A tsunami of hate, you say?
Well my only response to that is this: surf’s up, my brah.
Let’s hang ten because this is wicked gnarly.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday the coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering” and appealed for “an all-out effort to end hate speech globally.”
The U.N. chief said “anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.”
Guterres said migrants and refugees “have been vilified as a source of the virus – and then denied access to medical treatment.”
“With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable,” he said. “And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.”
The chief of the UN just condemned “contemptible memes.”
You’d better check your hate watch because mine says it’s party o’clock.
Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people, on educational institutions to focus on “digital literacy” at a time when “extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.”
He called on the media, especially social media, to “remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content,” on civil society to strengthen their outreach to vulnerable people, and on religious figures to serve as “models of mutual respect.”
Yes, of course talk of a “tsunami of hate” and “contemptible memes” must be followed up with a call for censorship.
“And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,” Guterres said.
The secretary-general stressed that COVID-19 “does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction.”
Shut up, faggot.
I don’t care who you are or where you live or what you believe, I just know you’re a whiny fat boomer who thinks someone’s going to get hurt by jokes.
We used to say “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Now it’s “a flu virus is going to kill us all and the only thing worse is memes.”
It’s gay. Everyone thinks this shit about “oh my pearls, there are people on the internet saying mean things and people’s feelings are being hurt!!!!” is gayer than literal man-on-man anal. The only people who ever believed this were antifa, and that’s only because antifa are self-selected for the absolute biggest dupes on earth that will literally believe anything.
If you tell normal people, even liberals, “THE DEADLY DOOM VIRUS HAS BROUGHT FORTH A TSUNAMI OF HATEFUL MEMES THAT ARE GOING TO HURT PEOPLE’S FEELINGS ON THE INTERNET…!”, they’re going to roll their eyes at you.
Though obviously that is neither here nor there, since the purpose of this is not to convince anyone of anything but rather to put even more pressure on tech companies to engage in even more extreme censorship.
It’s also probably the precursor to some kind of global government mandate against saying mean things on the internet.
And of course, all it is is a variant opinion. That’s all he’s talking about here. People who don’t agree with his bullshit. Saying “we believe in free expression, we just think it should be illegal to hurt people’s feelings with cartoon pictures” is not serious. This is not about courtesy. If it was about courtesy, then the entire media establishment wouldn’t have promoted “punch a Nazi” memes.
This wasn’t even humorous, it was just the media engaging in a straightforward effort for the normalization of violence against anyone who gets labeled a “Nazi,” which basically ended up being all white people (at least all heterosexual white men).
And it inspired real world violence as well. People were doing it at every right wing rally throughout 2017.
Just take a minute and ask yourself what would have happened if a right-wing group had been promoting “punch a kike” as a meme and Jews were getting punched in the face by mobs of right wingers during their holiday celebrations. There is zero chance that they would not have been swooped by the feds.
When the shoe is on the other foot, it’s “you can’t make those mean jokes, it’s just not decent, someone has to shut it down.”
The best part is that the feelings police are soon going to have much bigger problems to worry about than people’s feelings.