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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Qaddafi loyalist's Fake Rape Story became RW dogma on Facebook
Last edited Fri Sep 14, 2012, 06:35 PM - Edit history (9)
American RW conspiracists on Facebook and pro-Romney hate sites are all ablaze with the "news" that Ambassador Stevens was repeatedly raped by his assailants before they killed him.
This is obviously dubious since his assailants did not kill him face-to-face. He was murdered, of course, but he is reported to have died from asphyxiation by smoke inhalation in a burning building. (And the photos of his body being carried are of Libyans trying to help get him to the hospital.)
But, as with Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War, the claim of anal rape by Muslims, no matter how dubious the source, is always eagerly taken up by the RW.
So what is the source for this latest outrage story?
Well, we have tayyar.org, which, as Jeff Foxworthy would say, "Just may be a Qaddafi loyalist site," since the story claims to be reporting an AFP story (more on that later) that Stevens was raped by his assailants but then, in the first paragraph, equates that to what was done to Qaddafi.
http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm
And we have a website on wordpress that appears to call itself "Libyan Free Press"... but that is a self-description, not the name of the news organization. Look closer. The news organization is Jamahiriya News... the official state news organ under Qaddafi.
http://libyanfreepress.wordpress.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamahiriya_News_Agency
What they say is:
"Libya - USA Ambassador in Bengazi sodomized and killed by his own al-Qaeda puppets."
(Fair and balanced! The Qaddafi diehards have to present the overthrow of Qaddafi as a joint USA/al-Qaida operation to make their overall theory of "no domestic revolt" work.)
And the fact this is a remnant Qaddafi loyalist website is hardly disguised. For instance:
Happy Birthday Brother Leader!
So then THE WASHINGTON TIMES (America's most doctrinaire RW daily paper) runs with the Lebanese website claiming to be passing along an AFP story. And facially fake Qaddafi propaganda is thus bootstrapped into news.
The WT said:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/13/picket-report-murdered-us-ambassador-libya-reporte/
Okay, so AFP reported this and it was merely picked up by a pro-Qaddafi site, right? Except the claim of attribution is as bogus as the claim of news!
As the Washington Times puts it:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/13/picket-report-murdered-us-ambassador-libya-reporte/#ixzz26SJmNRay
"Unconfirmed" by the AFP? The Lebanese website claims their story came from AFP, so it isn't that AFP doesn't confirm another news organization's story, it is that AFP doesn't confirm that AFP reported it in the first place!
But many RWers will "know" this story is true to their dying day.
redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)The "Qaddafi loyalist" is, at this point, someone from the Qaddafi regime who seeks the restoration of the old order.
There are probably a few remnant Saddam loyalists in Iraq, and maybe even a few Shah of Iran loyalists still kicking around.
The model for this would be the Bourbon loyalists who operated from England after the French Revolution, seeking the restoration of the (deposed) royal French bloodline.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)I can see that people don't like this story, because it is repellent, but having taken the trouble to see how a particular RW lie came to be, it's an interesting story about the use and misuse of media, about journalistic standards, and about the hypocrisy of fanatics.
The extreme RW is currently relying on Gadaffi followers for news. I find that significant.
And having taken the trouble to debunk, it is good for that debunking to be "out there."
So I do not kick this out of ghoulishness, but because it's a story that people should be aware of, even if nobody is moved to comment.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)diplomat as propaganda to sway a campaign. I am not sure who is really behind it all, but I don't have a good feeling about it.
Iterate
(3,020 posts)Among the disparate groups still supporting Gaddafi last year at this time where the most hateful right-wing groups in the US -the very worst on the SPLC list. Gaddafi's political maneuvers and exploitations of division over the years had led to a very strange collection of international support that included neo-nazis, Serbian nationalists, and green-book leftists. The longer you make the list, the more unlikely it gets.
They still share a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the elected Libyan government or the popularity of the revolution. Exaggerating the real but limited threat from AQ in Derna was a common strategy.
You're right, this will never go away. But what we can do is to track who repeats it, knowing full well where their story came from.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)I wanted to find out why, and to inform folks as to where the story came from.
Kindly Refrain
(423 posts)What I was trying to say.