Examining Social and Political Commentary Part 3

 

When People Look For Conspiracy Theories In Places Where They Don't Exist.

This article has been on the backburner for the past two years. In some ways, nothing changed over that time-span. This is in regard to sensationalist click-bait on Facebook. The platform that was intended to share vacation and cat photos have given way to charged political and social content. The vast majority of these memes are typically one-sided or contain false information. One becomes emotionally overcharged as strong fervor consumes the body. Unable to cope with these intense thoughts, many take to social media, and Facebook in particular. 

As such,  tenacious views are formed from false claims that have no legitimate backing. The platform becomes flooded by those who have strong opinions, but yet, are badly misinformed.  While we are entitled to our opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts. Our opinions needs to be based on valid information. This is very seldom the case as  hyper-partisan bias is passed off as the gospel truth.  Claims from a conspiracy mill are given as much attention as a pieces from the BBC, AP, or NPR. One unwilling to exercise their critical thinking skills can't tell apart the news from the click-bait.

A couple of years ago, my Facebook feed was flooded by this sensationalist piece/meme. This meme widely circulated while Obama was still President, and hinted at his connections to Radical Islam. At this point, we need to remember that Obama isn't beyond criticism. While their are plenty of valid things to criticize Obama on, many chose to form hostile opinions about him based on baseless claims that had zero merit, like the one that is going to be covered in greater detail. 

Back in 2016, several Christian Right groups posted article claiming that school children in Tennessee were being forced to bow to down to Allah. Those memes and article used this picture as "proof" (which is the one linked to the Snopes article), even though the picture has no connection to the supposed incident. Since public schools are secular in nature, and they don't take a stance on religion affiliation, I already sensed that this was misinformation.

The picture that was used for "evidence" first circulated in 2011, a couple of years before the supposed incident. It was then shared by online anti-Muslim sites in Europe. The image was paraded by conspiracy theorist who claimed that  President Obama was conspiring to convert the nation to a Islam Republic and implement Islamic Sharia law. The claim about the Tennessee students was echoed by ChristToday.net. The site that appears to be defunct now. However, the link had been preserved on Archive.org's Wayback machine. The web-page only had a simple caption, with a dead image link which I'm assuming is the picture in question. Here is the link anyway:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160827225826/http://todaychristian.net/2016/08/23/public-middle-school-in-tennessee-is-forcing-non-muslim-students-to-bow-down-to-allah/

The story was picked up by Conservative Daily Post, just one of various hyper-partisan outlets that promoted various Obama-related conspiracies at the time. Luckily (or not), the website and story are still there. Holy Crap! Tons of ads everywhere. This site makes a strong case for ad-blockers!  Also (but not always), many click-bait articles will have their titles and certain phrases in all caps to add emotional emphasis. They stick out like a sore thumb and is a dead giveaway to articles that exist for clicks. Professional articles from reputable sites wouldn't resort to such gimmicks.  Also, reputable sites wouldn't use absurd and hysterical terms such as  "Master Plan" and "New World Order" (unless it was a reference to some New Order fan club I'm not aware of) as legitimate phrases.

There wasn't much of a article though. While people are entitled to their anti-Obama bias, one has to be reminded that Obama didn't mandate anyone to conform to Islam. Thus, the article is perpetrating a false claim. The article did link to a legitimate PBS piece though. Bogus news sites will often reference articles from legitimate source, but then horribly take them out of context. Yet, the article on Conservative Daily Post was actually a repost from a piece from The Political Insider.

The article from The Political Insider covered how students at the St. Cloud School District in Minnesota have made prayer accommodations for Muslim students. Again, the PBS article is referenced. This is true. However, the article then proceeded to make the  false claims that Christian Students were denied the right to pray. Thus, the article from TPI is perpetrating the false claim of a double-standard.

On one hand, I don't know how things are at Minnesota school districts, but with the vast majority of school districts, students have the right to prayer (just that the state can't sanction prayer. Religious beliefs operate on a individual basis). Making the claim that Christian students aren't allowed to pray is false. Students of other faiths can proceed as well. This also debunks the claim that prayer had been removed from school.

Within in civic setting, if a school district made exceptions for students of one faith, then these exceptions have to be made for all faiths. If Christian Students can pray on there free time or join after school religious groups, then those accommodations have to be met for students of other faiths as well. If you all sanctioned prayer in school again, it can't just be bound to that one faith. One can't just retroactively decide when these rules and exceptions are applied and to which groups. 

The claim about the students in Tennessee being forced to bow down to Allah doesn't have anything specific claim to it. There were no  reported cases of that event occurring. The picture referenced wasn't even taken on this continent, and was taken a few years before the supposed incident even occurred. While the school district in Minnesota made accommodations for Muslims students, they didn't force non-Muslim students to embrace these accommodations either. Non-Muslim students weren't forced to pray to Allah. The rights of Christian students or others were never infringed upon. The article perpetuated the false claim that Christian students can't pray in school, despite the contrary. The article and sites in question didn't try to hide their anti-Obama sentiments as well, playing into its bias. 

Bare Naked Islam
Holy Hell! Things could get a lot worse. The Snopes article referenced  Bare Naked Islam. The first article I checked out was "All about the Barack Hussein Obama Muslim connection to Common Core". First off, I though my shoddy web-design skills were bad! Yet, BNI is flooded with ads, click-bait, and memes  To say that BNI is poorly designed is a understatement. How is one able to navigate the site through all this crap!

Once you move past the rubbish website design, then your treated to a flood of conspiracy theories. Anyone who is familiar with my content knows how I feel about conspiracy theories. Revisiting this rough draft in the age of Covid only hardens my views on them. The article heavily parades Obama's secret Islamic connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Radical Islam (which he has no affiliation with). These claims could easily be debunked within a few minutes of research for those who actually bothered to exercise their critical thinking skills. Yet for many, the claims echoed by BNI became the gospel truth by those who use Google as a remote control and  blindly believe anything they read online.

Those unwilling to exercise their critical thinking skills  embraced these claims as fact simply because they "think" its true, no evidence needed. Again,  while Obama isn't beyond criticism; instead of forming opinions on him based on legitimate grievances based on rational interpretation of party policy, many did so from absurd claims with zero merit. Who's responsible when we pass off empty, sensationalist claims as fact?

How was Obama going to transform the country into a Islamic state? Via text-book passages that will accomplish this task simply by acknowledging that Islam exist. The "evidence" provided are pictures taken from school textbooks covering the history of Islam. Books about world history that I've read myself. That's right, I was reading my history book while others were playing video games or watching porn! Maybe I was actually the unlucky one!

Grains of Truth
The sources used to reinforce these claims were usually linked to other conspiracy-theory sites as well, so finding actual tangible evidence is virtually impossible. Their is a common theme to sites like BNI, Conservatives Daily, The Political Insider, etc. As absurd as these sites are, their claims do incorporate grains of truth in them. The St. Cloud school district made accommodations for Muslim students. Radical Islamic exist, and they have done very horrible things in this country in the past. They were behind 9/11 and various acts of terror in this country before and since. The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist organization. These groups embrace Wahabbism, which is a militant interpretation of Islam. It's the same brand of Islam embraced by Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Radical Islam is dangerous. I don't think anyone is denying that. All of this is true.

However, where these articles fall apart is when they start to promote their views using false claims, like promoting conspiracy theories trying to linking Obama to Radical Islam and his "master plan". This is the language one would find on InfoWars (and you DON'T want my opinion on Alex Jones!). They also fall apart as they imply that every Muslim is a radical Jihadist, despite Radical Islam being rejected by the vast majority of practicing Muslims. This isn't actually any different from any other religion. Extremist can be found in every group. Christianity has extremist to in the mold of the Westboro Baptist Church, along with various White-Supremacist groups that identify themselves as Christians. Buddhist extremist have been behind the genocide in Myanmar. Extremist within mainstream religion isn't something that's only restricted to Islam.

Also, public schools have classes about major world religions. However, these classes take a objective, non-biased look at these religions for educational purpose. It's goes against school policy to use education material about religion to promote or evangelize religion. Their has also been resistance to multicultural studies. This is why the  parents in Tennessee claimed that the students were forced to convert to Islam. From their perspective, even an objective, non-biased examination of Islam is indoctrination simply because its acknowledging its existence. This is where the vast majority of these charges originated. 

Bare Naked Islam is an conspiracy mill that uses fear as a tool to manipulate its readers. One could see a parallels to the Red Scare of the 1920's and 1950's. Was militant Communism a thing in this country. Yes it was. However, was it a organized political force that had the resources to even start a revolution (much less take over)? Far from it! This site is the modern equivalent of McCarthyism (yet again, Joseph McCarthy is a God to some, so I shouldn't be that surprised.)

Islam only makes up 0.8/0.9 of declared faiths in this country. That number alone makes the chances of a Islamic Revolution virtually non-existent. Combine that with the fact that the extremist fraction is a small percent of the total, then basically, your taking a small percent of a small percent. The vast majority of Muslims in this country fled there homelands after Sharia Law was implemented.

However, sites like Bare Naked Islam perpetrate the idea that the country is on the verge of a Islamic Revolution. Again, nobody is denying that Radical Islam doesn't exist or isn't a dangerous thing. They exist and their very dangerous. Attacks from them can happen in this country in the future.  However, the chances of a "Islamic Takeover" are about as real as a giant mutant lizard reeking havoc on Tokyo. While attacks by them have occurred on several occasions, the vast majority of extremists attacks in this country in the past 15 years have come from white supremacist.

Who Are These Outlets?
These sites have not been around for that long. Bare Naked Islam has apparently been around since the tail end of 2011 (according to Archive.org Wayback machine), while the Political Insider has been around since 2006. The Conservative Daily Post has been around since 2016. 

Looking at the about us page for Political Insider, it declares that they are a conservative outlet against "liberal media". On one hand, they don't mince their words. They get straight to the point. On the other hand why does a source have to be either Conservative or Liberal.  Can I just have a news without a political slants?

The about page for the Conservative Daily claims that they are a "independent" news organization that thrives on "truth". If truth is their priority, then why are they constantly flagged by the fact-checkers? Also, an outlet can't claim to be objective while being hyper-partisan at the same time. Their political preference is even in their name. Just saying. 

To Sum It Up
So far, the only thing that been under assault has been my intelligence.
These sites have not been around that long compared to there much more respected peers. However, what bothers me is that their are smart people I know who would eat up this drivel. They would embrace the sensationalist claims as the gospel truth. As such, the claims from the likes of Bare Naked Islam are held in the same light as something published by the AP, NPR, or the BBC.

One reaps what they sow, and corporate media have brought a lot of animosity upon themselves. People are justified when they say that they don't like corporate media. People are tired of news being treated as a product instead of a public service.  People are tired of filtered and watered-down news. People are tired of being treated as a demographic. Fact checkers have largely assumed the role of reporting news as a public service. However, with the rejection of  traditional media, many gravitated towards a source of news that is far more destructive than anything that they would have ever gotten from TV: social media.

Their was no validation of information. A random blogger is now as legitimate as the most experienced journalist. Many complained about how bias TV news is. Yet, on social media, people went to places that were far more biased than anything that they would have every gotten from the idiot box. The likes of WND, Newsmax, OAN, Briebart, and TheBlaze (upon countless others) are much more partisan than anything that came before it, and that's even when you include Fox News in the equation!

People became so desensitized to sensationalist clickbait that they are quick to declare a media conspiracy when corporate/traditional news doesn't report on absurd claims that they read or watched from any one of those sites. Most wouldn't know what legitimate journalism (ProPublica, Frontline) would look like if it hit them in the face. For many, a mostly unbiased source now becomes "hardcore Liberal Propaganda" simply because that person didn't like what they read from there. As such, anything that doesn't conform to their strong, but yet, misleading opinion becomes propaganda in their eyes.

Those operating the click-bait mills knows how naïve their audience is. They know that their audience will embrace any site that has the words "Liberty", "Freedom", "America", or "Christian" in its title. They will make the most outlandish claims and get away with it knowing that their audience will blindly believe anything that they publish. Essentially, they know that their audience is a bunch of gullible saps. They know that there readers aren't going to fact-check and validate their claims.

People who got their news from these sites formed hostile opinions based on false information. The claims echoed by them were taken as the gospel truth by their audience who embraced at face-value without batting a eye. Many will impulsively share this crap on their Facebook Timelines which will ultimately end up in my feed. My feed is too good for this garbage!

Articles of Interest
Were Tennessee Schoolchildren Forced to Bow Down to Allah? (SNOPES): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tennessee-schoolchildren-islam/

Conservative Daily Post <Media Bias Fact Check> (Media Bias Fact Check): https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/conservative-daily-post/

Bare Naked Islam <Media Bias Fact Check> (Media Bias Fact Check): https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/bare-naked-islam/

The Political Insider <Media Bias Fact Check> (Media Bias Fact Check): https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/political-insider/

JUST IN: Obama Just Mandated These 5 Schools To Pray In Muslim, Make Sure YOUR Kids Do NOT Go Here (Conservative Daily Post) : https://conservativedailypost.com/just-in-obama-just-mandated-these-5-schools-to-pray-in-muslim-make...

WHOA! This School Allows School Prayer, But Only For… (The Political Insider): https://thepoliticalinsider.com/whoa-school-allows-school-prayer/

All about the Barack Hussein Obama Muslim connection to Common Core (Bare Naked Islam) : https://barenakedislam.com/2015/08/05/all-about-the-barack-hussein-obama-muslim-connection-to-common...

ALABAMA: Parents demand social studies/history books with excessive emphasis on Islam be dropped (Bare Naked Islam) : https://barenakedislam.com/2013/12/14/alabama-parents-demand-social-studieshistory-books-with-excess...

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