A person who lives in Australia emails me regularly (at least a couple of times a week) ranting about Muslims.
He is clearly having an unhappy, insecure life. Some part of me feels sorry for him. But my pity for him is dimmed when he advocates:
- banning all Muslims from Australia
- supporting Pauline Hanson and Donald Trump
- putting all Muslims in Concentration Camps
- strafing Muslims (for the millennials, strafing means machine gunning)
This is a real person with some seriously toxic ideas. And just a few days ago (just before the election in the USA) he wrote:
“America’s first Muslim President will soon be history and the States are now saying that they want no part in the invasion of the USA by Muslims”. It boggles the mind.
Here is a selection of his emails from the past: anti-islamic-rants
I’m sorry Mr Burnside but there is nothing I can do. What I don’t understand is why you bother? Those who agree with you need no convincing while those who don’t will never be convinced – certainly not by logic or compassion.
I get a lot of hostile mail, as you would expect. I only mention that one correspondent because I think he represents a threat to the values we think (hope?) this country stands for, and we need to be aware of the existence of people like him who are so detached from the community that the feel a need to write toxic emails to someone they have never met.
It is a bit like the Trump phenomenon: it reveals the existence of a group of people who feel so isolated from Society that they will support someone who appears to have no coherent ideas on any subject, but is pretty good at spitting venom and hate.
I am so sorry you are receiving this kind of rabid, insane abusive online ranting, Mr Burnside. Could you please not dignify it & encourage it with a response? Let it sink! You must know by now that entering a dialogue just feeds the madness and the abuse, & the desire to be noticed is never assuaged by reasoned argument. The internet demonstrably has the effect of freeing people from normal social constraints, normal courtesy. You can’t overcome it this way – it’s the otherwise powerless rage on one hand & the contempt for the poor/ disadvantaged on the other that is powering support for the Dutertes, the Trumps, the Hansons, the Bernardis of the world. We are in the kind of period that oversaw the rise of fascism, Nazism etc in the 20th Century. Any intellect such as yours should be focused on how to turn that tide rather than feeding the rage, don’t you think?
It’s good of you to say that, and part of me agrees. I tossed up whether to post anything about it at all. Certainly I do not want to encourage a person with views like that.
But we all need to be aware of the existence of toxic views like those I quoted from his emails. And just the other day I got another email from him saying:
“Concentration Camps are returning and that is a good thing.” and a link to an English tabloid newspaper.
And yesterday, Remembrance Day, he wrote saying:
“Did you remember those who died to protect democracy and the Australian way of live to day?
Those values that the Muslims and their holy book are so eager to destroy.”
It seems to me that he is personally betraying the very Christian values he claims to support.
This lunatic should be on police watch. He is a danger to the community. If someone of the muslim faith wrote this disgusting tripe I could only imagine the reaction from our security agencies. I trust you have handed these email on to the appropriate authority?