‘Renouncing Violence’ Is a Demand Made Almost Exclusively of Muslims

http://fair.org/home/renouncing-violence-is-a-demand-made-almost-exclusively-of-muslims/
Date Written:  2019-03-29
Publisher:  FAIR
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23599

Media analysis shows that calls to renounce violence are directed at Muslims or other victims of Western occupation.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

A FAIR survey of the phrase "renounce violence" in the New York Times over the past 10 years shows that 95 percent of the time the demand is made of Muslim organizations, people or political parties, the most prominent being the Taliban and Hamas. There are zero instances of anyone in the Times—whether reporters quoting officials or columnists—from March 28, 2009, to March 28, 2019, insisting or suggesting that the United States, Israel or any white-majority country "renounce violence...."

Before the time frame of the survey, South African leader Nelson Mandela was often scolded in the Times opinion pages for refusing to unilaterally reject violence. "Why Won’t Mandela Renounce Violence?" asked a June 21, 1990, op-ed by congressional aide David G. Sanders. There’s no evidence in the Times archives that South Africa’s apartheid government was ever asked the same question.

For decades, Amnesty International infamously refused to label Mandela a Prisoner of Conscience because he wouldn’t formally pledge to refrain from violence—a rather precious, morally boutique demand Amnesty requires of all of its Third World causes. In the Western liberal mind, we can name oppressors, but never support those actually fighting them, instead demanding the oppressed unilaterally refuse the single most ubiquitous political tool in history—that of violence.