PRESS RELEASE
January 10, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tatiana Arizaga
(626) 792-6462
tarizaga@nhmc.org
Pasadena, CA. - The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is horrified by the senseless shooting rampage that occurred over the weekend in Tucson, Arizona. Our condolences and prayers go out to the victims and their families.
We are saddened that it takes a tragedy of this nature for the media and the public to notice that we have a serious problem in this country with extremist rhetoric and activities.
Indeed, this month marks the second anniversary of NHMC's call to action on hate speech in media, whereby NHMC made two requests: (1) that the Federal Communications Commission open a public docket to examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, and non-regulatory options for counteracting the violence that extreme rhetoric breeds; and (2) that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes so that it may address the realities of how people communicate in the digital age. To date, the government has not acted upon our requests.
In the meantime, we have witnessed the horrific murders and maiming of countless victims, many of whom remain in the shadows. The government must act NOW so that it may understand the underlying reasons behind hate crimes and other acts of rhetoric-induced violence. Only with this understanding may it protect the people of this country, including our members of Congress, who must be able to interact safely with their constituents in their districts so that they may represent them on the Hill - a fundamental tenet of our democracy.
To learn more about NHMC's campaign against hate speech in media, please click here. If you would like to join our plea for government action, please visit http://www.nhmc.org/content/take-action.
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The National Hispanic Media Coalition is a non-profit, media advocacy organization established in 1986 in Los Angeles, California. Our mission is to improve the image of American Latinos as portrayed by the media, increase the number of American Latinos employed in all facets of the media industry, and advocate for media and telecommunications policies that benefit the Latino community.
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National Hispanic Media Coalition | 55 S. Grand Ave. | Pasadena | CA | 91105
David Horowitz is the Islamophobia movement's premier promoter. Through his "Islamofascism Awareness Week" (see Islamofascism Case Study), which brought leading Muslim-bashers to more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007, and via his website, FrontPage Magazine, which features the movement's leading writers and links to other anti-Muslim sites, Horowitz has made himself the chief publicist of the Islamophobic movement. (Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab writings at Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine have been exposed for inaccuracy by, among other outlets, the New Yorker magazine--4/14/08.) But more than a promoter, Horowitz is also a key participant. He appears in his own venues as well as in other right-wing arenas, such as the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel. In one Fox appearance (5/9/08), he linked Muslim student associations on college campuses across the U.S. to the "terrorist Jihad against the West":
After the September 11 attacks, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly (9/17/01; FAIR Action Alert, 9/21/01) had a whole list of predominantly Muslim countries that he proposed to attack if they did not submit to the U.S.--starting with Afghanistan:
Debbie Schlussel may tout herself to her fan club as the "greatest sexy, blonde and beautiful commentator," but her Islamophobic rhetoric is as ugly as the rest. Schlussel jumped to the erroneous conclusion (Debbie Does Politics, 4/16/07) that a "Paki" was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. (She remarked that "even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.") When Sen. Barack Obama's campaign team prevented two Muslim women from sitting behind him during a speech (see Islamophobia Election piece, p. n), Schlussel asserted (Debbie Does Politics, 6/19/08) that they were "Muslim Terror Front-Group Activists" (One of them faced this accusation because she held a position at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Muslim Students Association.) Claiming a "unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism" (DebbieSchlussel), Schlussel presents America as being in "the war of our lives with Islam," and depicts the American Muslim community as a dangerous fifth column. She has asserted (FrontPage Magazine, 2/10/05) that "Fox's 24...actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists":
If you're looking for Christian charity toward Muslims, don't look to Rev. Pat Robertson or his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson subscribes to Robert Spencer's view that Islam is, in its essence, violent and irrational. He describes (700 Club, 8/29/06) Osama bin Laden as a true disciple of the Quran "because he's following through literally word-for-word what it says." Robertson tells viewers of his signature CBN show, the 700 Club, that Islam is "not a religion" but a "worldwide political movement...meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law" (6/12/07). At the same time, he claims Islam is a "bloody, brutal type of religion" (4/28/06) whose followers only "deal with history and the truth with violence" and "don't understand what reasoned dialogue is" (9/25/06).
If Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer serve the movement by providing intellectual arguments for its rank and file, Michael Savage serves as its angry rabble-rouser. And Savage's reach is remarkable: His radio show Savage Nation reaches a reported 8.25 million listeners per week (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08), the third most popular political talk radio show in the country (trailing only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity). Savage is notorious for his relentlessly hateful language--he was fired from his MSNBC gig when he labeled a caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die" (FAIR Action Alert, 7/7/03)--and Muslims are often his target.
Michelle Malkin calls Islam "the religion of perpetual outrage" on her two blogs, MichelleMalkin.com (8/1/06, 2/11/08) and Hot Air (2/9/08), though Malkin herself seems remarkably easy to outrage. When celebrity chef Rachael Ray was featured in a 2008 Dunkin' Donuts ad wearing a black-and-white paisley scarf that vaguely resembled an Arab keffiyeh, Malkin created such an uproar over what she imagined to be a "hate couture" symbol of "murderous Palestinian jihad" (MichelleMalkin.com, 5/28/08) that Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad and issued an apology (Huffington Post, 5/28/08).
Glenn Beck claims he doesn't hate Islam, just its "evil" extremists, but during his eponymous CNN Headline News show and the Glenn Beck Program--the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 (CNN.com)--he has repeatedly associated Islam with Nazism. He drew a parallel between Mein Kampf and "jihad" because, he said, both mean "my struggle" (Glenn Beck, 11/17/06), and he has warned (Glenn Beck, 7/12/06) of "World War III and the impending apocalypse," declaring that "whether you like it or not, this is a religious war. Radical Muslims want to wipe everybody else off the face of the earth."
According to American Muslim and former Nixon advisor Robert Crane (The Politics of Islam(ism): Decolonising the Postcolonial, 11/10=11/07), Robert Spencer is "the principal leader…in the new academic field of Islam-bashing."
Mark Steyn has a penchant for using ethnic slurs, including "chinks" and "japs" (Spectator, 3/24/01), but he is at his most prolific and poisonous on the subject of Muslims. In his 2006 New York Times best seller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Steyn warns of the "demographic decline" posed by Europe's emerging Muslim population, and suggests there are lessons for Europeans in the Balkan example of ethnic cleansing. As he explains, "You can't buck demography--except through civil war":
Remarking on reports that U.S. congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, was planning to be sworn in with a Quran, Fox News personality Sean Hannity (Hannity & Colmes, 11/30/06) drew a parallel between Islam and Nazism, asking a guest on his show, "Would you have allowed him to choose, you know, Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?" (Hannity insisted he was not equating Mein Kampf and the Quran, rendering his point entirely unclear.) But more important than his occasional personal forays into Muslim-bashing, Hannity regularly provides a welcoming national platform to some of the country's leading Islamophobes, through his nationally syndicated Sean Hannity Show on radio and his Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News (with only occasional challenges on Hannity & Colmes by co-host Alan Colmes).
The founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism think tank, Emerson regularly crops up as an "expert on Islamic terrorism" (New York Times, 1/16/01) in national media outlets ranging from the New York Times and Washington Post to CNN and NBC News (where he is employed as an analyst); he specializes in advancing allegations linking Muslim groups in the U.S. to fundamentalist Islamic international terrorism.
(see Case Study: