ISIS, Alternative Rock and Racial Panic- a look at discursive Media

Scapegoating in Western media is alive and well and it has a new target: who do we see as ‘the terrorist’?

A popular media focus surrounding race and conflict recently is the idea that ‘the Muslims’ (Brian Kilmeade, Fox) ISIS are the cause of all terrorism in Western cities. The focus has become about sensationalising events and rationalising action based on reflex rather than consideration. For example looking at the attack that occurred at the Bataclan in Paris, which was an ISIS motivated attack as was confessed, being automatically connected to the attack in Brussels before any responsibility was taken. This is backed by the repeated referral to ISIS attacks as Muslim attacks.

My focus here is on racial panic: the idea of a sort of inverted genocidal threat, one ‘race’, in this case an encompassing term for a religion not fully understood by those who apply it, wanting to kill off any outside of it. Categorising Muslims as terrorists in order to rationalise a sense of global vulnerability installed by Western media.

A particular case study is the treatment of Jesse Hughes following the Bataclan attack. Jesse Hughes is the frontman for the band that performed that concert, Eagles of Death Metal (NOTE: not a death metal band in the slightest, the name is meant to be ironic). Following the ordeal Hughes was berated by both social and established media about what he thought. His responses gradually shifted from shock and emotion for those who died, to saying right to bear arms would have helped, to suggesting the French have a relationship with ISIS through their acceptance of Muslim culture and the attacks were organised via the venue itself. This was after non-stop interviews following the events, many by American publications. This was the media pressuring statements of support for a movement that the interviewee involved wanted nothing to do with.

The frontman of the American band Eagles of Death Metal, which was playing a show at Paris' Bataclan theater when terrorists turned the venue into a bloodbath last fall, said in an interview Saturday that he refuses "to let the bad guys win."

This is the opening of the first article involving Hughes from NBC. On the same day Stuff NZ posted an article with this opening:

The co-founder of the California-based rock band Eagles of Death Metal, whose Paris concert was targeted in a deadly attack by militants in November, said in an interview with Vice posted on Wednesday that he came face-to-face with a gunman backstage.

The interview that each site is referring to centred primarily on Hughes discussing how upset he was trying to find his girlfriend.

In the months following this media series EODM performed in Auckland, at the Powerstation where I am employed. On arrival there was extensive heightened security because the local authorities had claimed a potential terrorism threat connected to the nature of the band. A friendly reminder that racial panic through discursive media practice finds its way to every corner of the Western world.