Honestly. It fucking sickens me that this is 100% true and that we aren't doing shit all to curb it. Like where the fuck are we? Why the fuck haven't we started to severely crack down on this shit. We didn't do anything when it happened to us. I can bet we aren't going to do anything when it is New Zealand. So my question is, what the fuck has to happen and how many fucking people have to die before we as a country stand up and start putting an end to these alt right nutjobs.
This whole thing just has me so down. So many innocent lives torn and broken over this hate. Why aren't we doing anything. WHY!
:'(
Mostly because a lot of Canadians spend too much time patting themselves on the back for not being as bad as the Americans. It's a sick sense of complacency.
Your post prompted me to get some things off my chest about this, sorry.
Truthfully, we have done some things, particularly pushing the alt-right out of the shadows once more people understood what had taken root there. It's forced politicians to try and find meaningful answers to big societal problems and be held to their word so they can't simply offer platitudes while they pretend that those with alt-right views don't control several seats of power in our society, particularly in the public safety and justice systems or (most dangerously) the halls of government.
Good people trying to fix the world systemically agitates the hell out of these people because it means we're doing something right, but that means that they come out in the open, being "provocateurs" (read: recruiters), saying this shit and goading others into terrible violence. All that said, the alternative was those same violent people getting encouragement in private, as it was for several decades and/or centuries prior, so the average person in the late 20th century just wrote the violent alt-right extremists off as one-off nutjobs rather than a systemic problem because they were blind to the scope of the problem. If they even knew about it at all, since the scope of violent hate crimes weren't well-reported for a LONG time.
They had to be exposed so that everyone else could know whether or not they were responsible for aiding them, be forced to make the decision to help them or not and be properly held to account if they continued to do so (at least it's more than just the marginalized in the mix of those who are holding such people to account nowadays), because the most effective way of dealing with them is to figuratively starve them: de-platforming, de-monetizing, de-legitimizing, etc. You can't do that without giving people the knowledge needed to identify who to starve, so you have to make them present and accounted for; it can't be properly addressed otherwise.
But that exposure has led to knowing the cause/incitement and fuller scope of violence and intolerance much more clearly and intimately than ever before. That shit's depressing and the media making the alt-right into some element of Western cultural theatricality instead of a legitimate imminent threat to society doesn't do any favours to actually confronting the problem, only deepening the woe.
I see the alt-right, homophobes and racists much like a boil:
- the cause of it hides on and below the skin in abundance, which may not be immediately apparent until you see it flare up with your own eyes
- it violently flares up suddenly and grows more apparent, painful and potentially deadly until it's gone
- you shouldn't blindly pick at it, in case you drive the infection further in and make it worse
- you should clean the affected area to be rid of anything that has or might come out of it regularly and frequently
- if it doesn't go away with regular cleaning, lance and drain it, no matter how much pain it might cause, to be rid of it once and for all
- if it's too large or you don't feel you can lance it yourself after regular cleaning, you call on someone better equipped and/or trained to do so
I'll admit it's a bit of a clunky metaphor, since boils don't typically fester for decades and getting people better equipped (read: in power) to properly address the alt-right problem seems to require some heavy convincing. But it feels good to compare the alt-right to an unwanted, useless and painful pus-filled sac of staph infection on the skin.
Anyways, the point is that we're only just starting to solve decades-long systemic problems. But there was so much time wasted thinking that the violent resistances that have all coalesced into the alt-right weren't a threat to solving Canada's problems, that violent acts of targeted hate were perpetrated by one-off crazies or that it is "an American problem", there's a lot of catch-up involved.
Believe me, marginalized communities have been (rightfully) terribly impatient at the majority of Canadian society for not catching up to where they were back in the 60s, 70s and 80s any sooner than most did. It's no fun waiting for people to get their shit together while you make plea after plea for people to show some human decency and respect the humanity of them and others.
As long as everyone works towards making the world an actually better place rather than the distorted hellscape the right wants to see, we get closer every day to not needing to condemn them at all, because they'll all be starved out of existence and relevance. But until then, do whatever you can to give them no quarter and you'll feel as good as you can until the boil has been lanced.