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+--- Thread: GP candidate nixed by religious selection (filter out maladaptive speech variants) (/thread-7601.html)
GP candidate nixed by religious selection (filter out maladaptive speech variants) - C C - Sep 13, 2019
https://globalnews.ca/news/5893499/green-party-pig-carcass/
INTRO: The Green Party‘s federal candidate in the Ontario riding of Simcoe North has resigned after coming under fire over a 2007 Facebook post in which he appeared to suggest he wanted to mail pieces of a pig carcass to Muslims. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, the [non-local] Green Party said Schomann had stepped down and would no longer be running for the party. “Today the Green Party of Canada accepted Erik Schomann’s resignation as a candidate in Simcoe North,” said the party in a statement.“The Green Party has zero tolerance for sexism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia or hate speech of any kind.” (MORE)
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Schomann's facetious remark (posted in 2007) was “we sent the left-overs to Denmark in support of the protesters of the Muhammed comic.” A reference to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy back in 2005.
A Canadian Conversative candidate in Manitoba was also negated by his party for social media posts that included direct Islamophobic remarks. He initially got through the vetting procedures by deleting or deactivating his secondary Facebook account. But he was caught by a social democratic think tank rather than a religious support council complaining.
Too bad it wasn't Christians that Schomann perturbed with an insensitive remark from the remote past. He might instead have received indifference or even glowing commendations from his Green Party colleagues. (Elizabeth May supressed --> Harris, Dawkins RL view --> More general free speech issue here rather than specifically the RL label: Harris ... youtube - audio file)
OTOH, in the years since 2007, the activity of extremist groups sending pig parts has accelerated, as well as a pig's head left at a mosque prior to Quebec City Mosque Shootings. So what may have seemed "lightweight" and tongue-in-cheek back then thereby receives a more serious retroactive judgment from the context of today.
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https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/09/12/green-party-candidate-for-simcoe-north-resigns-over-islamophobic-facebook-post-from-2007.html
EXCERPT: . . . Schomann said he grew up with many Muslims in his early childhood spent in Pakistan and Muslim parts of Nigeria in the 1980s and 90s. “The last thing I would want to do is harm them in any way,” he said. “I said a stupid thing.”
[...] Schomann’s March 2007 post shows a photo of him roasting a pig with a caption saying he would send the leftovers “to Denmark in support of the protesters of the Muhammed comic” — a reference to the violent backlash to a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish cartoons of the prophet Muhammed.
[...] In a statement, the [local] Simcoe North Green Party association defended Schomann, saying it is “devastated” to lose him as a candidate and that the consequences of the post are “out of proportion to the offense and are detrimental to our democracy. His one post on social media is an anomaly he has never repeated. He has lived and worked in Muslim regions of several countries and has the respect and admiration of his Muslim students. We fully believe that he is not Islamophobic.” [...]