Meet The Refugee Who Hates Refugees
Ever met a refugee who hates refugees? No? Then meet Tenzin Gyatso, better known as the “Dalai Lama”, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He recently gave the BBC an interview in which he also gave right-wing populists of the Salvini and Orban mold a run for their money.
When asked if refugees should be allowed to stay in Europe, the Dalai Lama replied: “Limited number… OK. But whole Europe eventually become Muslim country? Impossible. Or African country? Also impossible.”
Sound familiar? The oh so peaceful and not racist at all meditative Buddhist we know so well from Muslim-hating Buddhist nationalist Sri Lanka and Rohingya-slaughtering Buddhist nationalist Myanmar playing into the apocalyptic bogeyman fear of organized Islamization and its corresponding worn out clash-of-civilizations narrative.
And would somebody remind this Eurocentric dumbass of a captive mind (a term borrowed from Postcolonial Theory describing your generic Uncle Tom) that Africa is not a country?
Like staunch islamophobe Aung San Suu Kyi, another protegé of a gullible West who has turned out to be nothing but a sham, evil masquerading as humanity, I always knew that this red-robed bald-headed SOB with his tinted 70s porn star specs was a sublime fake.
The 14th Dalai Lama, the self-styled Ambassador of Peace, the darling of a naive liberal Western establishment that has a proven track record of being on the wrong side of history (siding with the barbaric Khmer Rouge when it took Phnom Penh, surprised when it quickly turned agrarian Kampuchea – as Cambodia was then called – into a single killing field for its own innocent civilians) not only has never had a single shred of legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese government (which has routinely branded him a terrorist), but has finally chosen to hit the self-destruct button on his own credibility and moral high ground, thus coming clean and showing his true colors: that of a racist and islamophobe bigot.
What is more breathtaking than Tenzin Gyatso’s bigotry is his hypocrisy: being the ultimate phoney that he is, the interview was given at his relatively lavish, hilltop residence in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh where he himself has been living as a refugee since 1959 when he was forced to flee Tibet (an autonomous region, like Xinjang, which China nevertheless considers as integral parts of its Han-Chinese ruled polity).
Take a moment and let that scene replay before your inner eye: sitting in the comfort of his host country-exile, this refugee is telling other host countries to send refugees who wish to stay in their host countries back to their own home countries. Is the Dalai Lama, at the age of 83, finally suffering from the erratic pangs of dementia?Or is he just that stupid and prone to jackassery like Trump groupie Kanye West?
When reminded by BBC interviewer Ranjini Vaidyanathan of this paradox of a refugee dissing refugees, he— like all populists — simply deflected the question by answering: “They themselves [the refugees], I think better in their own land. Better. Keep Europe for Europeans.”
Keep Europe for Europeans. Strong words from this Tibetan Pied Piper, the unofficial Emissary of World and Inner peace, this Paolo Coelho of Organized Self-Help, with his legions of spiritually drained New Ageists and other unmeritocratically privileged, neoliberal Westerners hanging on his every predictable word for dear life.
I’m not a specialist on Buddhism, but isn’t there something called the Noble Eightfold Path? Right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right something (samadhi, that was what that something was, meditative union) if I remember correctly? Are Tibetan Buddhists exempt from that? Call me a party pooper, but Tenzin Gyatso’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, as well as his international jetset lifestyle, are in direct violation of at least seven of these eight commandments.
Well, if the Dalai Lama wants to put his money (of which this Western media celebrity – thanks to Hollywood Has-Beens and Buddhist lobbyists like Richard Gere – has plenty to go around.. btw, aren’t Buddhists supposed to lead frugal lives of material restraint?) where his mouth is, I think he should lead by example and go back to his native Tibet/China.
Yes, maybe it’s time for the Indian government that has been hosting this shameless self-promoter and colonial stooge for the last 60 years to start “keeping India Indian” and finally send this bullshit artist – who like the aforementioned She-Devil Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 (as one female former professor of mine at Humboldt University Berlin aptly named her for her complicity in the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya) duped the nitwits of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo into awarding him a Peace Prize just two years earlier – back to where he came from.
It is one of those instances of karmic injustice that China — to the complete and shameful nonchalance of the international community — has currently imprisoned over one million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps where they are violently being excorcised of their Muslimness, while degenerates like the Dalai Lama are allowed to wander around freely and openly spout their verbal feces to equally hypocritical Western audiences.
Well, dearest “Dalai”, esteemed “Mr Lama”: until you clean up your speech and act and start adhering to the core principles of your faith, I hope you keep enjoying your well-deserved samsara, that painful cycle of rebirth you Buddhists spend your earthly lives striving to break. ‘Cause your bigoted ass ain’t goin’ to Nirwana anytime soon.
