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In reply to the discussion: Pam Geller lashes out at critics: You’re saying the ‘pretty girl caused her own rape’ [View all]Tommy_Carcetti
(43,241 posts)The thing about gay couples holding hands in front of homophobes: Sure, it's okay to mock their bigoted mindset. And if you are willing to accept a punch in your face to show to others the extent of that mindset, that's your call. It might work in an intimate setting like that.
But it breaks down completely in situations like Geller's. First of all, Geller is on record stating that there's no such thing as moderate Islam, that Islam is nothing but a "genocidal ideology", stating that Islam should be banned in this country. So she's not just targeting the extreme fringes of the religion but in fact what amounts to over a billion people.
So she criticizes the religion as a whole as evil. Then she does something she knows will provoke the most radicalized, reactionary members of the religion. Then she turns around and goes back to her original criticism of the religion as a whole being evil. It's disingenuous to say the least.
And again, unlike that gay couple pissing off a homophobe by holding hands, Geller's event has far more implications. It's a public event, and violence targeted at that event will no doubt not only affect the safety of the willing participants of that event but others in that immediate vicinity. Other people who might not have the same beefs or beliefs that she does. And that's exactly what happened here, and that's why her actions were so incredibly unethical, reckless and immoral. She's essentially playing chess with human pieces for her own little game.
She's not doing a good thing. Not even close. You might not like the extremists who take violence offense over a drawing, but you're ignoring the fact that Geller is an extremist too. Why are you sanctioning the actions of one extremist simply because she's at odds with the actions of other extremists? It doesn't make much sense to me.