Um... Don't be a white supremacist maybe?

Hey everyone! Let’s see if today’s blog post is something we can all agree on. Repeat after me, “Do not be a white supremacist.” Now hold onto that, that’s a mystery tool that we will be using later. See while this statement may seem so simple, apparently, there is more than meets the eye, as proved by the recent resurgence in hate crimes. Not to name any names, but every since our oh-so-beloved president was put in office, white supremacism, or to put it nicely, white nationalism, has been on the rise. Yeah we can blame Trump, and I will, but media also plays a big part in perpetuating white supremacist ideals, only circulating certain information to fool a larger audience.

See here is the problem, media finds a way to circulate cases of terrorism when it related to other races (prominently jihadism), but when white supremacists execute terrorist attacks, information is not as quickly broadcasted. According to a study from the University of Alabama, white supremacist groups receive four times less coverage from attacks than Muslim extremist groups. This just props up the ideals that white nationalists depend upon, painting the other as the threat, and themselves as the protector, saving us from the eastern savages. At this point, many probably believe the lack of coverage is because white supremacists commit more crimes, but once again this is utterly false. A study by the Anti-Defamation league that studied 573 “extremist-related fatalities” from 2002 to 2018, found that right-wing extremists were responsible for 80% of the deaths, and in 2018 alone killed 50 people. Clearly, there is a problem here, and media makes it worse by spreading around the wrong information, or selectively publicizing information

If Americans were all responsible and did research for themselves, then maybe this would not be such a prevalent problem, but the fact is, no one does. Many just believe the first news article they see, and when the same stories are circled over and over again- that Muslims are the enemy (through things like, oh I don’t know, the travel ban), that Muslims are terrorists, and that they are going to destroy the country, then those things become the truth for so many. Media is very powerful and has a huge influence on how we see the world, but people must recognize that not everything that is published is reliable, and find data and truth through extensive research of their own.

https://theappalachianonline.com/2019/03/28/opinion-white-supremacists-and-social-media-the-double-standard-with-jihadis/

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