Atheists & Agnostics

This particular bit is like arguing about whether or not Hitler was a fucking Christian as if a contrary result would somehow make the mass of Nazis become a bunch of godless heathens. These people are explicitly trying to incite a greater degree of conflict between the Christian west and the Muslim world. And most of the people pushing that are Christian. And Muslim.

As for being insulting, I was just responding in kind. I *am* being insulting. I don't deny that, or feel bad about it. The difference is, well, the usual. I was incited. I didn't do the inciting. And yes, that matters.

As for "victims...." I guess we can stretch that one out if you really insist. The majority of people at the event were "intended victims" of an outcome that had a real likelihood of happening, but a very low probability of actually harming them. In risk-assessment terms, the hazards were potentially high (hey, what if the terrorists had a nuke!!!!!11) but the risks were pretty fucking low. The ongoing risks for Geller and Wilders are likely to remain fairly high. So they're fairly brave bigots, it's true. I don't give a fuck that they're brave. But it's true anyway.

But to go from "intended victims" in your fairly-broad sense of "victim" to "the poor innocents who could never have anticipated this likely thing that benefits them" is, yes, fucking willfully dense. Yes, I have *knowledge* that this was in fact a trap. They knew what their bait might bring. They were prepared for what their bait might bring. And what the bait was most likely to bring would benefit their cause. They were aware of all of that. I don't give a fuck whether they had other motives too. I'm sure they did. But none of that takes away from the very, very simple, obvious, well-evidenced, rational and really, really real reality that this was, among other things, a fucking trap.

Now, being a trap isn't necessarily a bad thing. Selma was a trap for violent bigots too. They knew what was possible, and knew that their cause could benefit from that likely outcome. In both cases, the "intended victims" used violence to achieve their goals. Violence they incited against themselves. What sets them apart is the value of their respective causes. And the fact that the right-wing fuckwits knew the violence was very likely to be contained away from themselves by police protection.