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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   6611 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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A gotcha is not bullying.

Not in a private discussion. Where you disrupt a stranger's activities in public and put a gotcha to them to engineer a viral moment, yes, it is bullying.

I agree, but that leads us to the next question: do Muslims deserve to be bullied? That is, is the humiliation/ostracization of Muslims in Western societies an effective means towards generally desirable outcomes? (For the record, I think so, but preferably in a more limited sense.)

That may well be the case. But as I said upthread, I would have had no issue if Steele had been going after a Muslim preacher. What I find outrageous about this anecdote is that he picked, as his target, a woman doing volunteer work to fight Muslim domestic abuse - which is to say, a woman doing what she can in the direction of liberalization! Did she still identify as a Muslim? Possibly. If so, does this reflect genuine faith, or simply very reasonable fear of the social consequences of becoming an apostate? Unknowable. But either way, such a woman should be an ally, not an enemy, to someone earnestly trying to deal with Muslim-associated customs' negative impact on society.

This is the same kind of transparent nonsense as that stupid "sealion" comic, isn't it.

What "viral moment"? He wasn't filming anything. He politely asked one of his fellow citizens a rhetorical, non-personal question in a public place.

He wasn't filming anything.

…Wasn't he (knowingly) being filmed? I thought he must be from the moment I read the summary; I can't really make sense of his behavior and incentives otherwise. Perhaps I'm too Internet-brained. Where's the still that illustrates the article from, if it's not a screenshot from a video?

Immediately after he asked the woman the question, he left, and she tattled on him to the police. The police confronted him, and one of the officers was wearing a bodycam, which is where the still came from.

Huh. I stand corrected. I remain puzzled by his behavior, unless there was some sort of crowd serving as the audience in the moment.

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