The Islamophobia network’s media far outweighs progressive media in reach

Evidence

There is a vast and well-funded right-wing media complex that spans legacy media such as Fox News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, the New York Post, and online platforms. In the digital age, bloggers such as Pamela Geller have risen to prominence, as noted in Chapter 7. Further, the Right has been involved in the production of documentaries that are widely distributed. For instance, the Clarion Project has financed and distributed a number of documentary films. In 2008, in the lead-up to the elections, a DVD copy of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West was inserted into seventy different newspapers and mailed to 28 million voters in swing states. The Third Jihad was shown to New York Police Department (NYPD) officers as part of their training. The Clarion project was also responsible for a slick documentary called Honor Diaries that features a long list of native informants including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was also the film’s executive producer. Hirsi Ali also produced the Dutch film Submission, which similarly peddles imperial feminist tropes. Because so many foundations fund the activities of the Islamophobia network on a global scale, their media are significantly larger and more powerful than those of progressives. In the figure, the boxes representing progressive and right-wing media are the same size, but they are by no means equal in terms of resources or public impact as of this writing. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 766

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SHARE: The fact that a DVD was mailed to 28 million swing-state voters in 2008 is a striking concrete detail a politics-obsessed friend would relish.

Related

• Election-season mass DVD distribution delivered anti-Muslim propaganda to swing voters (similarity 0.85)
• Twenty-eight million swing-state voters received an anti-Islam DVD in 2008. (similarity 0.84)
• A coordinated 28-million-DVD smear campaign targeted swing-state voters in 2008. (similarity 0.80)
• Progressive media also contain liberal Islamophobia despite hosting dissenting voices (similarity 0.79)