"Yes, but they can only be interpreted as an over-representation."
I think it's time we put a stop to this hate campaign ourselves
When the moderator said "don't feed the troll", this is exactly what we are doin by responding t this behaviour.
We should really know better, after all, it's not as if it hasn't happened before.
Keith started his hate crusade back on the Muslim thread - he took the behaviour of a handful of criminals who happened to be Muslims, deliberately misused a term that had appeared in the press, "over-representation", and applied the actions of those handful of criminals to claim they represented the culture of the Muslim People of Britain, a million and a half of them - he even went as far as to invent a "cultural implant" to cast suspicion on the entire Muslim community.
He has maintained that stance since, though he has invented a secret army of "witnesses" (who he refuses to quote", who, he claims, put the idea into his head.
AS far as I am concerned, that is pretty extreme stuff.
The last time anybody went so far as to publicly make a cultural link to a serious crime wa when the Nazis came up with cultural theories about the Jews - we know the outcome of that one only too well.
Not long after this, we got into an argument about the Irish Famine, in the course of which a historian was produced who had explained that, after Independence the new Irish State revised its education system to include the parts of history that had been omitted from the schools under the centuries of British rule - that of the Irish people who acted independently from the behavior imposed by the British controlled administration and had fought for self expression and self - government, the blossoming of Irish literature a movement now referred to in Ireland as 'The Irish Renaissance'.
Keith leaped on the explanation (by historian, Christine Kinealy) and transformed it into "brainwashing" - all of a sudden we had an entire young population of Irish schoolchildren who had been "brainwashed to hate the British", though Keith as never at any time able to explain how that "hatred manifested itself - the Irish, in general, don't "hate" anybody, (though they do have Keith's problem with Travellers that they have recently taken serious steps to rectify).
Now he's started seriously on Travellers.
He has taken the criminal behaviour of a minute number of criminals who happen to be Travellers, has picked up a term used by the press, slave-like conditions", and invented a "massive over-representation of slave-owning within the Travelling community"
Nobody, not even in the sewer-press, has ever made such a claim - this is entirely out of Keith's sick mind.
The incident is now a thing of the past, the press and society in general has forgotten the incident and it is remembered only as the act of a few criminals.
Keith has taken to it like a duck (or should that be a leech) to water and is now using it to denigrate and smear an entire community who really do have enough problems to cope with.
It is only a matter of time before he comes up with another "cultural implant" theory to back his claims
I think our moderator is right - by "feeding the troll" we are giving him the soapbox he needs to spread his hate and distrust.
I detested Margaret Thatcher every bit as much as a detest people who deliberately spread cultural and racial hatred and fear, but her saying "oxygen of publicity" is a very useful one.
Please, let's STOP FEEDING THE TROLL.
Jim Carroll
I have little doubt that this will be passed off as "lies" and "a personal attack", but every single word I have written is verifiable and tucked away in varios parts of the archive of this forum.