Posted on 08/27/2012 9:49:00 AM PDT by presidio9
When 58-year-old Jeffrey Johnson was identified as the suspected shooter in Friday’s Empire State Building incident, the tone and tenor of the story shifted.
Both local and national news outlets confirmed that this was not a terrorism-related case, as some feared at first, but merely a workplace dispute gone horribly wrong. And when Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly conducted their initial press conference, they were equally cautious not to mention Johnson’s race, religion or ethnicity. While these measures all appear to follow protocol, it makes one wonder: What would have been the reaction and press coverage if the gunman were Muslim?
In March 2011, Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, conducted his first hearings on alleged “radicalization” within the American Muslim community.
Echoing Joe McCarthy, King piled on the hysteria. He even had the audacity to conduct a hearing earlier this year titled “The American Muslim Response to Hearings on Radicalization Within Their Community.” But as a recent report highlighted, harsh surveillance of Muslim communities yielded no new leads or investigations related to terrorism.
Maybe we should ask King when he’ll be holding hearings on the radicalization of white American men. While we’re at it, let’s have a follow up: “White Men’s Response to Hearings on Radicalization Among White Men.”
The year President Obama was sworn into office, the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report warning of the dangers of an increase in right-wing extremism and militia and patriot organizations. In 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported the existence of at least 1,274 of these groups — up from 824 the year before.
Suspected killers like James Holmes, Wade Michael Page or Jared Lee Loughner are never defined by their ethnicity or religion. Instead, their acts of murder are portrayed as the actions of a “lone wolf” with mental troubles.
But things are starkly different when it is a religious or ethnic minority doing the killing. By highlighting killers’ ethnicities, the media subliminally stoke prejudice.
So while King has openly called the patriotism of American Muslims into question, the same thing is done on a more subtle level in the media on a regular basis.
Press reports routinely reference “an Arabic-sounding name” or call someone an “Islamist.” This casts suspicion on an entire group of people far beyond the scope of whoever actually committed the act.
Instead of forcing American Muslims to endure his ludicrous hearings, perhaps King should spend more time figuring out ways to keep them safe, as assaults against Muslims (and those perceived to be Muslim) are now almost as high as they were in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, says the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
This month alone, for example, there has been an alarming rise in the number of attacks against Muslims and mosques, as well as other religious sites.
According to CAIR, hate graffiti was sprayed on Muslim graves in the Chicago area; a firebomb was thrown at a Muslim family’s home in Panama City, Fla.; vandals sprayed an Oklahoma mosque with paintballs; an acid bomb was hurled at an Islamic school in Lombard, Ill.; a mosque was burned to the ground in Joplin, Mo.; raw bacon was left at the site of a Ramadan/Eid event on Staten Island; shots were fired at a mosque in Morton Grove, Ill. — and, tragically, the list goes on.
If we’re going to be honest about what threats we face and whom we should be monitoring more closely at home, then it’s clear that we shouldn’t avoid using the term “domestic terrorism” — or openly stating what group is most often found committing these acts.
Then again, if the idea of having surveillance on white men and holding hearings on their radicalization makes you uncomfortable, upset or disillusioned, just imagine how the average American Muslim feels.
Khan is an independent journalist working in print and radio.
Also, it seems to me that the press has gone out of their way to speculate that every attacker was a lone white male until the facts proved otherwise.
since the guy got laid off in the obama economy, can we say that obama killed him and his victims?
And there's nothing to suggest this attacker couldn't have been Muslim himself. Muslim extremists and the Skinhead crowd have been known to work togeather against their common enemy - the Jews. This guy could easily have been a Sikh hating muslim.
Now that's a twist.
All I hear from BO's people is that ONLY white men can be extremists.
I had the airsickness bag right here in my lap too. Why can I never get it opened fast enough?
The Empire State Building shooter went there for one purpose - to settle a score with ONE individual - his former boss. That is the only one HE shot. The others were all hit by promiscuous gunfire from New York’s Finest.
(I will defer from speculating on the romantic inclinations of the shooter and the apparently very sorry state of training of the city police officers).
Besides which, when has there EVER been a mystery mass/serial killer whose prospective profile from one agency or another of the FedGov NOT begin with “white, male...”? Ever! Chief Moose anyone? How many people were shot by the beltway boys while everyone was chasing that particular scarlet herring down a hole?
Sure, any member of any particular color, gender or ancestry can be an extremist. For this moron to say that male persons of pallor are never considered or implicated in the speculation of actor descriptions is so absurd as to be prima facie a damnable lie. Good Lord, Morris Dees has a VERY fat bank account due exclusively to trading in the ‘white extremist’ meme.
Well, I know what it should be: Deport all Moslem aliens, of course including illegals—plus their anchor-babies—starting with you. And put their American lawyers in jail for espionage, where applicable.
Next question?
I wonder if the author of this article tried to interview any relatives of Daniel Pearl for their input? Just wondering?
That is 0.8% too many.
I am not kidding when I say to you that there is a sizeable percentage here in NYC that would prefer that police officers not carry firearms, and that they arrest one white person for every non white.
If you confine yourself to certain media outlets — MSNBC, NPR, NYT, etc. — it’d be hard to find evidence that anybody but white men could be an extremist.
SnakeDoc
As a former LEO, this is dismaying and embarrasing.
Standards have gone to h*ll. Not just the lack of marksmanship (bad enough in itself) but the decision-making! Total focus on the shooter, no awareness or concern for the back-stop (built of PEOPLE!), I’d expect better from a Tenderfoot Boy Scout.
The top three layers of management of the NYPD should be busted back to parking enforcement and issued a wheezy old Cushman to ride. That’s all they are apparently good for, since they can’t maintain standards of training.
Gotta hand it to them though. Sixteen rounds fired (so far as I can tell) by the police, eight people hit. That’s a much higher percentage of hits per round fired than is typical. But in all seriousness, what that means is that people were packed like sardines, and still they elected to get in a gunfight. Some really hard questions need to asked here.
The year President Obama was sworn into office, the Department of Homeland Security released a scathing report warning of the dangers of an increase in right-wing extremism and militia and patriot organizations. In 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported the existence of at least 1,274 of these groups — up from 824 the year before.
Yes the dabbling newspaper employee has a point.. let an adult handle this. Yes there are "right-wing extremism and militia and patriot organizations" that are really white supremacist groups WHO ALIGN WITH ISLAMIST GROUPS (political Islam, sharia law advocates) AGAINST ZOG.
The newspaper employee must be an adolescent -- at least mentally -- to not remember how Rush Limbaugh was widely condemned by the newspaper employee's ilk for creating and leading the nation's "angry white men."
If they’re this big of a pain in the ass at 0.8%, imagine what the problems will be when it’s 5%.
No. It is obviously Bush’s fault. /sarc
WoW! That's real extreme.........sort of like BASE jumping, isn't it?
OR that white men could be anything but an extremist.
"The Caucasian race is the cancer of the planet." -- Susan Sontag, Stalinist intellectual, 1966.
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