Who are the terrorists?

I keep reading about people with brown skin being threatened with beheadings.

Places of worship being defaced with threatening messages.

Heck. I could go on and on, but someone has already written something about the things that have happened just this week.

I can't help but think the definition is exactly what our politicians, our media, and many people (the guy who went into the islamic school with a machete today?) are doing.

So ban the burqa? Fit in? Is that the message? How can people we refuse to accept into our society fit into it? I somehow get the feeling the kiwi guy threatened with being beheaded on the Gold Coast wasn't wearing a burqa.

A famous person was once quoted as saying, "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

I have no doubt our politicians have heard this quote and base their policies off it. John Howard created a climate of fear around asylum seekers. It helped him get reelected. Kevin Rudd could have reversed this, but hey, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so he used the same technique. Now Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, when they're not blaming Labor for everything, are helping to increase the fear. Asylum seekers are now being sent to Cambodia. Basic rights for refugees written by the UN are being removed from our laws to allow us to do this. The government is using this fear to pass laws that remove freedoms from Australians.

The most disturbing part for me is that in 2014 our politicians are taking inspiration from the Nazis of 1940. Hermann Goering said this at the Nuremberg Trials.

Don't get me wrong. The Daesh are bad sorts. And yes, some guy DID whip out a knife and stab police. But how did some teenager get to that point?

Was he abused? Was he singled out because of his skin colour and his religion? Was he persecuted? Was his family?

Anyhow, I saw this photo by Mark Brunner today.

At a KKK rally in 1996, a white supremacist ended up in the cordoned off area with the protesters. Wearing a confederate flag and an SS tattoo, he was chased and knocked to the ground where he was kicked and beaten, until a young girl, Keisha Thomas, risked her own safety and threw herself on top of him to protect him.

A few months later a man thanked her. Not the man she saved, but his son.

Now I ask the question. If she had joined the mob, or if she had stood idly by and he had been beaten and even killed, what would that have done to his son? Would he be another hate filled, angry person?

Is our society creating a threat from within by its behaviour?

Martin Luther King said it best.

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.