A brief commentary on power, serving communities, and communities

In this week’s coming news post, one link is to an article describing an appalling abuse of power by police in Ireland, who silenced a family who wished their sons attack be made public - see here (from Medium). The police even had the gall to misdescribe their actions as respect for the victim! 

This is, IMO, either blatant homophobia or such gross professional incompetence and dereliction of duty that those responsible should be immediately sacked. 

This act does NOT promote peace or justice - it actually provides a tacit form of encouragement for haters. 

Even if there were no homophobia in this, this egregious violence would be unacceptable - and yet the police have come perilously close to covering it up. They have not even charged the attackers. 

This is shades of the old attitudes towards domestic violence, where it was treated dismissively, and with an automatic misogynistic bias against the woman. 

Has this problematic attitude continued in the Irish police because of the influence of the neochristian catholic cult? 

In any case, it may show the need to ensure the coercive organs of the state are changed to reflect current LAWS and community attitudes - and the outrage to this vile attack shows the police are out of the step with the community they are supposed to be serving. 

Note that: the  police  serve  the  community - not the community has to accept outdated bigotries of the police. 

A better example of serving community is the honest assessment (from the ABC - see also here, from The New Daily) of right wing extremists made by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) this week to a Senate estimates hearing. 

The ASIO Director-General’s evidence, as reported in the article, included the following: 

• right-wing terror threats make up roughly 30 per cent of ASIO's current counter-t_____ caseload, and religiously-motivated extremism takes up the other 70 per cent; 
• while the demonstrations are becoming more brazen, they are primarily aimed at driving recruitment, and do not necessarily indicate a growing terror threat from neo_n___ groups: “It's a sign that those groups are more emboldened to come out publicly, to push what they believe in and recruit to their cause”; 
• the greatest threat of a terror attack comes from an individual acting alone: “in the case of the neo-n___ groups, what we worry about the most is people who join a group, or get drawn into that ideology, and are not satisfied there is no action and go off and do it themselves”; 
• when asked why only three of the 29 “listed” terror organisations are right-wing groups, given the 70-30 split, the Director-General responded: “To be listed, that group has to actually promote and advocate acts of terrorism. So it's a high penalty with a high threshold, if you don't cross that threshold you don't get penalised and listed. And the reason we are where we are is those (listed) groups have actually pushed and advocated for acts of terrorism, where other groups are sadly smarter and don't do that publicly”; and 
• the Director-General also commented “Threats to security are well-defined, it's not unlawful for people to have a neo-n___ ideology in this country”.
  

So action against these right wing extremists needs to be political, including legislative actions such as giving targetted groups anti-vilification protection and banning the most egregious triggers.

Community actions and attitudes may also be significant. A recent opinion piece on The Guardian website is titled: 

“People have been asking why there are so many Nazis in Melbourne. But a better question is why are there so few? If the authorities won’t stand up to fascists, ordinary people must be prepared to come out in numbers”

It’s a thoughtful article, and well worth a read. I’m not going to summarise the key points, except to comment that it is well aware of the dangers of street violence, which I wrote about here recently, and to say the 3^rd last and 2^nd last paragraphs are excellent, and should be read - especially by the police in Ireland (who should also perhaps read this).

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.