Dinesh D'Souza Says Netherlands Shooting Proves Media Unfairly Maligns White People As 'Perpetrators' of 'Terror'

Conservative political commentator and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza used a train shooting in the Netherlands to claim that media outlets offer a contorted narrative of mass shootings.

On Monday, a shooting on a train in Utrecht killed three people and injured five others. Police arrested Gokmen Tanis, a man born in Turkey, BBC News reported.

The Netherlands shooting came days after the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, left 50 people dead.

Any act of terror is evil. But if a Muslim guy shot up a church in New Zealand it would not be news here. The media is going crazy over this #MosqueAttack for one reason: it fits their narrative. Muslims good, white man bad! So part of the story here is how #FakeNews is made

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) March 15, 2019

After Friday's attack in New Zealand, D'Souza tweeted "Any act of terror is evil. But if a Muslim guy shot up a church in New Zealand it would not be news here. The media is going crazy over this #MosqueAttack for one reason: it fits their narrative. Muslims good, white man bad! So part of the story here is how #FakeNews is made."

This Turkish terrorist’s #NetherlandsShooting does kind of ruin the media Left’s narrative, doesn’t it? Just when they were trying so hard to convince us that Muslims are the main victims, and white supremacists the main perpetrators, of terror and hate crimes worldwide...

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) March 18, 2019

On Monday, D'Souza, who Vox called "America's greatest conservative troll," tweeted again about media coverage of shootings.

"This Turkish terrorist's #NetherlandsShooting does kind of ruin the media Left's narrative, doesn't it? Just when they were trying so hard to convince us that Muslims are the main victims, and white supremacists the main perpetrators, of terror and hate crimes worldwide.…" he wrote.

A recent study of 136 terrorist attacks within the U.S. over the past decade found that incidents perpetrated by Muslims received 357 percent more media coverage than those perpetrated by other individuals.

"What was especially surprising was the sheer amount of coverage granted to the small handful of domestic terrorists who were both Muslim and from outside of the U.S," Allision Betus, a presidential fellow with Georgia State's Transcultural Conflict and Violent Extremism Initiative, said in a news release. "This tiny minority of the dataset accounted for a very large amount of coverage."

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Dinesh D'Souza attends the D.C. premiere of his film, "Death of a Nation," at E Street Cinema on August 1, 2018. Shannon Finney/Getty Images

Some discussion since the New Zealand attacks has focused on the alleged gunman's reference to President Donald Trump in a 74-page manifesto. The suspect described the commander-in-chief as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose." Supporters of the president dismissed the comments about Trump.

Fox's Chris Wallace presses WH Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney on Trump's reasons for not giving public speech decrying white nationalism, Mulvaney says president "not a white nationalist"https://t.co/54fMzYrYVB pic.twitter.com/PkydYroWtb

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 17, 2019

Critics noted that Trump's language about an "invasion" of immigrants in the U.S., which he reiterated hours after the New Zealand shooting, was similar to the claims from the Christchurch shooter that he would "show the invaders that our lands will never be their lands."

Conversation in the U.S. has also touched on the rise in white supremacist attacks in the U.S. Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told NPR last year that "since 9/11 is the number of people killed by white supremacist domestic terrorists is on the rise."

"In fact, the number of people killed in that period by white supremacists is approximately the same domestically as people motivated by Islamic extremism. The number of incidents is actually larger when it comes to white supremacists. But luckily, they've either—the plots have either been interrupted or not as many people have been killed," Beirich said.

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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

About the writer


Daniel Moritz-Rabson is a breaking news reporter for Newsweek based in New York. Before joining Newsweek Daniel interned at PBS NewsHour ... Read more

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