Argue About Waleed Aly’s Monologue On Being Kind To Bigots In 3, 2, 1…

By

Ben McLeay

Published

The man infamous for consistently nailing the zeitgeist on social issues has caused some uncharacteristic controversy tonight on ‘The Project‘, urging forgiveness for the racists and bigots driving the push against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks.

Waleed Aly talked about how the sort of extreme reactions to recent events like those voiced by Sonia Kruger and Pauline Hanson, are the product of fear and how reacting with hostility to these opinions just drives them to being more extreme.
He presented the options we have as destruction (telling them to get fucked) and construction (treating them with patience and forgiveness):
“When we’re presented with an outrageous opinion we’re actually presented with two options: destruction or construction.” 

“We can react emotionally and carelessly and with little genuine critical thought and we can destroy a perceived enemy in the hope it will neutralise a perceived threat that’s making us feel unsafe, that’s the destructive option.”

“Or, we can do something that’s much more difficult than that, when we’re presented with something we perceive to be an outrageous opinion we can consider what motivated that person, try to understand their fear and then empathise with how they came to that conclusion.”
You can watch the full video here:
That seems all well and good, if a bit simplistic, but people are not happy with what they consider to be ‘tone policing’ – essentially telling people who have been grievously wronged how they should go about expressing their anger over being wronged.
While, as a Muslim himself, Aly is in a relatively good position to talk about responding to Islamophobia, it does seem a little naff to be telling people to treat bigots in positions of power and influence with tolerance when they are actively causing damage.
Some folks were not at all chuffed:

If anything he should be taken to task for #SendForgivenessViral, the worst hashtag of all time. It’s a bit rich for a program that gets its lifeblood from outrage to be outraged at outrage, but let’s see if it magically works.
Photo: Facebook.

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