New York City has not only just experienced yet another jihad terror attack; it also has just given us a particularly revolting example of the leftist tactic of DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. In New York and in the establishment media today, when Islamic jihadis strike, it’s another instance of “Islamophobia” and Muslims are the victims.
New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani was full of righteous indignation. “Yesterday,” he wrote early on Sunday afternoon, “white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are. What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”
Anyone reading that would get the impression that “white supremacist Jake Lang” or his followers were the ones who attempted to “use an explosive device and hurt others.” That would have been a reasonable assumption if one formed one’s opinions solely on the basis of establishment media reporting about this incident.
In reality, while Mamdani doesn’t name the perpetrators, the violence came from two Muslims who came to protest against Lang’s group, and lobbed an IED at them while screaming “Allahu akbar.” None of the coverage, however, talks about Islamic jihad violence. Instead, the establishment media, like Mamdani, works hard to give people an idea of this incident that was just the opposite of what really happened.
Your friend and mine, Kevin Downey Jr., tells me that “the local NYC radio news stations are framing the attack as a ‘white supremacist’ rally. The news station is 1010 WINS. They are hitting the story every eight minutes or so.”
CBS News’s Sunday afternoon story on the incident begins by giving the details of the “anti-Islam protest” under the headline “Improvised explosive found at protests near Manhattan’s Gracie Mansion, Mamdani’s official residence, NYPD says,” giving the impression that the “anti-Islam” protesters targeted Mamdani.
Only in the sixth paragraph, at a point where most readers have stopped reading, does CBS get around to noting that “a counter-protester, identified as 18-year-old Emir Balat of Pennsylvania, lit and threw an ignited device toward the protesters.” Then in the seventh paragraph, we learn that “in videos depicting the chaos, a man appears to yell ‘Allahu Akbar’ just as Balat throws the device that Tisch described as ‘a jar wrapped in tape, importantly with nuts, bolts, and screws along with a hobby fuse.’”
That’s what’s known as an Improvised Explosive Device, or IED, unless the person throwing it is a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” in New York City. Other media outlets, meanwhile, were just as bad or worse than CBS. NBC New York ran with the headline “Mayor Mamdani was home when protesters lit device outside Gracie Mansion,” as if he had been the target, and while it named Jake Lang, it identified the two Muslims who actually threw the IED, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, only as “two young men from Pennsylvania,” once again giving the impression that they were part of Lang’s group.
The New York Daily News went into full passive-voice mode, so as to avoid naming the perpetrators: “An Upper East Side anti-Muslim rally led by Jan. 6 rioter and far-right influencer Jake Lang erupted into chaos as Lang and his cronies were confronted by scores of counter-protesters outside of Gracie Mansion on Saturday — the home of Mayor Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor — and a smoking improvised device was thrown, sending demonstrators scrambling for cover.”
The “smoking improvised device was thrown” — we don’t get to hear anything about who threw it until the fourth paragraph, when we learn that the perpetrator was “a man.” We only get the actual names of the bombers in the eighth and ninth paragraphs.
ABC News went even lower. The headline on its home page on Saturday afternoon was “Police say improvised explosive device was thrown at NYC mayor’s home,” which is stating directly that Mamdani was the target. The story itself says “outside” his home rather than “at” his home, which is a bit better, and actually leads with information about Balat and Kayumi saying they watched ISIS videos before deciding to target the protest, but that doesn’t erase the misleading headline.
The Daily Mail was just as bad, with the headline “Man arrested after throwing ‘nail bombs’ at home of NYC mayor,” once again misleading readers into thinking that evil “Islamophobes” targeted the poor Muslim mayor.
Related: A Far-Left NewsGuard ‘Fact Checker’ Asked Me Some Questions. Here Are the Answers I Gave Her.
All this misdirection had its intended effect. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-Clueless) thundered: “This is pure, blatant Islamophobia. This sort of hateful violence must be universally condemned, and those responsible should be apprehended and prosecuted. I’m glad the Mayor and his family are safe.” Far-left New York state Senator Liz Krueger wrote: “New York is no place for anti-Muslim hate or any other kind of prejudice. We don’t need out-of-state provocateurs sowing fear, division, and violence in our city.”
Krueger was commenting on the New York Daily News story, proving once again that burying the unwelcome facts far down in the story is a tactic that the establishment media uses because it works. And even if she did read the whole story, the Daily News says nothing about the jihadis screaming “Allahu akbar,” and quotes Lang to tell the parts of the story that it wants readers to discount: “’I just survived an assassination attempt by these two Muslim men,’ Lang posted on X. Oh, well, he’s a “Jan. 6 rioter and far-right influencer,” so he must be lying or at least exaggerating, right? That’s what the Daily News wants you to think.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many people who vote for leftists and think they’re doing the right thing by doing so? The way this story has been treated shows how the left recruits its cadres: with lies, deception, and deflection.
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