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  • 2017-10-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Were Illegal Immigrants Arrested for Starting California Wildfires? (en)
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  • The California wildfires of October 2017 have prompted a series of articles falsely blaming immigrants and Muslims for starting them. On 19 October 2017, the satirical web site Freedom Junkshun published the completely fabricated claim that police in California had arrested Muhammad Islam, a 23-year-old Iranian immigrant. None of these details are based in fact, and the Fox News report mentioned in the article also does not exist. The photograph used in the article actually shows Omar El-Abed, a 19-year-old Palestinian man accused of murdering a Jewish family in the West Bank in July 2017. Another article on Freedom Junkshun falsely claims that the fictional Muhammad Islam was seen burning the American flag at a protest in Berkeley, California. On 17 October 2017, the right-wing web site Breitbart falsely linked the arrest of Jesus Fabian Gonzalez in Sonoma County, California, with the wildfires. The article, which was republished by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's web site Infowars, falsely described Gonzalez as having been detained in connection with the wildfires, claiming he was arrested Sunday on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents. Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano directly refuted these claims in a press conference later that day. The relevant section of the video starts at 12.10: Giordano added that he wanted to kill that speculation right now, referring to reports that Gonzalez's arrest was related to the wildfires. Remarkably, something of a war of words has broken out between the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over Gonzalez's arrest. ICE says that Gonzalez is an undocumented immigrant. On 18 October, ICE issued a press release criticizing the sheriff's office and claiming that it had lodged a detainer against Gonzalez (asked the county to detain him for up to 48 hours after his scheduled release date, in order to make a determination about a possible deportation). The following day, Sheriff Giordano hit back. In a message posted to Facebook, he said the detainer request was not signed by a judge and was unconstitutional, and said ICE's press release had been misleading and caused fear during a major natural disaster. Earlier in the month, the Got News web site published an unsubstantiated claim that senior law enforcement officials believed that Mexican drug cartels -- seeking a strategic advantage over the nascent legal marijuana industry -- were responsible for the wildfires, which had destroyed a significant portion of cannabis farmland. That deeply flawed article was seized upon by web sites such as Proud Patriots, which almost gleefully reported: This trend of blaming certain societal groups (in these examples, immigrants and Muslims) for disasters and tragedies -- both natural and man-made -- and seeking out evidence of their culpability, however spurious, is nothing new. Throughout Europe in the 14th Century, Jews were scapegoated and blamed for causing the Black Death. They faced widespread and intensified persecution and violence as a result. The televangelist Jerry Falwell blamed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians. He later apologized. In 2015, a Malaysian state government official blamed Western tourists for an earthquake, and over the years, the LGBT community has been the target of consistent scapegoating in the United States, particularly on behalf of Christian clergy. Most recently, a number of pastors and ministers blamed Hurricane Harvey on the LGBT community. (en)
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