Corporate media exposes true colours after white supremacist terror in El Paso

CNN's Jake Tapper and Fox News's Garrett Tenney


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The US corporate media gives far-right terrorism much less attention than it merits. And its weakness in tackling the roots of such terror is clearer than ever after the horrific El Paso massacre of 3 August.

The white supremacist terrorist killed 22 civilians, mostly of Latin-American descent. He reportedly “set out to kill as many Mexicans as he could” after posting a document saying “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”.

Fox News fostering xenophobic hate

Rupert Murdoch‘s Fox News is the mouthpiece of the US hard right and its current leader, Donald Trump. And after the latest act of far-right terror, people stressed that Fox and Trump have consistently fearmongered about a supposed ‘immigrant invasion’:

During the “migrant caravan” humanitarian crisis in 2018, for example, Fox pushed conspiracy theories about a ‘criminal invasion’:

And it was even scaremongering about immigration as the El Paso massacre was taking place:

Donald Trump, meanwhile, consistently echoes Fox‘s fearmongering and conspiracy theories:

As Slate reported:

No single factor explains the recent rise of right-wing violence, which has a long and bloody history in the United States, mostly directed against black Americans…

But:

The rise of Trump both reflected the greater radicalization of right-wing voices [post 9/11] and heightened it. Trump rode to power in part on anti-immigrant and racist sentiments. At the same time, he elevated these concerns, with a regular track record of racist statements and hostility to Mexicans and other immigrants. Many white supremacists embraced Trump. Radicalization expert J.M. Berger found that the top hashtag for the alt-right is #MAGA.

Fascists and anti-fascists are not the same

While Trump has been leading racist attacks on Black politicians recently, he (and Fox News) has also been considering labelling anti-fascists (‘antifa’) as terrorists. This reflects his consistent attempts to suggest that fascists and anti-fascists are just as bad as each other. As the Pacific Standard reported, however:

Only 2 percent of the 372 Americans killed by domestic political extremists over the last decade were at the hands of so-called “radical left” extremists, according to data published by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism; by contrast, 74 percent of those killings were committed by right-wing extremists, levels that have only grown amid a global surge in far-right activity.

In fact, far-right terrorism is now the deadliest form of terrorism in the US since 9/11.

Yet mainstream ‘liberal’ media outlet CNN didn’t exactly use the El Paso massacre to focus on all of the above. Instead, presenter Jake Tapper tried to compare far-right US terrorists to Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation (which has the full backing of Donald Trump and his hard-right allies):

Resist both far-right terror and corporate propaganda

Instead of meaningfully holding the powerful to account, corporate media outlets consistently help to demonise the people whom the powerful exploit, attack, and oppress. And after the El Paso massacre, the results of that rotten agenda are clear for everyone to see.

We deserve so much better.

Featured image via YouTube – Rebel HQ and YouTube – Slate

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