Politically correct cultural appropriation

Today is a day where I touch on the two subjects that you are never supposed to talk about in polite company: religion and politics. So before I go into those dangerous topics, I will discuss something lighter and humorous on the same topic of symbolism, word-creation and discrimination before I go into the weightier subject of the practical misapplication of these in our so-called “modern” and “enlightened” “politically-correct” society (a.k.a. the nanny state).

While driving my daughter to school today, there was a Nissan Cube stopped at the red light in front of us. The Nissan Cube is quite possibly the most ugly car ever designed and marketed on the planet; a car so boxy and unsightly that even the political commissars at the Lada factory in the old Soviet Union probably would have rejected it. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration but lord it is an ugly car.

While still sold in Japan, this abomination of an automobile mercifully only survived two years in Europe (2009-2011) while lasting a little longer in North America (2009-2014). Although this car does look quite boxy from the back, it is most definitely not a cube as it doesn’t have the same dimensions on the z-axis (i.e., it is lengthier than its height and width). So why is it called a cube? Well, this got my brain thinking about what is the word for a three-dimensional rectangular object and the results were not pretty.

Every other primary shape has a cool short name for their three-dimensional counterpart. The triangle even gets two names, pyramid and cone (and technically three if you include a three-sided pyramid base instead of four-sided). But the poor rectangle only gets the ungainly term “rectangular prism” when it goes 3D. So, despite the ugliness of Nissan’s Cube, the marketing people at least had the common sense not to use “rectangular prism” as the name of the car despite the fact it would be more accurate. It also saves a few bucks as you don’t have to put a long name badge on the back of the car. Mind you, these are the same people who thought for years that they should market their vehicles in North America under the name Datsun because they felt that Nissan sounded too Japanese. So pet project of the day; start a lobby group to get the math nerds to come out with a decent short-form common name for a three dimensional rectangle. The poor rectangle deserves more respect given that it is probably far more common in every day life than a perfect cube and it is pure discrimination (shapeism?) that it doesn’t have a nice easy name like the other shapes.

Let’s start with the main topic. As my click-bait photo for this article suggests, some liberal in L.A. decided to go spray paint a swastika on Donald Trump’s star on Hollywood’s walk of fame. Of course, the implication is that Donald Trump is a Nazi. One interesting fact that seems to be ignored by liberals who like to call anyone who disagrees with them a Nazi is that the term is a short-form for Nationalsozialismus or National Socialism. Yes gentle readers, Nazi’s were not only against communism (specifically Russia) they were also very much against capitalism. While we tend to regard Nazism today as a far-right movement given its racist Aryan views, it was in fact, very left-wing and socialist in its economic policies. This should not be surprising given that the full name of the Nazi Party was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  (National Socialist German Workers’ Party). Everything from the Autobahn to the Volkswagen (the “people’s car”) reeks of socialist make-work projects to the unemployed masses suffering from economic collapse and hyper-inflation during the inter-war period. Today, the term Nazi and swastika are tossed around far too casually by lefties who want a quick and dirty way to slap a label on anyone with a different point of view. While this only highlights the left’s own uneducated ignorance, my real beef is with the abuse of the swastika.

You can look it up yourself but this simple infographic below tells you most of the relevant facts in a fairly accurate manner. Essentially, even the word swastika comes from the Indian Sanskrit which is not surprising as Buddhism started in the sub-continent even though it is practiced far more in East Asia today. It is also used in Hinduism and Jainism which are still widely practiced in India.

I have seen the swastika on numerous Buddhist temples and statues across Asia and it is a universal symbol for the Buddhist religion just like the Cross is for Christianity, the Star of David is for Judaism and the Crescent is for Islam. That one of the major religions in the world cannot actively use its millennia-old symbol without often being misunderstood or attacked in the West (due to a political movement that is long defunct and not even a hundred years old) is a travesty. It is even worse that the swastika is actually banned in Germany and they even tried to get the ban implemented throughout the entire European Union but failed. While there are religious exemptions to this law for Buddhists and Hindus, the systemic demonification of the swastika means that in practice, Asians still have to be very careful about showing overt symbols of their religion in everyday life.

 Yes, the Nazi swastika is slightly different. It is usually depicted at a 45 degree angle and right-facing whereas the Buddhist one is generally straight and left-facing (ie, reverse) although that is not an absolute rule as 卐 or 卍 exists for Buddhists. Regardless, the vast majority of Westerners certainly aren’t well versed enough to make the distinction in any case. Wear or portray a swastika and you are a Nazi, even if you are non-white.

It is also clear that whoever defaced Donald Trump’s star in Los Angeles has absolutely no clue because the Nazi swastika is never left-facing. Essentially, the aspiring artist/political-commentator is accusing Donald Trump of being a Buddhist or maybe even Hindu by spray painting an incorrect swastika. It is high-time that Asians, especially Buddhists and Hindus reclaim both the word swastika and the symbol from the aberrant use that has formed in the West. Why is it that this form of religious intolerance, symbolic persecution and outright cultural appropriation is acceptable by the liberals in the West while Islamophobia is increasingly heralded as the battle-cry for social justice and tolerance by the left and the media? I have no clue as the convoluted logic of the liberal mind and its massive internal inconsistencies only makes sense to them as they scream about intolerance towards Muslims and Islamophobia in one breath while bashing Christianity and Judaism (specifically Israel) in the next. On second thought, maybe it’s best that there is no talk of Buddhistophobia from the inappropriate use of the swastika in the West; like so many things in Asia, we like to stay below the radar and be left alone.

With Donald Trump’s executive order banning certain refugees and entry into the United States from seven muslim majority countries, the mantra of Islamophobia is being chanted more loudly than usual. Let me be clear. I think that particular executive order was mean-spirited and stupid since it is unlikely to achieve any of the goals that it is supposed to be targeting. It may actually have the opposite affect but given that this drama is still playing out in the courts, we won’t know one way or another for some time.

OK lets start with a basic definition:

First we have to ascertain whether Islamophobia as it is promulgated by the liberals is really an accurate description of what is happening. Below is a chart of terrorist attacks and casualties in Europe over the past 15 years. Other than the well known attack in Norway in 2011 by extreme right wing nutter Anders Behring Breivik, you will spot an obvious and disturbing trend with the rest of the chart.

The liberal argument is that, like the mass shootings that occur far too often in the United States, this is the work of a small minority of religious zealots and that most Muslims are peace-loving and law abiding. This is probably true but the numbers are not nearly as low as we are lead to believe by some. A Pew survey of attitudes towards suicide bombings supports this view that most Muslims are against terrorist attacks but the numbers vary dramatically from country to country with a substantial minority in some places like Palestine, supporting the practice.

In other words, there are pretty good reasons to be concerned about radical Islamists and terrorists (more if you are European or Israeli) which means I’m not convinced that the label of phobia is accurate. Sure, you are much more likely to be shot by a fellow American than you are by a Jihadist terrorist. You are also very unlikely to win the lottery or get hit by lightning; that doesn’t make it completely irrational to buy a ticket for fun or avoid hiding under a tree in a thunderstorm. More people die in car crashes than in planes but auto accidents rarely make the international news unlike plane catastrophes. Being concerned about terrorism and the threat of it can hardly be called irrational given that it happens all the time and the impact of attacks are disproportionately large and newsworthy.

Can’t we all just peacefully co-exist? For the most part yes. Some of my favourite discussions at my dormitory in Sweden when I was studying at the Stockholm School of Economics was with a Pakistani who had a degree in Islamic Law and was taking a Masters in International Law at the University of Stockholm. We discussed and even joked about everything from the Quran to Ramadan and he was happy that I found halal instant noodles (from Thailand) and cheap eggs from the Chinese supermarket for him. When I was a Managing Director at the Bank of China, we would often host mainland Chinese fund management companies who wanted their staff to train for a week with us to see how international capital markets worked. Usually about a half-a-dozen analysts and portfolio managers would come at a time. On one occasion, unknown to me, one of the analysts was a muslim; yes, there are Chinese muslims and not all of them are the Central-Asia (ie, all the “stans”) looking Uighers from Xinjiang Province. He wanted to excuse himself from the group lunch so I told him not to worry and had my secretary order in from a Xinjiang-style halal restaurant. He was flabbergasted that someone would go to so much trouble to accommodate one person but to me it was a small thing to do and a sign of respect for a guest. I also got to try some new food – it wasn’t bad although I’m saddened to say I’m not going to add Xinjiang cuisine to my list of favourites. Am I irrationally worried about Islamic terrorism and a Muslim invasion of the West? No. Does it occasionally concern me? Yes, especially after a big attack like 9/11 or Paris or Brussels or Nice or Berlin. Does that make me Islamophobic? According to many radical and shrill liberals – probably.

What disturbs me more is that, despite the fact that terrorist attacks are disproportionately done around the world by Muslims (and to be fair, more likely to be targeted at other Muslims rather than Westerners), any discussion or concern about it automatically earns you the label Islamophobe. You don’t agree with Trudeau’s policy of letting in 30,000 Syrian refugees? You must be both a racist and an Islamophobe. As horribly wrong as Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration are, he does have a point that there are risks and costs in letting in refugees, especially in insanely huge numbers like Germany has (over a million in one year alone), and not all of them are financial. The New Year’s attacks and rapes in 2016 across Germany and continued problems of integrating huge numbers of refugees is a case in point. Europe’s reaction to an endless chain of these sorts of news stories is not surprising – a sharp rise in support for the radical far right. It is a big election year in Europe and it will be interesting to see if the ultra-right parties take power in the Netherlands, France and Germany.

The phenomenon is not only limited to Europe. Recently, in Edmonton, we had a report that a Syrian refugee (a married father of six himself) was arrested for sexually molesting six teenage girls at the West Edmonton Mall water park. Not surprisingly it set off the usual anti-immigration rhetoric on the right. But we also have this surreal reaction from  Mohamed Huque, executive director of the Islamic Family and Social Services Association. “The insertion of two words — Syrian refugee — completely changed the dimension of the story. What was initially a local crime story became a wider discussion about screening practices, immigration levels. It just turned into an entirely different debate. If this person was Caucasian, that wouldn’t have been identified in any way, because it’s not relevant to the story. And his immigration status certainly shouldn’t be. Responsible journalists should be aware of the political climate, so when we use that kind of language or when we ascribe a community to an individual, we need to be wary of the implications.”

Sorry Mr. Huque, you couldn’t be more wrong. The fact is that the media, especially the Canadian Brainwashing Corporation (CBC), already self-censor important information far too often has already resulted in a growing mistrust of mainstream reporting. The fact that he was a Syrian refugee is hugely important and relevant; otherwise the inclusion of those two words would not have ignited the wider discussion you ascribe to them. It is actually responsible journalism to include all the relevant facts, not deliberately edit out ones that are inconvenient or those that certain interest groups like yours don’t like because you want to second guess what impact those facts may have. OK, let’s say the facts were different and the alleged perpetrator was a recent immigrant from the United States. Would reporting it make a difference? Probably not, which is why it is irrelevant and not reported. But if the man was a liberal Hollywood celebrity making good on his threat to escape Donald Trump, then it would be big news and should be included.

That the CBC devoted most of its follow-up report to justify arguments that the fact that the arrested man was a Syrian refugee should not have been included is disturbing. It is this sort of continued self-censorship and politically correct pap that has eroded intelligent discourse and debate in our society. It has caused most people to fear discussing many important topics and when they do, are forced to walk on eggshells out of fear of offending our snow-flake liberal populace. The recent case of Antonio Padula in Montreal who was charged with uttering threats to an individual and public incitement of hatred against an identifiable group is particularly disturbing. You can read about it yourself here:

Of course, this has happened in the wake of the mosque shooting in Quebec City which means Canadians and especially Quebecers are super-sensitive and itching to prove to the world that we are a civilised and tolerant country. What is missing from the CBC report (which is surprising giving how important I think the information is) are the conditions of his bail following his arrest:

Padula must respect a number of conditions, including not accessing the Internet and not being in possession of any device that gives him access to it, such as computers or cellphones. He must not carry or be in possession of weapons. His lawyer said he does not possess any firearms.

Padula was ordered to see his doctor within 48 hours of release, and take any medication and follow any treatment prescribed. He was ordered to post bail of $500, while a family member will post another $1,000.

This case highlights my greater fear that freedom, especially that of thought and speech, is under extreme duress from the nanny-state that seeks to force one train of thought and belief in the name of some asinine “progressive” view about “tolerance”. We can’t even recognise the irony that our pathetic attempt to promote tolerance is being done by passing and trying to enforce draconian and intolerant laws. That’s why I greatly object to so-called “hate speech” laws; the scope and vagueness in them are far too great. The potential for over-reach and abuse by the government and the judiciary too tempting.

In this case, a man has been arrested and detained overnight in jail for posts he made on the internet. Even before a trial to establish his innocence or guilt, he is not only prohibited from accessing the internet, he is not even allowed to possess a smart phone. This is not a modest restriction. In today’s world, most jobs require access to the internet and e-mail. Even a doctor often has to consult the internet to get patient histories and diagnostic data that is sent digitally. Moreover, the court has ordered him to see a psychiatrist and he is being forced to take any medication he is prescribed – all without the benefit of a trial. This seems to me to be a huge abuse of judicial power, especially in light of the fact that it is all because of a few nasty Tweets on Twitter.

The worst irony is that, Padula might actually have been using satire to attack others that were spouting anti-Islamic hate; in other words, they may have arrested the wrong guy. It’s hard to tell given the limited and one-sided release of small parts of the Twitter conversation in the media reports but it seems clear to me that he was originally arguing against Islamophobes and then stepped up to using an extreme position to prove his point; which is by definition sarcasm at its best. It’s also entirely possible that the Sûreté du Québec’s cyber surveillance unit doesn’t have the language skills required to correctly interpret sarcasm in English… Tabarnac!!! Ce n’est pas possible!!! Maybe a crash course in reading and interpreting Jonathan Swift should be mandatory for our jack-booted trigger-happy security forces as well. When Swift suggested in A Modest Proposal (1729) that poor Irish peasants should sell their babies to English nobles to be eaten (complete with recipes for their preparation), thus alleviating their economic problems… members of the Canadian police force and judiciary listen closely now… HE WAS NOT BEING LITERAL. That is what satire is all about and if our courts don’t have the intelligence to differentiate between the two, then we really need to eliminate the introduction to Latin courses in our law schools and introduce more remedial English literature classes.

In the end, even if Padula is completely cleared of all charges, he will have suffered enormously emotionally, financially and reputationally by a politically correct judicial system that has clearly run amok. If the Canadian government and police force’s aim was to stifle free speech and expression, they have done a job that would have made George Orwell’s totalitarian dystopian society in 1984 proud. In 1984, the country in question was called English Socialism – or Ingsoc in “newspeak”. Does this mean that our modern Canadian version is Cansoc? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “thoughtcrime” in Cansoc, now being monitored by “Big Brother” Trudeau Junior and executed by our incompetent Cansoc “Thought Police” (a.k.a. the R.C.M.P. and Sûreté du Québec) and enforced by our sarcasm-bereft “Thought Courts”.

An exaggeration? Hyperbole? This is what  Sûreté du Québec Captain Guy Lapointe had to say about this incident: “Padula’s arrest should serve as a warning… Because they are behind a keyboard or an intelligent phone, they’ll cross that line, and the words that they put up there go beyond what their thoughts are and then they end up in a situation where they might face charges.” That sounds like a pretty clear threat and attack on freedom of thought and expression to me. If the price we pay for trying to contain hate speech is totalitarian police-state restrictions on all freedom of speech; I submit that we have not only crossed the Rubicon but have already lit fire to Rome and are rosin up our fiddles.

Update (February 13, 2017): A small group of Syrian refugees handed out roses at Chinook Centre Mall during the weekend as a sign of gratitude and friendship to Canadians. They were eventually shut down by mall security for not having the required permit to do so. Before all you liberals get your knickers in a knot over police brutality and racism, at least they weren’t fined $101 like the free-hugs guy in the Montreal metro a few months ago (see below). Apparently this sort of activity has been arranged on a small-scale in numerous places where Syrian refugees have been relocated including Saskatoon last year. What a great way to build bridges, relationships and friendship. To me, this method seems far more effective in reaching people and fostering understanding than all the loud mouth liberals chanting pithy slogans, waving placards and blocking roads ever will.

Update 2 (February 14, 2017): Yusra Khogali, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto is a nasty piece of work; if she were white and male, I think even the liberals would have shut her down a long time ago. But she is at the forefront of the news again, this time with Facebook posts and Tweets. First she attacked the Prime Minister for allowing refugees into the country, “When Justin Trudeau says that he is a liar! He’s a hypocrite! He is a white supremacist terrorist!” Now everybody knows I am no big fan of Junior, but he is about as far from being a white supremacist terrorist as possible for a spoiled trust-fund liberal urbanite. She then basically spews racist and genocidal comments as if she were projectile vomiting: “Whiteness is not humxness… infact, white skin is sub-humxn… White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual… black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.” If that wasn’t enough, she then posts threats of violence and murder: “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.” There’s all the evidence you need Captain Guy Lapointe, go and arrest her for “uttering threats to an individual and public incitement of hatred against an identifiable group.” No? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Maybe you should change your name to Inspector Jacques Clouseau instead. On second thought, you should change it to Captain Louis Renault from the classic movie Casablanca because instead of going out and arresting the actual criminal, you’re more likely to “round up the usual suspects”.