Fair enough

Jamie, I was trying to nice and solve an issue that doesn't really end well. I completely agree with trip and given our past, I thought that locking of the thread would be a suitable ending.

And sorry Jamie, with no "thread" and "reply" feature under profile theres not a chance in hell I'm going back manually to find examples

I thought about contributing earlier, to express my dismay at the appalling behaviour of the "neo-nazis" and their racism with their protest.
I'm now posting to support HR's request that participants calm down and act like responsible adults, partly because it's an opportunity for me to be at my obsequious best around a Mighty Mod, but also because he makes a valid suggestion.

@ Jamiet99uk, you did get a bit free and easy with the F**ks, and even if you were provoked your responses did not, in my opinion, bring you much credit.

@_trip in my opinion your initial comment that Jamiet99uk had belittled the Holocaust victims ( and presumably survivors ) was an exaggeration, and an unfair exaggeration.
The title of the thread simply says " Yellow Star.....or close enough "
I'd suggest that the " or close enough " statement clearly implies that no exactly the same claim is being made and that "Yellow Star" is a simile, a metaphor you cork brained clown. In my opinion you chose to provoke Jamiet99uk with the way you chose to express yourself, a deliberate and premeditated provocation, so i might suggest that you show some small disrespect to those you declare to protect.
And then the whole thing spiralled badly.

References to the Holocaust, the scapegoating of the Jews by the Nazis are commonly used as similies, as metaphors. They're not something I'm always comfortable about, but they are common practice. I have, as some may be well aware, some sensitivities and idiosyncrasies with regard to "nazi" slurs and insults, and purported "jokes" that have a "nazi" component. But I have to also be pragmatic ( so I'm not holding my breath on getting an apology from a certain clerical clown for an unrelated incident )

So when I read the thread title "Yellow Star...or close enough" I wasn't happy to be reminded of the Holocaust tragedy, for personal reasons, but realised immediately that one of the well known symbols, the yellow star, was being used as a metaphor. When I read about the neo Nazis and their linking of the Nazi leader, the mass murderer Hitler, to the current refugee problems I thought the use of the yellow star metaphor reasonable, even if I would perhaps preferred some alternative title for the thread.

Mad old MM, the peacemaker, along with the Cheese makers I can look forward with anticipation to an interesting inheritance.

Whether it was an accurate metaphor is debatable, but if you wish to discuss that, then it should be done carefully I'd suggest, and it's a "side issue" when compared to the other far more significant issues related to the global refugee crisis

@trip and others who have taken offence at Jamie drawing the comparison - this sentence from trip is key "but to compare a bracelet that asylum seekers are forced to wear so they can receive free food, to Nazis forcing Jews to wear yellow stars BEFORE systematically starving, torturing and murdering them, is ridiculous and insulting." [My emphasis on the word 'before'.] The point surely is that the Nazis didn't suddenly wake up and put the Jews into concentration camps. They had years of de-humanizing people and tried to garner the support of the population to be anti-Jewish. I'm not claiming that asking people to wear red wrist-bands is going to lead to concentration camps, only that if we allow authorities to de-humanise people then we go down paths that we really shouldn't be going down again. The Yellow Stars should have taught us all something and we should be willing to learn that lesson and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

If trip and others are genuinely aggrieved, and I accept that they are, then that is still a price worth paying to remind people of the Yellow Star history and what it led to.

The Yellow Star was nothing new to Nazis btw, forcing Jews to be readily identifyable dates back to the 13th Century.

Thank you, MM and Maniac.

I apologise I got so angry, but I didn't much like being the subject of a fairly nasty personal attack aimed at de-railing the discussion of an issue that seems important to me.

=====

I started a thread about the poor treatment of refugees in the UK. I referenced the fact that they are being forced to wear a brightly coloured symbol that marks them out as foreign, "not one of us". The article reported that this was causing them to be the victims of racist taunting and abuse. And yes, in the OP, I referenced another time when a particular group were treated as "not one of us" and made to wear coloured symbols.

We then went on to discuss a worrying incident of Neo-Nazis parading through the streets, in the UK, in 2016, carrying anti-refugee banners and a huge picture of Adolf Hitler. I declare how troubled I am by this scene.

Then suddenly I'm basically accused of being an anti-Semite.

Really?

It wasn't aimed at derailing any discussion, it was a valid, if unnecessarily nasty point about the hyperbole in your title

As to Maniac's point, which misses the actual point. No the Nazis didn't wake up one day and send jews to the concentration camps, but the circumstances behind the star was a state with a clear philosophy of racial othering, marking racial undesirables and enemies with a star or triangle etc. purposefully singling them out for scorn, mistreatment etc. THIS IS NOT THAT. This is not close to that, the fact suggest so is nothing but pure hyperbole.

And to suggest that trip "derailed the conversation" is stupid, what is the discussion? Everyone agrees that this is bad, the only point made by the OP is that this is analogous to Nazi Gerany on some level, and the answer, which is completely on topic, is despite on the most shallow levels, no it isn't.

Sorry pointing that out sent you into a tailspin Jamiet

Maniac: "The point surely is that...."

That may the point to you, and you're entitled to believe what you like, but that was not my point.

There's really no reason to rehash what happened yesterday. I made my point. Jamie disagrees. Let's move on.

@ santa - you are red wristbands are not yellow stars and i'm sure the agency/govt didnt mean to dehumanise them, but they did feel targeted and could have been singled out by right-wing bigots. jamie used the yellow-star as a comparitor, no comparitor is (or is even meant to be) exactly the same. i think his drawing attention to the two things is fair

Sure, and "comparators" can be insensitive, shallow, and stupid, and this was in my mind.

First I should state that I simply don't know enough of the specifics regarding the particular refugees and their treatment.
But let me suggest this, an under resourced beureaucracy faced with a multitude of demands and tasks in delivering services to refugees most without documents needed for identification etc makes a hasty decision that appears pragmatic, give group x red wristbands that allows them to access services, it's cheaper and quicker than photo ID cards. It's done without malice, with good intentions.
It's possibly your classic bureaucratic clumsy well intentioned decision. I don't see that as an unforgivable mistake.

What I do see as disturbing are the actions of the neo-nazis and the vilification of refugees. And perhaps it is the actions of those who misuse/ abuse the red wristbands to identify individuals to make them targets of hostility and abuse that is of more concern than the red wristbands themselves.
A dictatorship can impose a symbol for discrimination, but it requires the cooperation of the population to enforce that discrimination.

And in a democracy like the UK, the coloured wristbands can have been used with good intentions, but then be misused by persons with bad, hostile to refugees intentions