Topic: Media Research Center
Fresh off effectively denying that Islamophobia exists, the Media Research Center wants to make a documentary about a arson at a Texas mosque about anything but the actual arson. Clay Waters complained in a Nov. 26 post:
The latest PBS Independent Lens film program, “A Town Called Victoria,” was a three-hour report on the January 2017 firebombing of the Victoria Islamic Center mosque in the small town of Victoria, Texas. Predictably, there was a deeper left-wing political message within this documentary, part of the “Exploring Hate” series by NYC-based public television station WNET.
[...]
Documentary director Li Lu tried the usual film-making moves, opening with an audio montage of former presidents mentioning Islam (like President G.W. Bush after 9-11). But she snuck in partisan and ideological jabs with her source seelction, going beyond the awful crime itself to score political points against President Trump or Republicans in general -- blaming Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries for the arson attack.
Waters whined that the film was allegedly "going beyond the awful crime itself to score political points against President Trump or Republicans in general -- blaming Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries for the arson attack" -- but he didn't mention the fact that the arson occurred literally just hours after Trump signed that ban, making it a reasonable point to bring up.
Waters went on to complain that the film portrayed the crime as an act of white supremacy even though a Latino man committed the arson, then took a couple irrelevant shots at longtime MRC target and Texas politician Beto O'Rourke:
Lu was much nicer to Democrats, like Sen. Cruz’s failed 2018 Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke. Documentary star Omar Rachid introduced O’Rourke at a local rally.
Rachid: When asked if I would introduce Beto, I said, are you kidding me? I mean this is like a dream come true! And it gives me the microphone! Beto O'Rourke!
Rachid took Beto’s eventual loss hard, and petulantly blamed the anti-Muslim atmosphere among his neighbors before leaving town for good. Apparently not voting for a liberal Democrat with who's served just three terms in Congress makes one automatically anti-Muslim. (And Beto went on to lose a presidential bid, and a gubernatorial bid.)
What Waters didn't do, however, was condemn the arson in any meaningful way or explain the Islamophobic motivation of the perpetrator Marq Vincent Lopez, as federal prosecutors did:
Testimony at trial detailed how Perez conducted what he described as “recon” by breaking into the mosque a week before he set it on fire. Evidence presented at trial showed Perez communicated with someone through Facebook about breaking into the mosque a second time, the same night of the fire. A witness who was with Perez on the night of the fire described how Perez used a lighter to set papers on fire inside the mosque and how excited Perez was upon seeing the mosque in flames just minutes later.
The witness testified that Perez said that he burned down the mosque, because he wanted to “send a message.”
During the execution of a search warrant, federal agents recovered stolen property taken from the mosque the night of the fire in Perez’s home. Several witnesses at trial also testified about Perez’s animus towards Muslims and that he often used anti-Muslim slurs.
Of course, Waters and the MRC don't think Islamophobia exists, so these facts would have caused cognitive dissonance with their narratives -- which is why Waters chose to lash out at O'Rourke instead. Indeed, Waters' hit job was so sloppy that he couldn't even be bothered to get the name of the documentary right in the headline -- it's "A Town Called Victoria," not "A Town In Victoria," which doesn't even make sense.
