Racism and Bigotry

Mainstream media seems to detest the active presence on the Internet of bloggers, interfering with their professional investigations searching out stories and printing reliable versions of events. But it seems that when on occasion, news items are picked up and circulated by bloggers who offer their version and interpretation of events through clever sleuthing, the professionals are not above using those stories, with their own spin, without attribution.

Professional jealousies. And withering scorn for the untrustworthy and irritatingly exasperating presence of on-line bloggers beating them at their own game. Characterizing the bloggers as rank amateurs, unlettered and unprofessional. And if they're all of that and more, then how is it possible to give them credit where credit is due?

The blog site Blazingcatfur.blogspot.com was a little put out with the unfairness of it all when the National Post picked up an item that emanated from a source other than the reporter who signed off on it: Stewart Bell. And so, Blazingcatfur puckishly sent an irate letter and an invoice to indicate annoyance with that lack of professionalism:

Dear Mr. Bell, your story in todays National Post entitled "Ex-KKK leader featured on Muslim group's website" is why people are sick of the the Dead Tree Tree media. Your story on the Muslim group CASMO was lifted directly from our blogs at Sassywire and Blazingcatfur respectively.Our posts appeared on April 5 2011 a full 6 days before your "me too" effort. One would think you would have at least had the decency to credit your sources.

Sassywire in fact deserves full credit for this story.

An invoice in the amount of $1000.00 dollars will be issued shortly for which we expect full payment for our services.

Thank you,

Blazingcatfur

And the follow-up to that was the Canadian Jewish Congress alerting Toronto-area police to a hate crime, with the Canadian Shia Muslims Organization posting not one, but two videos on their site - dedicated in support of "multiculturalism" and "interfaith dialogue" - of none other than far-right former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke expounding on his anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

David Duke was present as a collaborator-guest in Tehran when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously hosted a 2006 Holocaust denial conference, inviting participation from all the world's scholars and academics, deniers and racists who support the quasi-alternative-reality that the Holocaust simply did not occur, and was a pretext for the creation of the State of Israel.

Which State of Israel Iran's theocratic Islamic Republic and social theorists like David Duke dedicated to white power and racism would dearly love to dislodge from the geography of the Middle East. The two videos, after having had a solid presence on the Shia Muslim web site suddenly disappeared, although the York Region Police are intent on "moving ahead with it as a full-scale investigation" into propagating hate.

That the online journal The American Muslim has condemned the Canadian Shia Muslims Organization for its clasping to its bosom of the racist right, classifying it now as being among "the Muslim lunatic fringe", is a welcome sign that certainly not all Muslim groups are so tainted with hatred and bigotry.