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I am a regular at another board, a knitting one, that until recently has been very polite and nice, even about politics. In fact, we've even discussed the election with people all over the political map very nicely with no fights.
Well, someone started a thread about those poor Russian kids being held in that hellish hostage situation in North Ossetia. I was concerned about a couple of very nasty anti-Muslim comments and decided to just post a quick history of Chechnya to explain why Chechens are pissed at Russians and have resorted to acts of terror. One of the other regulars instantly attacked me, saying that all Chechen terrorists are Sunnis and therefore all Muslim extremists (regardless of the independence issue). She also said they deserved getting sent to the gulags by Stalin because of their deal with Hitler in WWII, since it was Hitler, and now they deserve to get wiped out for what they're doing. I explained that I'm not a Chechen sympathizer, that I'm Russian Orthodox and have a really hard time with violence of any kind, and that I just didn't think simply lumping everyone together was going to help anyone. Then, she started another thread elsewhere on the board about the ignore feature, obviously referring to what was going on in our thread and my posts.
What really got me today was that she posted a link to site monitoring the crisis filled with hate toward all separatists of Muslim faith in Russia. I mean, people were saying to nuke Chechnya to end everything, kill all Muslims, build concentration camps and fill them up fast, crap like that. What those terrorists are doing is wrong by any standard, but is that the way we should respond? Has it ever worked before? Stalin tried that, and look at what's happening now.
I'm taking a break from that board (hard to do, considering how much I'm there), but what should I do when I calm down? How should I handle this?
Thank you.
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