Europe lurches to the Right

[botley]

If we're going to shut down a racist who is couching their racism under the guise of a criticism of Islam, then just call them a racist and point out why they're actually being racist.

Fine, but what about all those cases of bigots who AREN'T criticising Islam, but simply insulting people and uttering hateful threats against them for belonging to that religion? The tweets quoted in the CBC piece I linked aren't racist, they're anti-Islamic. They make no comment about the race of the Muslims in the mosque that their writer wants to blow up. That's not a peaceful protest or a rational criticism; it's not speech worthy of protection, but it's not racism either.

The very idea that racism of any sort is actually contained by prosecuting people for exhibiting bigoted beliefs is ludicrous.

Whose argument are you attacking here? The guy in that CBC piece? Nobody is claiming you can legislate bigotry away, but I agree with the op-ed I also linked to from the Guardian: by marking it as socially unacceptable and unwanted, it can be made to wither away. I'll protect your right to criticise what is said, but if you say hateful shit about an entire people grouped together only by their religion, you should be called out on it in a way that matters, from a shared position of social authority, not by some other chump in a comment thread.

It's a good thing to know who those people are, and they should feel free to expose their ignorance to everyone around them, and face the consequences for it.

That's the problem: there are no consequences for it. You can make hateful threats towards Muslims all the live long day and there is no repercussion for you, meanwhile the environment for the Muslims living around you becomes ever-more fearful. People like us argue about whether what it is the bigots are doing is actually a thing or not, meanwhile people are being assaulted in the streets for wearing a hijab or having their windows broken or vandalized with "terrorist" scrawled on them for praying at a mosque. Don't call it Islamophobia, though, I guess?