When a Muslim makes the news for doing something violent, there is always one word linked to their religious affiliation: terrorist. When a white American makes the news for a similar crime, “victim” or “alleged” often appear, depending on the situation. This difference in how terror threats are handled by the media, and sheds a little light onto why these two names are hardly known: Glen Crawford and Eric Freight.
The two men are part of the infamous Klu Klux Klan and worked on making an X-ray device to release lethal levels of radiation onto Muslim-Americans, and then the president himself. Because Crawford and Freight are white American men, not Muslim-Americans their punishments are somewhat mild. Freight is about to go away for 97 months, and Crawford has yet to be given a sentence. None of this made the news. Even more shockingly, an FBI agent undercover helped them create this weapon.
That final fact means the device was pretty much meant to be debunked from the beginning, though no one seems upset or has even heard of this home grown terror. Even though the plan had been in action since 2013, no one made a big fuss. The device was even finished, yet still no media outlet bothered to raise the alarm against the KKK as they surely would have done against ISIS. Furthermore, the word “terrorist” immediately brings to mind someone in a turban, with a beard, and Muslim. This is partially due to how extremely diligently the media covers terrorist plots involving Muslim-Americans, and Muslims in general.
Even a Muslim walking past a biological plant where one might obtain biological weaponry, would raise the terror alarms. But, white terrorists in our society? They get a much lesser sentence. These two men were even planning to kill the president with this device. Even if the FBI had not been involved and the plan had succeeded.
The fact that this dastardly KKK terrorist plot has hardly even tickled media awareness is a big issue. Muslims set off the media’s hypersensitive stereotyping. When anyone other than a Muslim is in the news they are hardly ever, if ever, branded as “terrorists” no matter how violent and horrifying their crimes may have been. There is a cynical double standard to this. It deprives well-meaning Muslims of the innocence they have, and it gives it to the ill-meaning white Americans. Much like the Europeans who so viciously believed that the natives were savages, the American media is calling all Muslims savages based on who they are and what they look like and what they believe in.