By KALYN MENIFEE – Many people in Indiana don’t find the Charlottesville protest entirely relevant to their interests. How could they? The tragedy occurred in a southern state, far away from the comfort of safe little Indiana, with people who have similar ideas to those of Nazism. It’s crazy, it really is.
So what can someone write that hasn’t been overdone to the point it becomes physically exhausting to read? The fact of the matter is that this very question is the problem. Violence like this is oversaturated in the media so that if you see that someone is protesting and then that protest escalates to something violent, people overlook it. Anything concerning Donald Trump is tired and viewed as unimportant. Anti-Fascist is considered just another violent anti-conservative nonsense group for edgy teenagers to latch onto.
Normalizing the violence, normalizing extreme and often genocidal political views of either side and therefore validating them is changing the face of American media. Many would agree that there is an inherent malice in newsfeeds, youtube vlogs, late night tv shows and even some children’s cartoons that mention any political topic. You have the Alt-Right versus Antifa, you have Blacks versus Whites, you have Straights versus Gays.
People separate themselves from the goings on in America because they think that certain things will never affect them. ‘Oh look, someone criticizing Donald Trump again’ or ‘The right is just accusing everyone of being triggered snowflakes’ it’s commonplace, like listening to the same tired Katy Perry pop song on the radio since 2010, or watching a twelve year old dab consecutively because they don’t know how to act in a public place.
In the past few months, there have been several different protests that have ended in violence, Anti-Fascists attacking peaceful conservative right-wing protesters in Berkeley, and of course the clash of the Alt-right and counter-protesters in Charlottesville that ended up in the death of one individual. But all that ever happens is that news sources conflate the issue into something it isn’t and it becomes a hot-button topic on Twitter so people can flaunt how ‘woke’ they are and it’s over.
This is the exact formula of what happened with the Baltimore protests: people were very angry for a short period of time, but it inspired no long-term solutions. No actions were put in place, people seemed to let the issue fade out of their mindset.
‘What am I going to do about it?’ you may ask. It’s simple, try to understand what’s going on, take the time to read things, to understand the truth for yourself. Spend the extra five minutes to validate a source on whether ‘Donald Trump killed Mexican Children and Threw Them Over the Border Wall’ is an actual thing rather than posting it to your Facebook feed and watching as your fifty-year-old aunt that you’ve only ever talked to once have an aneurysm in the comments.
People need to step out of their comfort zones with the media as well, if you get your news from InfoWars and InfoWars only, you may or may not have a skewed view of reality. When people get stuck in an echo chamber where they can’t take criticism to their worldview because they are so ham-fisted about how right they are, they become megalomaniacs who refuse the likes of society itself because they, and only they, are the righteous hands of the ‘woke’.
For information to help confirm some of my ideas that media is normalizing violence here are a few videos and other sources listed at the bottom.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/08/28/black-clad-antifa-attack-right-wing-demonstrators-in-berkeley/?utm_term=.2dc39ca2dd2f
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/?utm_term=.1ec91a00ebc1
- https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiig8S9oKDWAhUR92MKHUmLB_AQtwIIJTAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DE5Brqo0vSNE&usg=AFQjCNFHtUvxU8a13C_tZOVLj-oE-bWfxg – Milo Stewart saying all whites are racist
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miQYoLc-Osg – girl agreeing with Hitler
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntWieh7YIgY – Alex Jones compilation
- Also check out anything that buzzfeed did during the election
- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/opinion/sorry-liberals-bigotry-didnt-elect-donald-trump.html?mcubz=0
- http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35406324
If there are any other, comments, validation of sources request, or even if you just want to argue with me, please write a letter to the editor.
[Photo from The Washington Post]
