Eric Brazau, a notorious protester sentenced to nine months in jail for willfully promoting hatred against Muslims and criminally harassing a Muslim man and his family in 2014, is now running a controversial website and Facebook page under the name FightIsl
Eric Brazau, a notorious protester who was sentenced to nine months in jail for willfully promoting hatred against Muslims and criminally harassing a Muslim man and his family in 2014, is now running a controversial website and Facebook page under the name "FightIslamophobia.ca."
On the page, Mr. Brazau, a "self-described reformed Islamophobe" puts on a show depicting himself as a Muslim man taking on Islamaphobia.
One of his most popular videos, entitled "Islamic Party Policy on Transgender and more," has roughly 80,000 views and 1,600 shares on Facebook.
While I personally have no problem with individuals continuing their right to free speech even it offends others, I do have a problem with the methods used by Mr. Brazau to "stop Islamophobia" through what seems like satire in bad faith.
In today's culture, most individuals only consume a small portion of the content posted, and in most cases do not even finish it.
On top of this, it seems most if not all individuals are not able to tell what is the truth, and what is just repeated.
In combination, that is extremely worrying, given that there is zero explanation that the project taken on by Mr. Brazau is satire.
Most individuals will likely follow the video just long enough to assume that this is a genuine Muslim individual reading out their personal beliefs.
If Mr. Brazau is truly a "reformed-Islamaphobe" I would hope that he takes more responsibility in the content he produces, by declaring the content as satire clearly, as this is a problem which is actually becoming more evident with each video.
Early on for example, the character portrayed by Mr. Brazau would portray alcohol bottles labeled "water."
The most recent ones? Don't even contain that.
Furthermore, at this moment, the organization maintains a review average of 1.2 stars out of 5 on Facebook and virtually every single comment blasts out more Islamaphobia than the last.
If Mr. Brazau truly aims to stop Islamaphobia, I'd say, he is failing at it, if not in some ways inciting it.
Will he make any of these changes? We will just have to wait and see.
For now, I don't have much faith that he has reformed at all.
What do you think? Join the conversation by commenting below!
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