Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Hot tip: Blame the victim!

It is always easier.

Sylvi Listhaug, Progress Party councilwoman here in Oslo, thinks that the annual Pride Parade, one of the highlights of Oslo Pride Week which opened today, is a bad idea for teh gays. She doesn't mind seeing it, of course ... she's only concerned about them. She thinks that 'it doesn't strengthen their cause' to have halfnaked homos dancing around in the city streets ... because when normal people who don't live in the big city see pictures of that, 'it doesn't contribute to greater tolerance'.

I'm not even going to go there ... I'm barely even going to point out that the parade lasts for like one hour and has lots of different people in it, and most of them have clothes on. I'm just going to tell a little story.

Back in the 1930s, a lot of German Jews were wanting to get out of the country that they had thought was theirs and move somewhere that would hopefully be safer. Some of them applied for shelter as refugees here, in Norway. Fridtjof Nansen's homeland, right?? But their applications were dismissed. I'm obviously not saying that they would have been safer here, because after a while the Nazis came here too, and so many of our Jews were taken away ... but I digress. The point is that the applications were denied. I'm proud to say that there were Norwegians who did fight for these people, who did a lot to help them and to get them here to a safer place. But they didn't get anywhere with that. And what was the logic behind the authorities' refusal to grant asylum to these refugees? Well, because of the anti-Semitism in our society. But ... um ... Norway wasn't really very anti-Semitic, was it? The supporters genuinely wanted to know. And the authorities agreed, we weren't all that anti-Semitic. Yet. But, and get this, we would become anti-Semites if all these Jews were to come here. So it would be better for them to stay where they were, because if they came here we would probably end up resenting them.

Blame the victim. It makes everything so much easier.

5 comments:

Paz said...

Great post, agree with you the gay thing
on the Jewish thing just to bore you, in Ireland after WW2 in 1948 the department of justice refused to let in 500 Jewish into Ireland "It has always been the policy of the Minister for Justice to restrict the admission of Jewish aliens, for the reason that any substantial increase in our Jewish population might give rise to an anti-Semitic problem" This was overturned by the president De Velara and eventually 100 kids came in, in 1952 it had to be over ruled to let in 5 families getting away from Communism.

Leisha Camden said...

You guys had the same problem in Ireland, that is so sad ... or actually the same attempt to construct a problem. >:-( Good for your president that he had enough sense to at least try to show some empathy.

It's fine to be Jewish, just not right here where we live. It's fine to be gay, but do they have to be so obvious about it?

Argh.

Paz said...

We only really took to racism in the last few years, there was always latent potential to be racist due to the way we treated the "travelling" community and the English.
The "Travelling" community are a nomadic group, I have the " " because they don't travel anymore they live in settlements, they tried to to get status as an Ethnic group, but they have the same genealogy as Irish. If you saw 'Snatch' with brad pitt you get the picture.
If you want to see more look here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller

Anonymous said...

Wow, I did not know that about Norway and the Jews.
I'm planning to go to the Gay Pride Parade in NYC this Sunday :D
I agree with your points, blaming the victim is so much easier than trying to fix the problem.

Paz said...

Read this during the week meant to send on earlier, forgot about it till today. The Columnist often says the difficult thing in a lighthearted manner
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/ian-odoherty/if-you-prance-about-like-a-prat-that-is-how-youre-going-to-be-treated-1803786.html