Cherry-Picking Stories To Fuel Hate Against Muslims, And The Mainstream Media Downplaying A Nazi Salute

Our monthly round-up is an overview of the most significant results of our monitoring of traditional and new media in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, and the United Kingdom. In August we saw the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival be used to fuel hatred against the community, and a newspaper singling out a Muslim wedding for flouting COVID-19 rules.

Germany – Anti-Mainstream Blog Uses Gory Images and Language to Spread Hate Against Muslims

An article published on PI News, a German blog that defines itself as anti-mainstream and against the “Islamisation of Europe”, used inflammatory language to portray Muslims as barbaric, due to the ritual slaughter for Eid al-Adha, one of the most important festivals in the Muslim calendar. The cruelty-related wording (“bathing in blood”, “delighting in the suffering of the animals”, “bloodthirsty celebrations”, “ankle-deep in blood pools on our streets”), and use of terms such as “Allahu-Akbar-blubbering", depicts Muslims as barbaric intruders who pose a threat to the wider population. The writer of the piece also invokes the conspiracy narrative of the so-called “Islamisation”, imagining a future in which this leads to the streets of Germany being flooded with blood every year. The article gained much traction on Facebook, with a total of over 39,000 interactions.

Hungary - News Sites Cherry-Pick Western Europe Stories to Fuel Fears Against Muslims

Nation-wide news outlets such as Origo and Hirado, as well as local newspapers such as Baon, published a number of articles designed to stoke fears against Muslims. These news stories reported on a man slaughtering a lamb in his bathroom in Southern France; a Bosnian Muslim family physically punishing a teenager over her relationship with a Christian Serbian boy; and the damage left by an anti-racist protest in Sweden. The strategy of pro-government Hungarian media consists of cherry-picking stories about Muslims or immigrants in Western Europe who have committed acts of violence, spinning them to give the impression that all Muslims are violent or dangerous. In doing so, they fuel fears about what Hungary would look like if the government did not have strict immigration policies.

France – Magazine Publishes Interview With Filmmaker Accusing BLM of “anti-Western fascism, Black supremacism, Islamism and far left”

The French magazine Valeurs Actuelles amplified the conspiratorial views of Pierre Rehov, a French–Israeli documentary filmmaker. In an interview published by the news outlet at the beginning of August, the journalist Alexandre Del Valle asks biased questions, giving the article an anti-Muslim angle from the start (the BLM activist Assa Traoré is deemed untrustworthy because of alleged connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nation of Islam). The article also uses antisemitic dog-whistling language, referring to George Soros as funding BLM for "spreading Marxism". Rehov replies confirming the racist claims of the journalist, accusing BLM of “anti-Western fascism” and ”Black supremacism”, as well as of being an ”Islamist” and ”far-left” movement, “destroying from inside the Judeo-Christian West”. This article presents a conspiratorial interpretation of current events, discrediting a movement for racial justice through fabrications and hyperboles.

Greece - Sunday Paper Singles Out Muslim Wedding For COVID-19 Rules Flouting

Greece's most widely read Sunday paper, Proto Thema, reported about breaches of coronavirus rules at a wedding reception in the city of Alexandroupoli, highlighting in the headline the religion of the bride and groom. The fact that the people breaking the restrictions are Muslims, however, is not relevant for understanding of the story. On the contrary, reports like this one criminalise an already marginalised group, and to create, among readers, a vast overestimation of the proportion of Muslims disregarding the rules. Proto Thema took the story from a regional news site, Evros-News, which mentioned only once, in the text, the religion of the people participating at the wedding, and which did not use any anti-Muslim terms or covert disparaging comments. Considering that local news outlets have often reported about other wedding celebrations where COVID-19 rules have been breached, why has Proto Thema chosen to single out this wedding by labelling it as Muslim?

Belgium – Mainstream News Site Publish Articles Downplaying Nazi Salute

Two separate articles, appearing on the national news outlets SudInfo and 7sur7, have played down the gravity of a Nazi salute, which was performed by a French policewoman during an incident of police brutality in 2018. Surveillance camera video images show how a man, who died the following day in the hospital, was pinned down in the cell by six police officers, one of which sat on his rib cage for 16 minutes. The officers laughed while one danced and made a Nazi salute. Instead of giving the case the significance it deserves, SudInfo’s headline used a quote by the police officer’s lawyer saying that ”the police officer thought she was being funny", while 7sur7 used a press statement by SNPS, a police trade union, saying that ”the Nazi salute was shamefully taken out of context”. Created to pay homage to Hitler, neo-Nazis and white supremacists have continued to use the salute since WWII. Given its history, media should not take it lightly.

Belgium – News Blog Highlights Irrelevant Detail of Ethnicity in Article on Beach Brawl

An article published on the news blog SCEPTR about a brawl in the Belgian coastal city of Blankenberge unethically underlined the ethnicity of the beachgoers fighting the police. The law enforcement officers were called after dozens of young holidaymakers were disturbing other people on the crowded breakwater. While other Flemish and European media reported the incident referring to the individuals as “youths”, SCEPTR, which often publishes anti-Muslim and anti-migrant content, wrote in the article headline: “Rioters [from] Blankenberge are members of an African youth gang from Brussels.” The whole SCEPTR article also focusses on the supposed African origin of the young people involved. Was the ethnicity of the young people a relevant detail to the story? Or was it highlighted to portray a specific group of people in a negative light and stir hatred against them?

UK – Sensationalist Daily Mail Article Smears Muslims for Eid al-Adha Celebrations

On 1 August, the British tabloid Daily Mail published an article titled: “Muslims slaughter cattle, camels and sheep in bloody sacrifice to celebrate Eid al-Adha during scaled back festivities because of the coronavirus crisis”. The article focuses on Eid al-Adha, one of the most important festivals in the Muslim calendar, which is observed all over the world and includes the sacrificing of animals. While the coverage of the event is newsworthy, this piece uses sensationalistic language and images, reinforcing the false narrative that depicts Muslims as violent and barbaric. Christian religious festivals involve the killing of millions of turkeys and lambs, and yet hostile framing and wording are used only with Muslims.