Now this is something that is very interesting. An article in Today’s Washington Post talks about Little Green Footballs and the altered Reuters’ photo. When you get towards the end of the article, a side of LGF that many of us knew, but was never really talked about in the mainstream media, is talked about:
Not everyone, though, is a fan. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights organization often vilified on Johnson’s blog, calls Little Green Footballs “a vicious, anti-Muslim hate site . . . that has unfortunately become popular.”
The irony, Hooper says, is that if the same kind of “hatred” that appears on LGF appeared on Muslim sites, it soon would be used by LGF’s fans to justify their worldview.
Like many politically themed blogs, Little Green Footballs doesn’t always traffic in subtlety and nuance. Dissenting points of view often are dismissed as “idiotarian” or “LLL” (for “loony liberal left”), and Islam is mockingly referred to as “RoP,” meaning “religion of peace.”
Hooper says the Reuters incident is unfortunate in itself, but says such sites as Little Green Footballs use such lapses “as a club against the entire mainstream media. Their line is basically that if one freelance photographer alters a photo, then everything Israel does must be justified. Or if one of the sentences that Dan Rather once uttered wasn’t correct, then the media is corrupt and Dan Rather’s whole career is rotten to the core.”
The FBI, according to Hooper, recently investigated several threats of physical harm against Muslims posted by Little Green Footballs readers.
Johnson acknowledges the investigation but says Hooper’s organization initiated the complaints to try to stifle free speech on his blog. And Johnson names the Council on American-Islamic Relations as one of the groups he’s referring to when he talks about the undue influence of Arab-funded organizations on American society and the media.
Hooper most likely hit the nail on the head with this complaint. Take a few minutes and visit right wing blogs or political forums and one thing is constant – the hatred towards Middle Eastern people. They believe these people should be tortured simply because “they are brown”. They make cute little names for them like “mooslims”, yet they are the first to yell about their tolerance. Of course they are just trying to justify their hatred by saying this.
While saying things on the internet is not the same as actions in real life, they do have real life implications. Think of the people who read these type of posts and get enraged at Middle Eastern people as a whole simply because these authors do such a good job at lumping them all together. I wonder if any soldiers who are suspected of killing innocent Iraqis ever visited these sites. This is the new form of hate being bred on the internet and law enforcement needs to really be on the look out for influences in this. Sure these blogs and posters have a right to free speech, but Muslims, who are American citizens, have a right to life and liberty and be free from persecution because of religion or skin color.