Thanks for pointing this out Patzcuaro, it’s a very good cartoon.
It’s probably not exactly applicable to New Zealand. Extreme intolerance seems to be mostly expressed here by those tending more towards ‘white power’ here.
Whale Oil seems to be getting more right wing and extreme, more ‘Christian’ (in a fundamental rather than a Christ-like way) and into conspiracy peddling. Yesterday: Leighton Smith calls out the war on Christianity
The dominant narrative of the media-political elite in the West is one of ?Islamophobia?. No matter the escalating violence and horror that Islamic extremists perpetrate in the West, the great and good remain utterly convinced that it is Muslims who are shivering in abject terror of slavering Westerners. In the near-two-decades since 9/11 the narrative goes, the bigoted hordes of non-Muslims have been straining at the bit to unleash a ?backlash?.
Meanwhile, it?s the other two Abrahamic faiths who are genuinely facing violent persecution.
Across the Middle-East and North Africa, Christian communities, among them the most ancient in the world, are being persecuted ? if not all but wiped out. Not even the Pope can bring himself to break the iron code of PC orthodoxy and admit it, though
I have written before of the vast gulf between small-m multiculturalism and its capital-M variety. The former simply acknowledges cultural difference, and that exchange can enrich cultures. Its odious cousin, though, is an insidious doctrine that denigrates Western culture and denies its natives any claim on its heritage, let alone lands.
That prompted the types of comments that have ramped up since the Christchurch mosque shootings, like this from Sunshine:
The war is not on Christians. Christians are just the vehicle. The war is on western culture which happens to be Christians. It is western culture and civilisation that must be destroyed and rebuilt with a neo-liberal (nihilistic) flavour.
deja vu only disagrees about the level of Christian insecurity:
I disagree – the war is being fought on two levels, the physical and the spiritual, the latter being the most insidious and malevolent. The fallout (if we don’t wake up) will be the certain demise of Western culture and civilisation. Western culture today is largely indifferent to the God of our forebears who is reluctantly taking His hand of protection from us. When the West honoured His transcendence and sovereignty we flourished. It is not His nature to deny His people their choice of turning away from Him. We get just what we deserve, as do wayward children. Let us try to prevent the inevitable happening by seeking Him again in earnest. One thing is certain – Islam is rising to fill the spiritual vacuum caused by this conflict. At the moment it has the upper hand, and we’re fooling ourselves if we think we’re somehow immune from its onslaught. What we need is a nationwide repentance for our folly.
Christian extremists are almost as dangerous as Muslim extremists generally, and possibly more of a potential problem here in New Zealand.
“Western culture and civilisation” is a bit of a euphemism for white power. Trying to cling to some semblance of Western/Christian/European/white superiority by driving intolerance and division is going to make things worse, not better.