GoKawiilSign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Email address Sign Up Thank you!
When far-right white nationalist Jake Lang rolled up to a peaceful religious procession in Dearborn, Michigan earlier this month with a sign calling to “deport 100 million” Muslims, he clearly didn’t plan on making any friends.
Predictably, the repeat-agitator of Michigan’s Arab-American community — who served four years in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection — got into a scuffle with a small but angry crowd, resulting in three arrests.
In other words, he came looking for a fight, and he got one. But for Lang and his supporters on the far right, the fracas was proof positive of the “Islamification of America,” and Dearborn’s large Arab community made an obvious target.
In response to the tussle, Lang announced a “Christian Crusader March on Dearborn,” using an AI-generated poster depicting Christian paladins drawing swords and charging at a crowd of Muslims (the Crusades were a centuries-long series of religious conquests by Western European Christians involving mass slaughter of thousands of Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians.)
“CRUSADE OR BE REPLACED!” the post fumed.
On Facebook, word of Lang’s “crusader march” spread like wildfire, manifesting in a disturbing outpouring of posts cheering on the racist cause — and in some cases, acts of violence against Muslim Americans.
“Okay Michigan y’all need to quit being a bunch of f****** pussies and do something about Dearborn,” wrote one Lang supporter in a Facebook post. “Let’s not get it twisted this is an attack on American soil… me personally they come to my town tried to come on my land and do that they would definitely leave in a f****** body bag.”
As the story of Lang’s ousting spread — which he outrageously exaggerated as a “stoning,” referring to a method of capital punishment — it became warped into a fictionalized tale of an innocent man having been killed by angry Muslims. The peaceful march, stripped of context, was now depicted as a violent anti-Christian riot.
“They stoned a christian to death that had shown up at a Muslim antichristian protest and turned around and tried to keep it hush hush from the media,” wrote an Indiana resident in a Facebook comment. (In reality, nobody was killed, and Lang’s attackers were swiftly arrested.)
... continue reading