Thursday, July 14, 2016

BLM Toronto Co-Founder Detects Hidden Hate In "Hijacked"

In an interview in Maclean's, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto leaps at the chance to play linguist:
Q: How do you respond to people who say BLM “bullied” Pride or “hijacked” the parade? 
A: We really need to interrogate the language being used. When we use language like that it suggests that we have some kind of social, systemic, and structural power. We’re a group of marginalized people coming together fighting against the police, fighting against a not-for-profit that provides governance for one of the largest Pride celebrations in the world. That manoeuvres over a million people. So when we say this is the group, I don’t think that’s in alignment with what bullying is or what bullying looks like, I really don’t. I think when people are fighting because we have been marginalized, because we have been brutalized and we’re actually standing up for ourselves, and people use a word like “bullied,” that’s anti-black racism to suggest that. When people are using the word “hijacked,” I think it really reflects that, because we have Muslim people on our team, how quickly we’re falling into anti-Islamic sentiment. 
Q: You think “hijack” is a reference to the Islamic people on your team? 
A: Oh, absolutely it is. I think there’s an investment with rtain people to frame us as the type of organization that has the type of power to incite change in a particular way that we could have the power to hijack something so large.
I had no idea there were Muslims on her team. I highly doubt that most of those who used the word "hijacked" did either. But if you're as heavily invested in the victimhood narrative as this BLMer is, you're more likely to misinterpret these sorts of things.

And sometimes "hijacked" just means "hijacked".

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