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- Mar 9, 2009
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Jeremy Chen
3 hrs ·
Why TRS Must Go Down
The Real Singapore should be held accountable for all the xenophobia it promotes and profits off of. All those who have received money from TRS should be ferreted out, and those who are responsible for fabricated content that promotes xenophobia should be jailed.
Some have argued that TRS is more a symptom than a cause of xenophobia. But this is an incorrect assessment based on a misunderstanding of how xenophobia acts on the world.
There is no reasonable way to say TRS was either symptom or cause -- one but not the other. Is a disease carrier "symptom" or "cause" of an epidemic? Both actually. Xenophobia has been likened to a disease. It's an imperfect metaphor. Xenophobia is not a disease in the sense of "you have it or you don't", but the key characteristic of note is that xenophobia reinforces itself when xenophobes congregate.
Returning to the disease metaphor, xenophobia is like a staged disease with multiple paths:
individualized anger
small group angry talk
individual-level verbal abuse
(small) group-level verbal abuse
individual/group violence of varying degrees
mob violence
And xenophobia progresses when xenophobes congregate, and regresses when xenophobic sentiments are isolated from each other.
Members of mobs are emboldened through knowledge if how large the size of the mob they are in. TRS highlights the size of the mob. It is in TRS comment threads that xenophobes realize how many others like them are out there. Knowing that out there, one's "lynch mob brethren" are legion, an otherwise closet xenophobe might be emboldened to verbally abuse some foreigners, or even to physically assault them. That is how lynch mobs operate, and this is why we must keep xenophobic sentiments isolated from each other.
Even as recently as in the past few years, lynchings of black Americans (via "nigger hunts", as a black judge put it) have occurred. For details on a 2011 case where both men and women were involved in a lynching, follow this link. We may not have as rich a history of racial violence as the USA, but I'm sure we don't want to develop one.
Finally, while it is plausible that one might feel "some sympathy" if the xenophobia of the TRS staff was purely "heartfelt", but this is deeply unlikely given the composition of some of the known staff profiting off advertising dollars attracted to xenophobic eye-balls. They are like drug dealers who know the dangers of drugs and stay clean themselves while ruining lives through their trade.
This is why TRS should be held accountable for all the xenophobia it promotes and profits off of. I reiterate: All those who have received money from TRS should be ferreted out, and those who are responsible for fabricated content that promotes xenophobia should be jailed.
3 hrs ·
Why TRS Must Go Down
The Real Singapore should be held accountable for all the xenophobia it promotes and profits off of. All those who have received money from TRS should be ferreted out, and those who are responsible for fabricated content that promotes xenophobia should be jailed.
Some have argued that TRS is more a symptom than a cause of xenophobia. But this is an incorrect assessment based on a misunderstanding of how xenophobia acts on the world.
There is no reasonable way to say TRS was either symptom or cause -- one but not the other. Is a disease carrier "symptom" or "cause" of an epidemic? Both actually. Xenophobia has been likened to a disease. It's an imperfect metaphor. Xenophobia is not a disease in the sense of "you have it or you don't", but the key characteristic of note is that xenophobia reinforces itself when xenophobes congregate.
Returning to the disease metaphor, xenophobia is like a staged disease with multiple paths:
individualized anger
small group angry talk
individual-level verbal abuse
(small) group-level verbal abuse
individual/group violence of varying degrees
mob violence
And xenophobia progresses when xenophobes congregate, and regresses when xenophobic sentiments are isolated from each other.
Members of mobs are emboldened through knowledge if how large the size of the mob they are in. TRS highlights the size of the mob. It is in TRS comment threads that xenophobes realize how many others like them are out there. Knowing that out there, one's "lynch mob brethren" are legion, an otherwise closet xenophobe might be emboldened to verbally abuse some foreigners, or even to physically assault them. That is how lynch mobs operate, and this is why we must keep xenophobic sentiments isolated from each other.
Even as recently as in the past few years, lynchings of black Americans (via "nigger hunts", as a black judge put it) have occurred. For details on a 2011 case where both men and women were involved in a lynching, follow this link. We may not have as rich a history of racial violence as the USA, but I'm sure we don't want to develop one.
Finally, while it is plausible that one might feel "some sympathy" if the xenophobia of the TRS staff was purely "heartfelt", but this is deeply unlikely given the composition of some of the known staff profiting off advertising dollars attracted to xenophobic eye-balls. They are like drug dealers who know the dangers of drugs and stay clean themselves while ruining lives through their trade.
This is why TRS should be held accountable for all the xenophobia it promotes and profits off of. I reiterate: All those who have received money from TRS should be ferreted out, and those who are responsible for fabricated content that promotes xenophobia should be jailed.
