We can’t say that Fox News/Fox Business hysteria played a role in either of the two right-wing terrorist plots against a peaceful, law-abiding group of Muslims in New York but we do know that Fox has been spreading inflammatory, false suggestions that they are a group of terrorists since at least 2007.
Writing in The Daily Beast, radio show host Dean Obeidallah, who also happens to be Muslim, noted that two recent plots against the community would have gotten much more national attention had the conspirators been Muslim and the targets white conservatives instead of the other way around. One of the recently-arrested gang was revealed to be an ardent Trump supporter who called for the mass murder of Muslims.
The Islamberg community is not even close to being a “terrorist compound” as Fox shrilly obsessed over an isolated family of extremist Muslims in rural New Mexico who were found to have abused and neglected children, probably resulting in at least one death, and were allegedly training their kids to carry out school shootings. Obeidallah noted that Islamberg spokesperson Muhammad Matthew Gardner described his community as “veterans, doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. We are true American patriots.”
Yet Fox News has deliberately targeted Islamberg with baseless, bigoted smears for more than a decade. Obeidallah explains:
They would be living the quiet lives they had dreamed of if not for right-wing fearmongering, especially by Fox News. Dating back to at least 2007, Fox News has run story after story spreading lies about this community as some type of terrorist training camp. One segment featured a representative from the Clarion Project, an organization dubbed an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and which boasts as an adviser Walid Phares, one of Donald Trump’s advisers on the Middle East during the 2016 campaign, to spread these lies, which have been debunked time and time again.
As New York State Police Major James Barnes explained in 2017 to the Associated Press, his state troopers have a good relationship with the Islamberg community, even being invited to speak to the youths about law enforcement careers. Barnes explained, “These folks that live here are American citizens. They’ve lived here for over 30 years. They have ties within, outside of this community. And there’s not a problem here.”
But that hasn’t stopped Fox News from whipping up wild fears and hatreds, and, as Arsalan Bukhari, strategic communication analyst at the national offices of Council on American Islamic Relations, told me, “Hate speech leads to hate crimes.” In 2017, CAIR documented the highest number of hate crime against Muslims ever, far exceeding those seen just after 9/11.
Of course, no matter what Fox said, it was the actual perpetrators planning to commit the plots who are criminally responsible. But that doesn’t mean Fox doesn’t have a responsibility to recognize the potential dangers of its rhetoric and dial it back. Or, better yet, Fox could have one of its prime time hosts, each of whom is noted for his or her bigotry, host a friendly discussion with the New York State police major about the real nature of the community.
But I’m not holding my breath for that to ever happen.
Meanwhile, watch the kind of poison Fox has spread about Islamberg below, from a 2015 Lou Dobbs Tonight episode.
