A Small Victory for Pro-White Activism
By • 5/21/08An annoying habit of contemporary news reporting is irresponsible ascriptions of nationality. Up until a few decades ago, to be an Englishman or a German meant more than just inhabiting England or Germany. Rather, it meant that you were a member of an ethnic group that had lived in that country for centuries. While the traditional meaning of national designations lingers, for most reporters today anyone who happens to be in Germany, whether he was born in Afghanistan, Nigeria, or Peru, is a German.
The new meaning of national designations is annoying not merely because it erodes ethnic identity, but also because when one reads a story about a crime committed by an “Italian,” one never knows whether the criminal was really Italian or not. The press daily attributes crimes to people of European nationalities when the criminals are no more European than Osama Bin Laden or Robert Mugabe.
Alex Lee, who has written for White America, protested one such slander against the German people by the BBC and actually succeeded in getting that mighty oracle to clarify itself. Lee’s example should inspire all pro-white activists.
The title of the story that Lee protested attributed the stabbing of an Orthodox rabbi to a “German.” However, the actual criminal was far from being a neo-Nazi skinhead. The corrected version of the story is here.
Lee wrote to the BBC:
In regards to your article on the “German” stabbing the rabbi: The title of this article is misleading and borderline slanderous. Implying that this Afghani Muslim is an ethnic German through the title of the article is fallacious and confusing to readers. A more appropriate and clear title would have been something like: “Muslim in Germany Jailed for Stabbing Rabbi.” The content of the article was fine, but please try to be clearer with your titles, especially when it comes to the difference between ethnicity and citizenship.
Alex Lee, The United States of America
The BBC replied:
Dear Mr Lee,
Thank you for your comments on the story below which have been noted. The headline has now been altered to better reflect the story’s content. Thanks once again for your interest in the site.
Well done, Alex Lee!
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Kudos to Mr. Lee for calling the BBC’s hand on this. For a particularly appalling example of this phenomenon of misleading ethnic ascription, check out the Washington Post’s coverage of the “French” riots of October and November 2005. This orgy of arson involved the torching of almost 9,000 vehicles and numerous schools, youth centers, and police stations.
Here is the Post’s headline for its story about the worst violence France had seen since World War II:
“Rage of French Youth Is a Fight for Recognition”
The racial makeup of the troublemakers was not acknowledged until the middle sentence of the sixth paragraph, and even then the reporter felt obliged to add an exculpatory:
“The youths rampaging through France’s poorest neighborhoods are the French-born children of African and Arab immigrants, the most neglected of the country’s citizens.”
The complete article can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR2005110501515.html
Good work by Mr. Lee. I am surprised that the politically-correct BBC would actually amend their headline in response to a complaint.
I’ve noticed this trend of obscuring nationality since around the time of 9/11. I noticed then that headlines told us things like ‘Canadians arrested in terror plot’, leading us to imagine actual Canadians were plotting terror attacks, when of course the suspects were from the Middle East. Then we had news stories referring to the ‘Frenchman’ Zacarias Moussaoui, and headlines about the ‘Louisiana man’ involved in a terror plot, who turned out to be a Saudi named Yasser Esam Hamdi.
I think the point is to render the whole idea of nationality meaningless. After all, if anybody residing in the UK is a Brit, or anybody with a Canadian passport is a Canadian, nationality is no more than a descriptor of one’s area of residence, not of ancestry and race as it should be. It’s stripping terms like ‘British’ and ‘German’ and French’ of all their meaning. Unfortunately for some time we’ve had people proclaiming that literally anybody can be an American; the word ‘American’ describes no particular race or people, according to those who buy that notion.
The same applies within the United States of course.
Headlines about terrorists ignore their Muslim religion or Mideastern ethnic backgrounds “Fairfax Man Detained In Terror Investigation”, “6 New Yorkers Indicted”; headlines about criminals, even descriptions about criminals on the loose, ignore their black or mestizo race, etc.
Thanks for the kudos, everyone! I rely on the BBC a lot for glancing at world news, and while I often find articles that are relevant for race realists, I occasionally also find articles like this one that stink of politically-correct editing and/or journalism. This example was so absurd, I had to call BBC on their “mistake”. From now on, I will repeat this complaint to any news outlet that does something like this. The BBC’s swift response and correction was indeed shocking to me, but in a good way! Who knows? Maybe this impact can be repeated even in the US media.
It’s about time that the Germans are given some justice. To correct the misleading articleS regarding ethnicity is long overdue.. The media has a (focused)pattern in which, all too often, the German stigma is applied..as it was in this case. With Europe wide open to all the dregs of the world, having no borders, and as here, catering to the minorities, those who wish to keep the Germans down in the cellar rejoice in the opportunity to call all residents in Germany ‘German’ NOT SO. Sincere thanks for sticking up for our people!!!