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A Journalist Tricks Internet Racists With A Photo Of Empty Bus Seats That Look Vaguely Like Women In Burqas
The supposed encroaching threat of a Muslim takeover of Europe is something that gets internet racists all a-quiver. The mere sight of a mosque or a burqa in a country they think their whiteness helped build is enough for them to kick up quite a storm — on social media, while they’re safe and cozy at home in their stained jim-jams.
In 2017, Norwegian journalist Johan Slattavik found the most poetic way to highlight, exploit, and, most importantly, mock the everloving shit out of this anti-Muslim hysteria. When on a bus, he noticed that if you only took a brief glance, the empty seats kind of looked like women wearing full-body veils. Deciding to see how many cherries he could get with a pull on the racist rage machine, he took a photo and posted it to a local anti-immigrant Facebook group with the caption: “What do people think about this?”
Unsurprisingly, most of the commenters proved how little scrutiny they performed before blowing their hateful lids. “You can never know who is under there,” one person commented, “Could be terrorists with weapons.” Others insisted “Get them out of our country.” Even though Slattavik knew exactly what he was doing when he posted the photo, he was still surprised by how many people fell for it. Though it could be that xenophobes also really, really hate empty bus seats. It makes about as much sense.
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Trump’s “Illegal Alien” Hotline Gets Swamped By People Reporting Space Aliens
In April, the government, as part of its mission to drum up hysterical fear of immigrants, launched the “Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office” (VOICE), through which upstanding citizens can rat out their neighbors for being too brown. Never mind that immigrants don’t commit much crime — if it’s in the fascist playbook, the Trump administration is going to give it a whirl.