I shared a Paul Joseph Watson article on Facebook entitled, “Twitter Says Telling the Truth About the Refugee Crisis is “Hateful Conduct”. PJW added to his article when he posted it to Facebook: “I joked about how a “refugee” boat didn’t contain any women or children. Twitter said it was “hateful conduct” and possibly illegal. Yes, really.”
In reply to this article and comment I shared to my wall by PJW, a pastor from my denomination (LC-MS), replied:
“We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body but help and support him in every physical need.” and “We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.” I’m going to believe a boat of refugees full of adult men are in fact refugees fleeing war, and that Twitter might be onto something.”
Engaging with someone else who replied to his comment, he added:
” I question anything posted in Infowars to be factual. It’s not illegal to say something mean or wrong. I do think Christians should remember they have a responsibility to put the best construction on their neighbor, especially as it relates to “the least of these.”
The following is my reply to him and anyone else who would like to give me feedback to my thoughts on why I shared the PJW article:
Thanks for sharing your word of caution. I certainly consider it and take it to heart. I do not like the sarcasm with this Paul Joseph Watson post, and I rarely share his videos due to his demeanor and language. I almost didn’t share this article for that reason, but I’d like for you to consider why I did share it, and I welcome your feedback.
When you read the article that is linked, you can see that he said he posted with sarcasm as an attempt to shield this post from the Twitter thought police. Directly stating the facts that none of the refugees on that boat were women or children and that none of them are from Syria would have blatantly been censored as hateful conduct. Even masking the truth of his post with sarcasm got caught and censored. That explanation helped me go ahead and hit share despite the sarcasm, because I did like the points that followed the opening explanation of the sarcasm.
There is a link in the article I shared to a New York Times post that “Social media giants including Facebook and Twitter are not doing enough to curb hate speech on their platforms and could face fines of up to $53 million if they do not strengthen their efforts to delete illegal posts, a German government minister said on Tuesday.”
The problem has become though that just speaking out against the migrant situation in many European countries is deemed hate speech. For instance, the Daily Wire just posted today about a 70 year old woman in Sweden who is being charged with hate crime for posting on Facebook that migrants are burning cars and defecating in the streets. That’s a hate crime for posting that, and she’s facing up to four years in prison for that. Rapist in America don’t even come close to serving that amount of time for their crimes – think Brock Turner. This 70 year old lady is getting the book thrown at her for simply reporting what is occurring in Sweden. Here’s a link to the article, and I would hope you would trust the Daily Wire with the NeverTrumper, Ben Shapiro working for the Wire and being the person I saw who shared this article, “Woman, 70, Says Migrants Defecate in the Streets and Set Cars on Fire. Cops Charge Her With a Hate Crime.” Now check out the details of the last few paragraphs and you’ll get a sense of what is going on the Muslim “no go” zones of Sweden. The bulk of it can be found in video on Youtube, easily!
In our own country, from Patheos just a couple of days ago there was a post about a student reporter at Portland State University who was fired for sharing video of a Muslim explaining death for apostates under sharia law on Twitter. The video was recorded at a Q and A interfaith panel in which a Muslim on the panel shared that killing non-Muslims “only applied in countries governed by Islamic law, but in those countries, “you’re given the liberty to leave the country.” The students had the following to say to defend his posts:
“In my defense, I told the two editors that I had simply been relating the speaker’s words. While dozens of Muslim states do not consider apostasy or blasphemy a crime, 13 Muslim-majority countries punish these actions with death. The speaker was admitting as much, and as someone who has covered the persecution of atheists and apostates in Muslim countries, I considered that newsworthy.”
Here’s the link to that article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/05/12/student-reporter-fired-for-sharing-video-of-muslim-explaining-death-for-apostates-under-sharia-law/
The level at which speaking out against the thugs on the Left brings hate upon the speaker has reached high levels. For example, watch this video of a guy simply holding a sign that says, “The Right to Openly Discuss Ideas Must be Defended.” That’s all the sign says. He likely held it up at some sort of SJW protest or gathering, otherwise I have no idea how so many people railed against him calling him nazi scum and swearing at him, surrounding him and trying to physically rip the sign from him. They won’t discuss ideas with him. They only yell at him to shut him up. He is calm and composed and not yelling back. This is the direction we are headed even in America (the accents don’t seem American in this video), if you have followed any of the Antifa riots this year. Watch and be shocked, and I saw this video posted by Paul Joseph Watson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81k93Guu-Oc
These few examples show how speaking out against anything related to illegal migrants and the impact of the many illegal Muslims in Europe (or any other SJW agenda) gets shut down hard and fast, by social media bans, sometimes by fines, sometimes by jail time, sometimes by violence. It is these offenses that I shared the post to bring awareness to the movement to censure free speech, a part of what I see as fitting as defending my neighbor.
The defense also comes with raising awareness of how bad things are in Europe right now and how we could very well be going that direction ourselves. Speaking for the good and defense of my neighbor is the point here and abroad is the point I had with the post I have shared. Once legal migrants or refugees are in my community, I will certainly respond to the call to help them and support them with their transition. If someone is in my community illegally and I know this, the best thing for me to do is to encourage that neighbor to get the proper credentials to be here legally. In China, our local church encouraged a man from Nigeria to return back to Nigeria instead of stay in China against the law of the authorities that God put in place in China. We helped him get a plane ticket back to Nigeria and we had church members escort him to the airport to ensure that he boarded the plane. He stayed in my apartment for about a week. I didn’t know he was in the country illegally at first when I let him stay; I just heard he needed a place to stay and some financial support. Our church’s leader was from Nigeria. It was really his play to send him back and to do what was right, coming to China with a proper visa.
As to the post I shared and the status of these men on the boat getting the ride to Italy, the article stated:
“According to the Institute for the Analysis of Multiethnicity (Ismu), 85% of asylum requests in Italy are from men, with only 4% from minors. Only 2.65% of those immigrating into Italy were awarded asylum status as refugees.
The UNHCR’s own data shows that, “Nigerians make up nearly a fifth of the arrivals in Italy, followed by the nationals of Eritrea at 13 per cent and then Sudan, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Somalia, Mali, Senegal and Bangladesh,” again emphasizing how the “refugees” are not even from Libya, they’re arriving from countries that are not at war.” (https://www.infowars.com/twitter-says-telling-the-truth-about-the-refugee-crisis-is-hateful-conduct/)
Did you read that before making your post to me? The “refugees” arriving to Italy from Libya are not even from countries at war. The bulk of them are from men, with only 15% being women and children applying for asylum. Only 2.65% immigrating to Italy are awarded asylum status as refugees!
The article also stated:
“Although pro-migrant institutions have claimed that the majority of migrants entering Europe are women and children, the deluge of video evidence suggests otherwise.”
I have followed this situation for a couple of years now and the video footage in Europe is really bad! It’s really bad at border crossings where semi-trucks are slowed crossing country lines. Check this video out, just one of many of this kind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOkRfYHYJU8
If you want to understand better as to who these men are on the boats in the video that Paul Joseph Watson shared, you can check out the Spector link PJW put in the article that I shared: https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/are-we-helping-desperate-migrants-or-just-people-smugglers/ It’s not from InfoWars, so maybe you’ll trust it. Here is its opening paragraphs that explain the situation:
“What is happening in the 300-mile stretch of sea between Sicily and Libya, day in and day out — in other words, what ‘we’ are doing there — is beyond reasonable doubt insane.
A sane person would assume that the 181,436 migrants (a new record) who made it by sea to Italy last year had done so under their own steam in flimsy fishing boats and dinghies at least some of the way across the Mediterranean. This, after all, is the message aid agencies and governments put out.
In fact, every one of those 181,436 was picked up by EU and non-government aid-agency vessels off the Libyan coast just outside the 12-mile territorial limit, then ferried across to Europe. The people-smuggler boats — more often than not these days dangerously unseaworthy rubber dinghies — chug out towards the 12-mile limit, send out a distress signal, and Bob’s your uncle.
Nearly all the migrants arriving in Italy are young men from West Africa, not refugees. They have the cash for a ticket on a smuggler boat (€1,500, give or take) so are not destitute. That’s getting on for £300 million in ticket sales last year. West African migrants are big business.”
And because of this nice EU service of complimentary boat rides into Italy, 250,000 more migrant boat people are expected this year.
The Express, again not InfoWars, but it was linked in the article I shared, states:
“EU officials said the vast majority of migrants who reach Europe turn out to be ineligible for asylum and will be sent back though they acknowledged deportations often proved difficult in practice.”
Many of these people inevitably end up filtering through Europe and remaining illegally.
Virtually all of this information was in the article I shared with plenty of links to sources other than InfoWars, most of the sources being from UK news agencies.
After reading all of this and checking out the links, do you really think these men on the boat are refugees? Do you really think Italy, and other EU nations, being flooded by these migrants, many of whom are Muslims, is a good thing? Do some searches on the number of Islamic terrorists attacks in Europe over the past couple of years? How many of them stem from people who entered as “refugees”?
I see the post I shared as largely being a way of speaking out for my neighbor and to raise awareness against the ills of illegal immigration that comes under the guise of refugees. Sin is lawlessness. The bulk of the migrants just showing up in Italy right now under the guise of asylum seekers is lawlessness, if only a little under 3% are actually qualified for this status and are coming from non-war countries, and are getting there by paying a smuggler boat to get them far enough out to sea to get a free EU ride into the country. Could you imagine a country the size of Italy being swamped with almost 200,000 of these migrants a year and growing with many of them not having an official reason they should be there. How do you deport that many people? How do they assimilate? What do you do with that great of a disproportionate amount of men being added to a society? What do you do if the bulk of them are Muslim and this is a form of jihad? Do you bury your head in the sand and say I have no right to question their legitimacy of being refugees or question the limiting of the free speech of those who do ask such questions? What would loving my neighbor look like in this situation? Do I want my immediate neighbors in my own country to know we shouldn’t fall for a situation that will produce such a state in America like what we see in the EU right now? And do we know that we already have millions upon millions of people living in our country illegally? That’s lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin, and the right thing to do as a loving concerned neighbor is call sin what it is and not support it and protect it.
Andy Wrasman 