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NYT: After Attacks on Muslims, Many Ask: Where Is the Outpouring?
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ClosingADoor
Member
Because it is further away from us. Same reason we don't really care that much about what happens to people in China, Indonesia or Russia. We don't feel connected to them like we do with France or the US for example.
It's really not that strange and happens with everything.
It's really not that strange and happens with everything.
Zantetsuken
Member
Selective outrage.
Air Zombie Meat
Member
Yeah the contrast in reactions is clear. It's always been this way though. People can't relate as much so theres a lack of sympathy.
PeskyToaster
Member
People expect those things to happen in the Middle East.
Palette Swap
Member
Pretty much. We percieve them as being more estraneous to us. I mean, the US has been bombarding and killing middle eastern civilians for like what, 40 years now? And no one in america seems to give a shit since they're gonna elect a president with interventionist policies once again.
We didn't need iraq terrorist bombings to know this shit. Palestine is another example that was there basically forever. Africa's genocides is another.
Article is lazy as fuck.
It has always been like that imo. When something happens in a western country it gets more coverage in western media than when something happens in africa, south america, asia, ... And pretty sure it's the other way around also. And that's no so very strange tbh.
Doesn't mean I personally don't care, because I do, a great deal.
Doesn't mean I personally don't care, because I do, a great deal.
Turin Turambar
Member
Partly, because where there is a bomb attack in Paris, that's news. In the sense of news: something new.
Dozens of deaths in Iraq after a bombing isn't new, there has been so many terror attacks there in the last 10 years. Insecurity there isn't "news", it's business as usual.
Dozens of deaths in Iraq after a bombing isn't new, there has been so many terror attacks there in the last 10 years. Insecurity there isn't "news", it's business as usual.
Whilst this sounds reasonable, there is a deeper undercurrent you may be brushing under the carpet.
The demonization of Muslims is widespread around the world.
The west has become almost psychopathic in its lack of empathy with the Muslim world.
PeskyToaster
Member
Wasn't that all over the news and Michelle Obama held up a hashtag?
Pretty much. At least based on my experience with people who don't keep up with whats going on in the world. The consensus is that the Middle East is just a place where this happens all the time, so its no news.
SliceSabre
Banned
This is the honest answer.
I mean everyday multiple times a day we hear about someone in the Middle East blowing themselves up and killing a bunch of people or shooting up a marketplace. We don't pay a lot of attention to that cause we expect it.
It is just like how we generally don't pay much attention to the shootings going on in Chicago because that's what we expect.
And that's the thing. Nobody would think it's a problem is people didn't care as long as it didn't mean that people in the West would keep voting for people that actively fuck up the region.
Not close enough to relate to the suffering but close enough to kill and murder.
And the interest died quicker than kony 2012
After the fact, and she had to explain why it was news worthy
gutterboy44
Member
It is the main reason my Reddit feed is filtered to all hell these days. Anytime it is Muslim (they don't even need to be part of ISIS in the case of Orlando) on non-muslim (the minority of attacks) there is nothing but floods of anti Islam hate speech, etc. But when the majority of ISIS attacks happen, against Muslims, it is fucking crickets. No half dozen posts across multiple /r/'s on the front page. No outcry of disgust. Just a minor blip. This is pretty representative of social media and the media as a whole. Death tolls are obsessed over like high scores at an arcade when white people are being killed. But as soon as the people dying are muslim.. eh oh well just some mid east shit going down, no big deal. It is fucking disgusting. Don't pretend to give a fuck about combating ISIS if you don't even care about the people they victimize the most. This makes the rhetoric by Trump that much more alarming. Stoking these fears and making it about a war against Islam is the worst thing that could happen.
DiipuSurotu
Banned
Justice should be universal.
Emotion isn't and shouldn't, however.
Emotion isn't and shouldn't, however.
There it is.
If a mosque blew up in the US we would see a lot more support. These events just happened top far away and seem to happen too often to warrants conversation here.
What an obnoxious article. Great, let's shame people for not starting a #prayforBangladesh twitter tag. Feigning concern over a tragedy. I roll my eyes at any #prayfor____. No one is actually even praying. Not to mention what the hell is that going to do? And while I may not have seen a #prayforBangladeshTurkeywhatever hashtag, honestly I can't be bothered to remember shit like that, I do recall individual tags for both those events and when I clicked on them people were offering their condolences in tweets so... Not sure what exactly this journalist is looking for.
PeskyToaster
Member
Well what was my or anyone else's awareness going to do about it? If only she intimately knew someone who had some sort of power to fight terrorists.
Familienoberhauptvogel
Banned
Technically the middle east is closer to Europe than the US. Something happening in the US doesn't actually hit too close in Europe if you ask me.
Same with Russia, something like 80% of the people living in Russia live in the European regions of the country.
I think that of course it's partly that people have innate bias toward Muslims, but I think also that these sorts of attacks seem to be more... regular... in countries like Iraq, and thus people get desensitized to it. Doesn't make it right, but I think it's a combination rather than all one thing here.
I think the greater and longer lasting point here is in the section I bolded. Islamophobia is an irrational consequence of these attacks (both in the west and abroad) and there's not enough awareness of how it is affecting actual Muslims and Muslim nations.
if only he wasn't hamstringed by 50 percent of the government that could give a shit about black or brown people
It's unfortunate, but yeah, this is a big part of it. From another thread:
Saw this on twitter, map of every car bombing in Baghdad since 2003.
If Facebook posts (as someone mentioned earlier) draped themselves in Iraqi colors to show solidarity, that would be their permanent Avatar. That's how fucked up this situation is.
And there are people that will defend the invasion to their last breath.
Yeah, that's a problem. I remember reading the headlines about stuff in Iraq and not paying much attention; because every article was basically the same.
"Blast, emergency response, government condemnation, someone claims responsibility etc." Read something like that 5 times a year in the same country for 5 years and it gets repetitive. We also see it to a certain extent in the US; ever since Columbine and Sandy Hook each shooting has had less of an effect on the psyche of Americans. It feels like it has become a regular occurrence.
You're kidding me right? ha wow. Just...wow. That's so not true.
MisterFalcon
Member
Is there a similar map for every bomb and shell fired by Saddam's army in his various campaigns against Kurds and Shia ?
mcz117chief
Member
Every Sunday during the mass we pray out loud for the victims of the terrorist attacks, suffice to say we have a lot of praying to do unfortunatelly and we don't distinguish between Christians and non-Christians.
There are people that care, not everyone is indifferent about this, even in the western world.
There are people that care, not everyone is indifferent about this, even in the western world.
GrizzleBoy
Banned
Alligatorjandro
Banned
People just don't care
VenomousCoffee
Member
What is that? You're saying people are born with a hatred of this specific religion? Or that there is something about Islam that people are compelled by some inborn trait to hate?
jm89
Member
Yet Muslims around the world are expected to care if something happens in the West. Or else they are supporters or as some would prefer to call them passive terrorists.
Blueingreen
Member
This is ludicrous, most of these attacks occur in politically socially, economically unstable countries, terror attacks of that scale are far more prominent in these nations than they are in the west, to put it bluntly it's not news. You may as well ask why #Blacklivesmatter and the media in general turns a blind eye to black on black crime that has plagued African American communities for the better part of 5 decades, and is far more prominent than a kid being shot by a police officer, the latter is news the former is not.
kittoo
Cretinously credulous
As a mental exercise-
Would 10 US soldiers dying in Afghanistan in an attack be as big a news as 10 dying on US soil in a terrorist attack?
If not, maybe its just because it has more to do with 'common' and 'expected' than anything else.
I remember it was pretty big news worldwide when Mumbai attacks happened in 2008 (not as big as Paris, but it was a different time too). West has little cultural connection with India but it still was big news.
Would 10 US soldiers dying in Afghanistan in an attack be as big a news as 10 dying on US soil in a terrorist attack?
If not, maybe its just because it has more to do with 'common' and 'expected' than anything else.
I remember it was pretty big news worldwide when Mumbai attacks happened in 2008 (not as big as Paris, but it was a different time too). West has little cultural connection with India but it still was big news.
No, I meant that so many people have internalized the whole Muslims are far more likely to be extremists idea, inspired in part by attacks like 9/11 and the France attacks, that for them the idea that a Muslim country gets attacked by terrorists is just proper comeuppance or they simply choose not to care. It's fucked up, but that's the environment we live in now encouraged partly by our politicians. Just look at Brexit.
But it's also due to how frequent these types of attacks are in Islamic countries, since Iraq for example simply is not stable right now. So of course people get desensitized to these things, like Americans have to gun violence.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
This, and paired with the following. 80% of the world's terrorist attacks happen in just 5 countries.
It's still terrible, don't get me wrong.
With the exception of India, all of the terrorist attacks in the other countries listed in that pic were perpetrated by Islamist terrorist groups. In India most terrorist attacks came from the Hizbul Mujahideen, but in 2013 there was an attack by a Maoist group as well.
DrunkShogun
Member
Not their problem. I'm Muslim and I'm not expecting them to report the news with as much attention as I would expect the east to say much about the west having problems.
Yes they do. Look at what happened after Paris, or after Orlando.
I'd argue the reason that the people who are the most vocal about attacks on U.S. soil don't say anything about victims in the Middle East is because, as far as they're concerned, "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim". Anything that brings their numbers down, they'll quietly allow it to continue, unless they can use it as a means to stoke more fear and hatred, of course.
Probably the same reason you hear certain types of news anchors mentioning that ISIS has killed "many Christians and Muslims", because even though Christians are only a small fraction of the victims, they're lives are automatically more important, and can use that as an excuse to further their narrative of self-victimisation at the hands of foreigners.
Probably the same reason you hear certain types of news anchors mentioning that ISIS has killed "many Christians and Muslims", because even though Christians are only a small fraction of the victims, they're lives are automatically more important, and can use that as an excuse to further their narrative of self-victimisation at the hands of foreigners.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
In this age of satellites and worldwide travel I really question if this continues to be true. The world has become astoundingly small to us. Think it has more to do with people who look like our majority. That is, white people sympathizing more with other white people.
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