Intolerance

A noun, defined as:

The fact of refusing to accept particular ideas, beliefs, or behaviour, especially because they are different from your own, or refusing to accept people who are different from you:

I was thinking about intolerance this morning when I got up, not because I am intolerant to the idea of getting up in the morning, though lately I have been suffering intolerance to things that a couple of months ago I really loved doing - but this is a whole other post entirely, and is more to do with motivation than intolerance, as defined by the above definition.

No, I was chiefly thinking about intolerance towards other people for whatever reason, and there is a whole smorgasbord of things that some people, for whatever reason have become intolerant too.

I think I had been thinking about the Maltese Muslim man who ran to become a member of parliament in the 2026 Maltese General Election, in particular. (Malta's General Election was held on the 30th May 2026)

He, as a result received daily hate messages and death threats, from not just those intolerant people who supported the opposition party, but also from people who supported the very party that he stood for - I mean, with friends like those, who needs enemies, right!?

You'd like to think that something might be done to address the threats that were made on social media, but there was a lot of populist rhetoric in the election campaigning this year, so I very much doubt any action will be taken - he'd have to be a catholic before anything was I guess - meanwhile anyone susceptible to the language of intolerance was just radicalised, so, I guess we'll hope for the next, next generation.

The thing is, we are not born intolerant of others - we never saw skin colour when we were very young, or cared about what religion our friends might. We didn't care about a persons size, or if our friends wanted to be a boy or girl, or who they were attracted to, or weren't, or whatever - these things simply did not matter.

It only began to matter when those susceptible to the intolerance of others, went on to develop an intolerance to another person because they then began to perceive them as different.

You have to wonder who these people are, that have managed to poison the souls of those who knew no hate, or cared about someone's differences - well they are our parents, our grandparents, sometimes our teachers, the police, a stranger on at a bus stop, or in a shop.

Like drug dealers, they have pushed a toxic ideology - right into the minds of those who are susceptible to such language, and thoughts.

For the rest of us, that black seed wasn't able to germinate - Thank heavens for that!

These days we have social media - it is very much the vehicle of toxic intolerance, especially on the platforms that encourage hate speech under the auspices of free speech. They have created an arena where the better that you hate on a particular group of people, the better and bigger your engagement and sense of empowerment will be - This is very much the weaponisation of intolerance.

The tactics are the same as before, but those pushing the seeds of intolerance have now become those that lead us, those with influence and money, who have the ear of the powerful, that for whatever reason are pushing the gospel according to Bigot!