Society & Politics

The Paris attacks and some peoples newfound, temporary, and ultimately fake love affair for Africans and Middle Easterners

We've seen a lot in the last few hours about what happened in Paris. A lot of it is in solidarity towards the french, and some of it is in solidarity towards the people who have already died from terrorism outside of the western world. Before I begin this, I'd like to post a video here made by one of the best geopolitcal historians that I know of. He goes into great detail about the current position of ISIS after the paris attacks, and what the course of action should be in terms of responding to them. Do note that the video is not actually an hour long. It's only 30 minutes long. The last 30 minutes is just him repeating what he said in french.


Here it is, for those of you interested:





Now onto my opinion on things. One of the first complaints I've been seeing on this is that people hardly cared about similar attacks that have happened in the middle east and Africa, but they care a lot about what happened in Paris. I think part of the problem here is the media. The reason why a lot of people seemingly don't care is because a lot of people simply don't know about what goes on outside of the western world. That's part of the problem when you only get your news from one or two media outlets. It should come to no surprise to anyone by now that the western media is more focused on western people and western tragedies. I mean, no one really should be shocked that there was more outrage over what happened in Paris than what happened in Nigeria. Now, I personally consider this to be a valid point, but one thing that is very interesting to me about all this is peoples, almost fetish, to find a pretty/intellectual/beautified reason not to show any solidarity or sympathy whatsoever towards people who died in these attacks. People can't just come out and say, "I don't care because i don't care about people dying when they aren't related to me." No, no no....some, for whatever reason feel the need to excuse themselves with some point about how there was no outrage over terrorist attacks in the middle east, which is why they do not care about what happened to the french. Really? Do you really need other people to care about a human life wrongfully taken before you can care about it too? I can only imagine what my life would be like if i could only care about people wrongfully dying if other people cared about others dying somewhere else. People listen...if you don't care about french civilians dying, you're better off just saying that you don't care because you just don't. Saying that you dont care about them because the already well-known bias of western media doesn't care about Middle Easterners dying is honestly pathetic. You're basically admitting to yourself that you're leading from behind.


One of the main problems with people in general today is that they lack any form of nuance. It's so completely unheard of that you can care about French civilians dying to terrorism AND Lebanese civilians dying to terrorism AND Nigerians dying to terrorism, and all while still simultaneously recognizing that the western media has a bias towards highlighting the deaths of westerners because a western face > Middle Eastern/African face. Holy hannah, how can one compute such high level rationale? What's funny to me though is that some of the people who use this as an excuse don't give a rats ass about people dying in the middle east. They are just using them as a proxy in this case to excuse themselves from caring about people they don't know, in a way that looks somewhat intellectual/less bad while doing so.


Today, image is everything. Here's a little challenge for some of you on here. When you post in some of these postings about the Paris attacks here on GaG, and you see people making this argument as a means of not caring about the civilians who died in France, ask them what their opinion is on Syrian refugees who are trying to flee this death by terrorism which they claim to care about so much about outside of the west....this under-reported terrorism that leaves them incapable of caring about anyone else. Some of the answers should be interesting, i guarantee you. The golden rule here is that generally, people only care about brown people dying when its convienient for them. Don't care about all the spam concerning frenchies dying in france? Pretend to care about the lack of coverage of brown people dying from terrorism in the middle east, while unbeknowst to most, harbouring the opinion that western countries doors should be slammed shut in the faces of brown people trying to flee that very terrorism in their own countries. The main exception i make here are for people who are actually of middle eastern/african descent or are muslim, because they actually have a legit reason to be mad, and im less inclined to believe that its fake outrage. Again, its not difficult to recognize and sympathize with several realities of life simultaneously. You can care about the french, and the middle easterners and still raise a middle finger towards the media for showing obvious bias in the way they cover things. And if you don't care about people dying who aren't related/known to you, then just say so. Don't act like some social justice warrior for your temporary bros in the middle east, while in reality, not really giving a shit about who lives and who dies outside of your immediate family either way...because at the end of the day, a person who genuinely cares about the wrongful loss of human life by terrorism isn't selective about it. It was Martin Luther King who once said that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. No one has to care about french lives...but you owe it to yourself to not make yourself look like a fool while exercising your right to not care.


Regards,


Watermelonoma

The Paris attacks and some peoples newfound, temporary, and ultimately fake love affair for Africans and Middle Easterners
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