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Old 2nd June 2017, 11:53 AM   #68
baron
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Join Date: Dec 2006
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Originally Posted by Pterodactyl View Post
If you go back to my original post on the topic, I pretty clearly prefaced it by saying this was just my opinion. I didn't say it was an established fact. I don't believe there is data to support the idea one way or another, but anecdotally speaking, I know it to be a factor in at least a couple of cases.
It's definitely a thing, it's related to the reason why over half a million ostensibly decent people voted for the BNP (an openly racist party of parochial incompetents) in the 2010 UK general election. They were concerned about immigration and what they perceived as a relegation to second-class citizenship, but every time they spoke out about it they were called racists and bigots. The main parties ignored the issue and so the voters felt pushed into taking extreme action, i.e. voting for the BNP. Happily it made little difference in the UK but in other European countries it has led to an exponential rise of the far right. Now clearly these are bigger topics than a bunch of racists and lunatics on a campus, and not directly comparable, but it is this sense of racial and national unfairness that, if elevated beyond a certain threshold, can cause people to over-compensate in their political leanings.
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