On October 18, The Blaze ran an essay by Vik Khanna and Rich Gurdak, hosts of ‘The Bible Men’ podcast, calling LGBTQ and racial-justice progressives allies of Islamist activists. Its headline names no person, group or event. The headline has no one in it who could be checked. Its first three words are a protest slogan, and the body never names a group by that name. Then ‘woke left’ and ‘Islamism’ do the judging: verdict nouns, labels that convict before a single event arrives. ‘Unholy’ adds a faith’s own word for condemnation, on a page filed under Lifestyle with a ‘faith’ tag, not Opinion, by the hosts of ‘The Bible Men’. The tell: a label sits where a name should be. The page tells a smaller story lower down. The first named groups arrive in the third paragraph: a Columbia coalition of 116 student organizations, among them the Muslim Students Association and Columbia Queer Alliance. The only Pride event arrives in the tenth: the 2024 NYC march, blocked by 11 activists from the Coalition of Fruits to Free Palestine, by Hyperallergic’s count. The essay does not say any were Muslim. NBC News counted hundreds of disrupters across that June’s parades; the essay cites one. The headline rides the us-and-them habit: the other group’s one member stands for all of them, our side’s is the exception. About a dozen people who held up a march for 30 minutes stand for every queer progressive, and two student groups stand for a faith. The essay quotes no protester, student or Muslim group. Its first paragraph recalls the authors’ call to ‘stem the growth of Islam’ in Alabama. The headline’s word is Islamism; the first paragraph’s target is the faith.
