Sun Terrorism Hypocrisy AGAIN

Terrorism can be perpetrated by people of any ethnic background, and by adherents of any religion, as anyone who knows their 20th Century history will know. But the agenda of right-wing tabloids that has been allowed to take hold recently dictates otherwise: for them, terrorism can only be undertaken by Scary Muslims (tm), and against the kinds of white people who buy their increasingly piss-poor papers.

Terror where there isn't any ...

So it is that today’s Murdoch Sun has told its dwindling readership “UK On Festive Alert … XMAS TERROR PLOT BUSTED … Six arrested in Police raids … More gun cops for shoppers”, although no actual plot was uncovered, never mind busted. And no time was wasted in ensuring readers knew who was responsible: “Islamic extremists … jihadi gang … Islamic extremists … jihadi gang … IS and its affiliates”.

And remember, Sun readers, “As many as 3,000 homegrown Islamist extremists are currently at large in the UK, according to intelligence sources”. Though exactly what those “sources” are, they’re not going to tell you. It’s merely sufficient for those readers to know that terrorism gets done by brown people who talk foreign.

... and someone who becomes a terrorist ...

This is most convenient for the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker, and enables them to view every act of violent criminality as another means of frightening readers into thinking that the Scary Muslims are coming to get them. Like the case of Nicholas Salvador, who was cleared of murder on the grounds of insanity after he beheaded an elderly woman in her garden. The Sun dishonestly told readers he was a “Muslim convert”.

But white people indulging in terrorist acts are never terrorists. So Sun readers were not told that the racially motivated attack on an Asian man in a North Wales supermarket was terrorism. The neo-Nazi who carried out the attack was an “extremist”, but as he was white, he could not be a terrorist. Likewise Thomas Mair, who murdered Labour MP Jo Cox outside her constituency surgery in West Yorkshire. He, too, was not a terrorist.

... but white people don't do terrorism, right?

And now another violent incident that was not an act of terrorism, honestly, took place on a London Overground train near Forest Hill station in south London. The Sun does not put this on the front page, and stresses that the Police are not calling it “terrorist related”. Why might that be? Oh I dunno, how about the attacker shouting “I want to kill me a Muslim” and telling passengers on the train that Muslims should all go back to Syria?

Nothing demonstrates more clearly the way in which the right-wing tabloids set an agenda and the rest of the media obediently toddles along behind. While the Sun tells its readers that Scary Muslims are coming to get them - on the basis of nothing at all - it excuses acts of terrorism by whites, and by anyone against Muslims, as “extremism”, or perhaps “hate crime” in exceptional circumstances. But only brown people do terrorism.

The Murdoch press is a disgrace to its own profession. And its boss wants to extend his lamentably poor standards to yet more of the media. Forget being afraid of brown people who don’t go out and get wasted - the real villains are the ones feeding the incitement.