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The Islamophobia Fear Factory And The Billionaires Who Pay For It

Amy Goodman and Yasmine Taeb from the Center for American Progress discuss Taeb's recent report on who buys Islamophobia and their motives for doing it.

With Islamophobia at the front and center of the news day after day, the Center for American Progress updated their 2011 report outlining who buys the Islamophobes and promotes them in order to understand how to tamp it down.

From the transcript:

So, as Amy has mentioned and as you played the introductory video, since 2001, there has been over $57 million that’s been contributed to this fearmongering, anti-Muslim, anti-Islam organizations by eight very wealthy donors. What we’re trying to do and what was part of our recommendations is, obviously we’re trying to identify not just the funders, but also the organizations, the activists, the misinformation experts and all the politicians that are intimately connected to this network. We’re trying, one, to dry up the money.

Eight large donors are responsible for the shameless and ceaseless fearmongering around Islam in the United States. They are Donors Capital and Donors Trust, the Scaife Foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, William Rosenwald Family Fund, Middle Road Foundation, & Abstraction Fund, Russell Berrie Foundation, Fairbrook Foundation, Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker Foundation and Charitable Trust, and Alan and Hope Winters Family Foundation.

Here's what they create:

So, for example, we know that the effect of the anti-Muslim hysteria that this network generates is in an uptick in the number of hate crimes. To give you an example, for instance, in the aftermath of the hysteria that was created over the construction of the so-called Ground Zero mosque in New York City, hate crimes in New York City against Muslims in 2010 were 300 percent higher than they were in 2009. And again, we’re seeing this now, whether it was in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings or in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack and the rise in ISIS, etc. I think shedding light on this network was something that we wanted to do in 2011 in the first report, but in this second report we detailed how the policies, the discriminatory policies that this network is promoting, is in fact hurting the lives of average Americans.

Here's an example of the damage they do. Wingnut Ralph Peters appeared on Fox and Friends over the weekend to inform fearful viewers that Obama promotes "Islamophilia". Sounds nasty, right?

Here's his quote:

"We do not have an Islamophobia problem in the United States, we have an Islamophilia problem — which places Islam above all criticism. And until we hold Islam to the same standards as every other religion, ethically and behaviorally, terrorism wins."

As if all terrorists are Muslims? Here's more:

When you indulge in false tolerance you enable the terrorists.

Would "false tolerance" include the fact that we have to put up with the incessant whiners on Fox who complain that they're denied "religious liberty"? Is that just something Christians enjoy or do Buddhists and Muslims get to have religious liberty, too?

If you're from one of these militant anti-Muslim hating organizations or their "media" counterparts, the answer to that is clearly "no."

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