cheevan's thought

去年follow瑞典國會改選相關訊息的時候，發現因某些政黨的種族政策，在網路上引起很大的討論；
以下是某個討論串中的一段話，大家可以思考思考，並試反駁之。
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Victor_D:

The term "racist" lost all its meaning in the past two decades. In my language, when someone is "racist", it means he believes in BIOLOGICAL inferiority of some group of people (blacks, Roma, etc.).

It seems to me than in the English-speaking world, the word has become a generic insult and slander used to keep other people's mouths shut, so that they can't voice their opinion. It reminds me of the smear-words the communists were using in this country to silence their opponents. Anybody who questioned the viability of the socialist system was "enemy of the people" or "mercenary of the American imperialism" or "saboteur", among dozens of other things.
 
In contemporary Western world, all non-mainstream -- meaning non-multicultural -- opinions are dismissed as "xenophobic" or "racist", no matter that such opinions often have absolutely nothing to do with "xenophobia" (irrational fear of something new and unknown) or "racism" (believe in biological superiority/inferiority of certain races of people).

For example, if someone says "I am opposed to further Muslim immigration and I believe that the Muslims who are already here should assimilate to our culture, not the other way round", he's neither "xenophobic" (that would imply he knows nothing about Muslims and is irrationally afraid of them because they're new to the country, not because he has had his experience with them and had rationally come to the conclusion he doesn't like them) or "racist" (Islam is not a race, it's a religious ideology: people can change religion - religion is not innate or biologically determined). Calling him that is stupid and it is an insult to common sense.

The real tragedy is that the devaluation of the term "racism" allows the real racists to escape the contempt they fully deserve.