Here’s some real news for the fake news purveyors over at the New York Times: the “far-right media” isn’t responsible for “anxiety about Muslim refugees.” Who is actually responsible? People such as Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry, who in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian; Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan Muslim migrant who in September 2016 set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey; Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim migrant who in September 2016 murdered five people in a mall in Burlington, Washington; Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant who in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”; and Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant who in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University.
What’s more, all of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. In February 2015, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. The Lebanese Education Minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country.
Meanwhile, 80% of migrants who have come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all. So why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and now the U.S. as well? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September 2015, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.” These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.”
On May 10, 2016, Patrick Calvar, the head of France’s DGSI internal intelligence agency, said that the Islamic State was using migrant routes through the Balkans to get jihadis into Europe.
But as far as the fake news purveyor known as New York Times is concerned, it’s all just fearmongering by the “far-right media.”
“Anxiety About Muslim Refugees Is Stoked Online by the Far-Right Media,” by Caitlin Dickerson, New York Times, January 28, 2017 (thanks to Lookmann):
Type the word refugees into Facebook and some alarming “news” will appear about a refugee rape crisis, a refugee flesh-eating disease epidemic and a refugee-related risk of female genital mutilation — none of it true.
For the months leading up to the presidential election, and in the days since President Trump took office, ultraconservative websites like Breitbart News and Infowars have published a cycle of eye-popping stories with misleading claims about refugees. And it is beginning to influence public perception, experts say.
That shift was evident on Friday, as many Americans heralded the news that the Trump administration intended to temporarily curb all refugee resettlement and increase the vetting of Syrians.
“There really is a kind of cultural battle going on,” said Cecillia Wang, the deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “There’s no question that kind of xenophobic or anti-Muslim bias is infecting our political discourse about refugees.”
Breitbart, May 31, 2016: Syrian Refugees Spreading Flesh-Eating Disease, Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis
In speaking to pollsters about refugee resettlement, Americans tend to cite concerns about the country’s national security and economic health as their biggest worries, but they have also begun to point to disease or rape, experts say.
“This is something where the fear outruns the fact by a factor of 100 to 1 or even 1,000 to 1,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has tracked American sentiment about refugee resettlement over years.
Infowars, July 6, 2016: Muslim Refugees Causing Rape Epidemic in the U.S.
Mr. Galston said the reaction to misleading coverage of refugees was reminiscent of the wave of measures introduced in state legislatures in recent years to stop the spread of Islamic law, despite scant evidence that it has been promoted anywhere. And while he doubted that alarmist stories about refugees were powerful enough to change people’s minds, he said the coverage played to existing fears and pushed mere differences of opinion into hyperpartisan outrage.
“I think their opinions are being intensified because the intensification of contrary sentiments is increasing polarization,” Mr. Galston said.
Breitbart, Aug. 2, 2015: Muslim Immigration Puts Half a Million U.S. Girls at Risk of Genital Mutilation
Outside his job as a police officer in Kansas, Okla., Mike Eason begins and ends his day with the television news — first CBS, then Fox, but never CNN, which he hates. Then, he scrolls through Facebook, where he’s read stories about refugees who commit violent crimes against women.
“It’s one of them Facebook things where you see Muslim men are attacking women, and stuff like that, and having no respect for them at all. I’ve got a real issue with that,” he said. “I see story after story after story, and I don’t know how true it is.”…