Leftist portal The Wire has now given legitimacy to Islamist apologist and serial fake news peddler CJ Werleman for a writeup by its Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan to fear monger and insinuate that BJP hates Muslims and would want them all dead. In an article titled “For the BJP, the Muslim is Not Just the Message, It is the Only Message”, The Wire’s Varadarajan shares image posted by BJP Gujarat on conviction and subsequent death sentence to terrorists in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blast case.
BJP Gujarat had shared an image which showed the representative caricature of the terrorists hanging to death, symbolising that terrorists will meet their rightful end.
One of the convicts, Safdar Nagori, had said that Quran is above all and that the Indian constitution holds no value. He had said he had no regret for killing the innocent people.
Terrorism has no religion, they say, but get triggered when terrorists are shown as getting punishment for their deeds – of killing innocent people.
Varadarajan then compares the above terrorists who killed innocent in the name of their religion and ‘holy book’ to the Jews who were killed in Nazi Germany. An image of a cartoon where Jews and other enemies of Nazis were shown as hanging was juxtaposed to show how the terrorists getting death sentence was akin to Jews being killed by Nazis.
Further, to give legitimacy to the fear mongering that the BJP and its supporters, majority of whom are Hindus, want all Muslims in India dead, The Wire and Varadarajan give legitimacy to CJ Werleman who had indulged in similar fear mongering on the Turkey state media, TRT world.
The Wire shared a random image it claimed was made my Hindutva groups in 2020 where it showed the coronavirus riding on shoulders of a Muslim man. The Wire made assumptions that it was created by Hindu groups. It also assumed the bearded man was a Muslim man, thereby playing to stereotypes itself. While there is no basis for the same, The Wire again compared Jews, victims of The Holocaust to Muslims, without any evidence that the bearded man was a Muslim.
Further, to give credibility to his insinuations, The Wire’s Varadarajan uses Werleman’s propaganda piece from Turkey state media. Referring to Werleman as ‘several analysts’ The Wire link takes its readers to the TRT World article from April 2020.
CJ Werleman also decided to share The Wire article by pointing out how The Wire cited his article.
“CJ Werleman and others have noted the parallels between the 'corona jihad' campaign and Nazi propaganda blaming Jews for typhus.”https://t.co/GWi3upppqR
— CJ Werleman (@cjwerleman) February 22, 2022
In an article published on Turkey state media website, titled “Yesterday, Jews were demonised for spreading disease. Today, it’s Muslims”, Werleman had indulged in similar hate and fear mongering and likened the genocide of Jews by Nazis to the incident of Muslims, a lot of them foreign clerics on violation of visa rules, bring found in hiding at the Nizamuddin Markaz.
Many of these were foreign return and a lot of them had tested positive for COVID. Subsequently, a lot of them had refused to get tested, claimed COVID was a Modi conspiracy and even misbehaved with healthcare workers, including doctors, and assaulted them. There were reports of Tablighi Jamaat members having misbehaved with healthcare workers and even defecating in open at quarantine centre. Naturally, there was anger at the people who were putting public health at risk. However, instead of calling out the ones who were indulging in criminal behaviour, Islamists like Werleman and others chose to paint them as victim only because of their religion.
However, The Wire decided to toe the line of an apologist of Islamist behaviour, who had recently even indulged in spreading Taliban propaganda only to make PM Modi, the BJP and its supporters in poor light and further the anti-Hindu rhetoric.
