• TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Afeef Nessouli

        “I’m a Lebanese-American Muslim who is gay.

        “From that, I have a lot of experience going to Lebanon and experiencing war. “In 1998, I was there when one of the sonic booms was above the sports stadium.

        “I remember that just because it was so traumatising as a child to hear bombs, even though in 2006 there were way more experiences and it was way more horrifying, for some reason, the 1998 experience when I was 11 was really, really traumatising.

        “I think these experiences set me up for always really being interested in the Middle East as just a place of complexity and competing interests, narratives that feel different than my experiences.”

        Source

          • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            How is this article about the Lebanese community gaining “white” status in the Jim Crow south relevant in order to become a naturalized citizen relevant to our discussion.

            It is infinitely infuriating when some middling engagement with the material presents a loose keyword match of the topic at hand masquerading it as something relevant worthy of a “gotcha ya” moment. Citing this article in this context is a waste of everyone’s time when the whole of your argument is “Lebanese people are white”. It didn’t matter to to racists then and it doesn’t now.

            Nou’la had immigrated with his wife Fannie from Zahleh to Valdosta, Georgia around 1906. They decided to move to Lake City, Florida in 1926 after N’oula was flogged by the local KKK chapter, and after several run-ins with the law in Valdosta. Unfortunately for the family, problems with the law persisted in Lake City, and came to a head when the Sheriff and his deputies shot Fannie to death over an altercation at the Lebanese couple’s store. They then placed N’oula in jail where later that night a mob dragged him out and killed him.

            This happened in 1929. They were declared “free white men” in 1913.

  • BaroqueInMind@piefed.social
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    11 months ago

    And nothing will be done to stop this tragedy.

    The left are filled with toothless pacifist pussies impotently waving signs while waggling their fingers uselessly at openly aggressive fascists, and the right are filled with wealthy cartoon villains exploiting people openly with zero consequences.

      • BaroqueInMind@piefed.social
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        11 months ago

        I’m really tempted to say your mother right now, but also seriously nothing because it’s an entire fucking culture of people leveraging all the resources of their whole nation-state perpetrating this on the other side of the planet so you and I are actually powerless.

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          “All the impotent left do is protest” he says while admitting to feeling too impotent to even protest.

          Sounds like you need to work up to at least “protesting in the face of overwhelming opposition” before you chastise the protestors for not doing even more in the face of overwhelming opposition.

          • BaroqueInMind@piefed.social
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            11 months ago

            Fair enough. I’ll go out an join the finger waggling (serious) and wave signs and chant. That’s all I can do though, is support the movement. You got me with facing the opposition, because that sounds brave and i respect it.