We’re meant to be living in an enlightened world. We’re meant to be more educated. We are meant to be more tolerant of other cultures.
So why is it that the most common lunchtime and pub conversations still convey a desire that (travellers, criminals, immigrants, [insert minority group of choice]) be (executed / castrated / locked away and the key thrown away / [insert gruesome ending of choice])?
Seems we haven’t progressed that much after all. 😦
In truth, I find that I don’t generally hear such things spoken openly. Maybe I keep better company.
When I do The question becomes “How to deal with it?”. Of course, no
rightleft-thinking person can ignore it, and in my times I’ve tried various measures, from ineffective fulmenating to starting a fight. More recently, what I’ve realised that these morons are inviting one to agree with an accepted orthodoxy. So you can patronise them. What peculiar views! Why on earth would anyone think such nonsense? Surely everyone knows that travellers are economic victims/ the reasons for and cures for crime are complex/ immigrants are to be welcomed. I’ve learned to speak as though Marxism were common sense.I think the sad truth is that many people are simply unimaginative and cannot put themselves in anyone else’s position, meaning they fall back on knee-jerk opinions and right-wing rhetoric. It’s also comforting to identify yourself with a strong group and one way to do that is to demonise anyone outside. The other problem is that many of society’s issues don’t have a simple solution and people like black and white answers with quick results.
I’ve usually found that such attitudes are the result of laziness, not malice, and once you engage in any sort of debate, most people will sheepishly accept that they’re spouting nonsense, particularly if you point out the obvious parallels, e.g., “Isn’t that what Hitler was planning to do?”. If they really advocate hate crimes, however, I doubt anything I could say would dissuade them, so I’d just steer the conversation to safer waters!