Sitting in the dark

Big cat Dervish cuddled up to me while we watch some pointless TV, and she purrs deep and low. She is the gentlest and least needy of the four. But when she likes you, you really feel liked.

Time for sleep.

Britain First: Conversations

Well now, this is odd.

It's probably not important...but I am seeing an awful lot of those 'Britain First,' style posts all over FB. Not so much on other forms of social media. Perhaps I am imagining it.

They are a bit different too. It's hard for me to demonstrate without linking to a couple of images and I would rather not. There's one picture that shows chained little figures in burqas supposedly being led away to meet their husbands, alongside an article stating that "At the 192nd meeting the Council of Islamic Ideology went further and declared that women are un-Islamic and that their mere existence contradicted Sharia and the will of Allah. "Women by existing defied the laws of nature, and to protect Islam and the Sharia women should be forced to stop existing as soon as possible." Women who express their own will (most especially non-Muslim women) will be the first targeted for extermination."

The responses on BF's page are predictably rabid and stupid. However,below are the responses on one friend's page:
( Example 1 )

Now, it could be argued that Poster 4 is being reasonable, citing external sources for their case. The peculiar thing is that they could have cited the study directly from its source at the Berlin Social Science Centre and they didn't. They chose a link to a website with far right affiliations which then refers to a commentary on said study in Die Welt a conservative German newspaper. Why?

Example 2, again from the Britain First website, shows a man dressed vaguely like a Muslim cleric, with a caption over the pic claiming that said man sexually abused an 11 year old girl and was spared jail because his wife doesn't speak English and he is on benefits. Responses below again:
( Example 2 )

Again, all seems very reasonable. Poster 6 agrees that of course the story is clearly motivated by moronic racists - so why did s/he start by asking us if it was true?

Hmm. So we start with claims that are clearly absurd in and of themselves, obvious straw men for the more discerning. Said strawman gets knocked down, and some commentator brings us to what seems to be the middle ground of the argument: which is still very far to the right, because the originating premis was so extreme, i.e. of course not all Moslems are baby eating monsters...just a few... but we have to work out how to deal with them anyway. Of course fundy Muslims won't stop women from breathing, but they oppress women anyway, and their influence is growing...From being a big crazy nightmare unbelievable problem, they have become a smaller rationally approached problem. And this might seem very reasonable until we realise how far we have moved from a position of seeing Muslim citizens as no problem at all.

It's a coincidence, a sneaky little nothing. But it is strange to see it, and gives one pause for thought.