Originally posted by Patient_Leech
Possibly more, because they give the religion such a "bad reputation."But as outsiders looking in, those damn holy books do seem to contain some justification. Allah-forbid anyone talk honestly about that. 🙄
Agreed,The weirdest one lately was when Breitbart tried to make the Pastoral murders in Nigeria about Islam Vs. Christianity recently.
https://qz.com/africa/1576853/new-zealand-attack-right-wing-media-uses-nigeria-christian-killings/
To be clear, the reports on the spate of killings in the region are true (even though it’s typically difficult to verify death tolls in Nigeria). The conflicts have been going on intermittently for nearly three years and occasionally surface in international media. But attributing the attacks solely to religious persecution “is a misunderstanding of the actual problem,” says Cheta Nwanze, head researcher at SBM Intel, a Lagos-based intelligence firm that has analyzed conflict in northern Nigeria over the past three years.
“The pastoral conflict is, in reality, primarily a resource conflict [over land] but because it has gone on for so long it is beginning to metastasize and is taking the coloration of a religious and ethnic conflict where it originally was not,” he says. Amnesty International, in a report last December, also noted the root of the attacks lie in communal and pastoral clashes.
As Quartz Africa has previously reported, these conflicts had overtaken Boko Haram as Nigeria’s biggest internal security problem as of two years ago.
“It appears to be classic “whataboutism”— an age-old Russian propaganda technique that the American right has warmly embraced,” says Matthew Page, associate fellow, Africa Programme, Chatham House. It’s easy to reach that conclusion as right-leaning platforms mainly appear to be reporting the attacks in Nigeria only to point out the lack of coverage in global media in comparison to the New Zealand attack.
Indeed, Breitbart reports that its Rome bureau chief Thomas Williams “describes ‘mainstream media’s’ response to the massacring of Nigerian Christians as ‘silence’ in comparison to its approach towards last Friday’s mass murder of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand.”
“Presumably they are trying to meet a demand signal from their readership for countervailing narratives that distract from the uptick in white nationalism worldwide that has occurred over the course of Trump’s tenure in office,” Page says.
Chief orwelliANDYstopia
@andyRoidO
Are you all going to pretend you would ever have considered the death of 120 black Nigerians newsworthy, if it did not serve in your mind as a narrative counterpoint the Christchurch story you are uncomfortable with?
Leave us out of your culture war.
Rachel Campos-Duffy
✔
@RCamposDuffy
The media is so dishonest. 120 Christians killed by Muslims in Nigeria this week. Why the blackout on Christian persecution? Both tragedies are newsworthy. https://twitter.com/FreddieMillerJ3/status/1107124721550876673 …
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The reports will achieve one thing as they bring increased awareness to the long-running internal security problems which Nigeria’s political leaders have handled poorly to date. But the increased attention is not guaranteed to deliver a change of fortunes in the region.
Indeed, during Nigeria’s president Buhari’s state visit to the US last May, Donald Trump claimed the US will be “working” on the “very serious problem” of murdered Christians in Nigeria. So far though, there’s very little evidence to suggest his statement was followed with action or that it was anything more than a populist play to rally his vast evangelical base.