WARNING: triggers ahead. Sexual violence, xenophobia, paranoia, religious bigotry — you name it.
There’s a ‘news’ story out there that’s circulating through the right wing media machine. The details keep changing to stay ahead of facts — a lie can go halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its boots — but there are millions of Americans who have heard it and believe it.
They also know the “Liberal Media” refuses to cover the story because it doesn’t fit their narrative and it would be a problem for Hillary Clinton if they reported it. Clinton, of course, is going to make the problem “500 times worse.”
It’s all over the usual right-wing ‘news’ channels. Sean Hannity keeps pushing it on his radio show and elsewhere. Fox News is running with it. They’re using it as part of a larger agenda to discredit Clinton, Obama, and Democrats in general. They want people to believe Clinton and Obama are going to flood the country with terrorists. They’re using it to ‘prove’ the “liberal media” is covering up things and lying about others — as for example when they tell the truth about Donald Trump.
The right wing media machine has apparently decided that one way (maybe the only way) to get Trump elected and keep Congress in GOP hands is to deliberately scare America into voting for conservatives. They don’t care what this will do to the country as long as it gets conservatives elected.
Here’s the story they’re using as part of this effort. Warning — it’s pretty graphic. Here’s how Pamela Geller reported the ‘story’.
Here are the details as reported by a Twin Falls [Idaho] resident-
The little girl being born very premature she is less developed for her age.
The little girl was at the FAWNBROOK apartment buildings where both her parents and grandmother reside. She was playing in between those two apartment units when 3 boys (from 2 Syrian refugee families, ages 8, 10, 13) pulled a knife on her, held it to her throat, forced her into the laundry unit, stripped her naked, raped, and urinated on her. The 13 year old “coached” the younger boys as he videoed. Due to age restraint the boys could not ejaculate but did urinate on her.
The details keep changing — it turns out they are refugees but not from Syria — but the right wing has chosen to run with this as far as it will take them. Here’s a few more versions: Breitbart, Louder with Crowder, WND, National Review (Michelle Malkin), and so on.
Fox News is in on it, of course.
An alleged sexual assault on a five-year-old special needs girl has put a small Idaho city at the center of the debate over the Obama administration’s move to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees.
Much of what occurred in the June 2 incident is unclear, clouded by emotion and rumor and sealed from public record due to the suspects’ ages. At a raucous public meeting Monday, dozens of residents of the city of 44,000 voiced their concerns after word had spread that young Syrian refugees had gang-raped a little girl at knifepoint, defiling her in unspeakable ways.
emphasis added
There has been some push back, but its nowhere near as comprehensive as the right wing effort, and it reinforces the story by repeating it.
The Washington Post has taken a stab at debunking it. As per:
‘I’m looking at Drudge: “Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho” – all false’
...The problem, as Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury explained at Monday’s council meeting, was that large portions of the prevailing narrative were false.
The misinformation was so potent, the chief would later tell The Washington Post, that it threatened to compromise this sexual assault investigation as well as others in the future.
Now it was up to the chief, in only his sixth month on the job, to set the record straight.
“The No. 1 priority is the victim,” Kingsbury said. “We can’t forget this. We have a young girl who has been victimized.”
But, he added: “There’s a lot of disinformation on social media. I don’t know if they made it up or what, but it’s just not true.”
The Idaho Statesman has also been following the story.
UPDATED: Story of Syrian refugees raping Idaho girl is wrong, prosecutor says
TWIN FALLS
Authorities are denying reports that Syrians gang-raped a child at knife-point in a Twin Falls apartment complex earlier this month, saying the false claims are being spread to incite anti-refugee sentiments.
“There were no Syrians involved, there was no knife involved, there was no gang-rape,” Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said Monday morning.
His comments largely refute several differing accounts about the incident circulating on anti-refugee resettlement and conspiracy websites and anti-Muslim blogs. Most of those accounts claim a group of Syrian refugees sexually assaulted a mentally disabled girl at knife-point June 2 in the laundry facilities of Fawnbrook Apartments, a low-income housing complex in Twin Falls, and that the attack was celebrated by the perpetrators’ families as city officials orchestrated a cover-up.
Investigators and the prosecutor were quick to dismiss nearly all those claims Monday. Loebs said he didn’t want to “fan the flames of anti-Syrian refugee people” but suspects the false reports are the work of a local group opposed to refugee resettlement who hoped to stir up trouble by claiming the incident involved Syrian refugees who committed a violent sexual assault.
emphasis added
If you have friends who are caught in the right wing media bubble, they’ve all probably heard this fabrication, and take it as more proof confirming America is going to hell and the liberal media is covering it up. (And if you haven’t heard this story yet, that ‘proves’ it.)
The legitimate media has been largely silent on this because the assault story doesn’t hold up on examination — but the hysteria being deliberately generated by it is starting to get their attention. They have a real problem trying to figure out how to handle something as outrageous as this.
Much is (finally!) being made of Donald Trump’s near constant lying and his fear-mongering. The only real difference between Trump and the rest of the right wing-o-sphere is that Trump has just cranked it up to eleven. As the election campaign continues, look for them to ramp up their own efforts to keep up with Trump.
It seems pretty clear that they’ve decided the strategy they’re going to use to try to hang on to political power involves ramping up anti-muslim sentiments, paranoia over terrorism, lies, slander, fear-mongering, hysteria over guns, and anything else that will play to mob psychology. The obsession with “Radical Islam” is part of the game plan.
All their talk about principles, moral values, patriotism, the constitution — it’s all bogus. At the end of the day, it’s all about winning by whatever means possible. No scruples. None.
Scott R. Kurtz is a guy who makes a living drawing cartoons, and it’s usually fun and games at his website. But… his grandparents grew up in Germany, and what they taught him, including about guns, is starting to look scarily relevant.
...When I got older I would learn and understand that my Grandparents watched the rise of Hitler. Watched as he and his party invaded their country, divided their people, and drafted their young into the war. My grandfather was drafted into that war against his will at gunpoint and he carried the horrors of it to his grave.
My grandmother still has a car parked outside her apartment at the age of 92 despite the fact that she probably shouldn’t be driving. And I asked her once why she still needed it and paid for parking.
“You never know when you’ll have to go.” She said. I laughed and assured her that that could never happen here in America. Not now.
“That’s what we said” was her response to me.
This website is supposed to be a place to come to escape. To forget your troubles and laugh for a little bit. But my father constantly reminds me that the biggest part of my job is making people think. So today, I’m sorry but I’m going to ask you to think a little bit.
Because for the first time in forever, I’m started to get scared.
Because my grandmother was right. And my grandfather was right. No guns. Never guns. And it could happen in America. Right now.
I’m starting to believe it could absolutely happen here.