“What do people think of this?”
In an effort to show just how quickly and senselessly hate groups rush to spread their beliefs, a Facebook user named Johan Slåttavik posted a photo on the anti-immigration Fedrelandet viktigst (“Fatherland first”) Facebook page.
The photo below shows nothing more than empty seats on a bus. But the hate group quickly saw what they “wanted” to see: Muslim women in burqas.
The responses are almost exclusively in Norwegian, but you hardly need a linguistics degree to ascertain the meaning behind the puking emoji. The website Local translated one response to “It looks really scary, should be banned. You can never know who is under there. Could be terrorists with weapons.”
The prank comes amid a proposed Norwegian law that would ban certain types of Muslim clothing in public institutions, such as schools and universities and increasingly anti-immigration sentiment.
While that debate continues in Norway, one response offered a simple takeaway from the joke.
“Then it is proven: The meanest are also the stupidest.”
Interviewed subsequently, the prankster himself, Slattivak, said he learned a lot from the joke. “I would say that has also been educational,” he said. “I have thought about the differences between legitimate criticism of immigration to Europe and blind racism and xenophobia. I wanted to look into these differences: something I think I have achieved by setting up this practical joke and watching the reactions.”
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