scapegoat members of the ‘inferior’ group. Scapegoating a group diminishes our responsibility and allows people to feel connected as they join to exclude the Other. Straub suggests that devaluation of a subgroup helps to raise low self –esteem.92 Myanmar’s history of conflict and instability - including the Japanese invasion and the British colonial period – allows Wirathu to play on the country’s low self-esteem by offering Buddhist citizens a strong sense of cultural and national identity. The monolithic country that Wirathu and likeminded thinkers aspire to cannot tend to the rights of every group within the culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse country. Acknowledging this, the International Crisis Group (ICG) recently urged the government of Myanmar to find way to create a new sense of national identity which would embrace the country's cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, including the clarification of the legal status of the Rohingya.93 Though Strachan argues that it can be difficult to monitor how much of an impact online hate speech can have on society because we cannot accurately attribute certain changes to that hate speech,94 participants of both focus groups both acknowledged how propaganda shared on Facebook can influence anti-Muslim attitudes. Members of focus group one believed that this kind of hate speech does cause violence, and has led to very real consequences for the Rohingya Muslims who not only lost their right to vote in the November elections, but are no longer accepted as citizens, despite many of them having resided there for generations.95 The exclusion of the Muslim Rohingya minority led them to literally be referred to as the ‘other’.96 As I addressed earlier, Waldron is concerned over the loss of dignity of minority groups that affect 92 Straub, (1989) p.17. 93 Domínguez, G., (2014) ‘Myanmar ‘needs a new sense of national identity’’, Deutsche Welle, available at: http://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-needs-a-new-sense-of-national-identity/a-18019522 [November 2015]. 94 Strachan, (2014) p.1. 95 A greater history of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims can be found here: Selth, A., (2004) ‘Burma's Muslims and the War on Terror’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, vol. 27, no. 2, pp.107-126, available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10576100490275094 [November 2015], p.111. 96 Radio Free Asia, (2014) ‘Myanmar Will Not Recognize Rohingyas on Upcoming Census’, available at: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/census-03132014181344.html [November, 2015]. - 42 -