not showing up in Google search results AT ALL (99% of it wasn't being web-crawled or indexed or whatever) and there was another big problem with it, so this is a mirror of the old one although there will be some occassionnal editing of old posts and there will be new posts. I started this blog 12/16/20; 4/28/21 I am now done with re-doing the internal links on my blog) (the Google problem with my blog (only 1% of this new one is showing up in Google search results) is why I include a URL of my blog when commenting elsewhere, otherwise I would get almost no visitors at all)
(The "Table of Contents" offers brief descriptions of all but the most recent posts)
(I just recently realized that my definition of "disapora" was flawed- I thought it included, for example, Jews in Israel, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and with the Irish diaspora, the Irish on that island. I'll do some work on that soon (11/21/20 I have edited the relevant paragraph in my post about Zionism))
(If you're really cool and link to my blog from your site/blog, let me know) (if you contact me, use the word "blog" in the subject line so I'll know it's not spam)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment