{"id":288064,"date":"2017-01-01T06:02:53","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T05:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-fell-for-nazi-manufactured-white-genocide-scandal\/"},"modified":"2017-01-01T06:02:53","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T05:02:53","slug":"media-fell-for-nazi-manufactured-white-genocide-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/media-fell-for-nazi-manufactured-white-genocide-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Fell for Nazi-Manufactured \u2018White Genocide\u2019 Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Breitbart:<\/a><\/p>\n

Breitbart<\/strong> (12\/25\/16<\/a>) finds a hook to push the “white genocide” canard.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A \u201cTwitter<\/b> controversy\u201d broke out on Christmas Day after leftist Drexel University professor George Ciccariello-Maher tweeted out, \u201cAll I Want for Christmas Is White Genocide\u201d to his 11,000 followers. The tweet\u2013since deleted\u2013was a play on the white supremacist myth of a \u201cWhite Genocide,\u201d a canard<\/a> that whites are under threat from interracial dating and diversity.<\/p>\n

Online Nazis (sometimes euphemistically referred to by their prefered marketing descriptor, the \u201calt-right\u201d) quickly pounced<\/a>. The faux Twitter<\/b> outrage was further stoked by the far-right online tabloid Breitbart <\/b>(12\/25\/16<\/a>), which ran the story without any of the essential context (though it took the opportunity to denounce Venezuela’s \u201ccommunist government,\u201d for some reason). Before one could catch up to the substance of the \u201ccontroversy,\u201d it was asserted to be a controversy as such.<\/p>\n

Much like George Hamilton is famous for being famous, \u201cTwitter<\/b> backlash\u201d stories are often controversial for being controversial. So long as enough people are tweeting outrage\u2014regardless of their motive or Nazi status\u2014the story becomes one through sheer assertion. Someone is \u201cunder fire,\u201d \u201cprovoking outrage,\u201d causing \u201cbacklash\u201d\u2014no matter if this fire or outrage or backlash is merited, or sincere. What matters is there\u2019s controversy, and this must be breathlessly covered.<\/p>\n

In an effort to \u201cboth sides\u201d the issue, corporate media indulged racist concern trolling over what, as anyone familiar with the term knows, is a white supremacist panic. Those stoking the outrage, namely Breitbart<\/b> and hordes of online Nazis, know that the term means interracial relationships and diversity programs, not an actual genocide. Rather than investigate the outrage, its motives and its proper context, most media outlets\u2014and, initially, Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s employer Drexel University themselves\u2014reflexively framed the issue as a leftist professor literally calling for genocide, without noting the cynical origins of the controversy.<\/p>\n

As FAIR has noted several times before, headlines matter as much if not more than article text. 60 percent of Americans don\u2019t read past the headline<\/a>, and the same percentage<\/a> share articles on social media without actually clicking on them. People\u2019s impressions are formed by how issues are framed\u2014how they are initially presented\u2014and from scanning these headlines one is given the impression Ciccariello-Maher is a pro-genocide zealot:<\/p>\n