On Thursday, October 31st, a paper titled “Fanning the Flames” was released by by Action Center on Race and the Economy’s Crescendo Project with the Public Accountability Initiative. Through a series of studies and examples they explain how American corporations and social media platforms are perpetuating and encouraging anti-Muslim movements around the world. The groups main concerns were Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon. All three, among others, were called out for providing a space for ‘unsafe actors’ and using algorithms that have the recommendations spread bigot language.
Specifically, the paper calls out Facebook, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and other corporations for being the “unindicted co-conspirators of the Christchurch shooter”. The Christchurch incident took place in New Zealand in March of 2019 in a mosque and killed around 50 people. The perpetrator live streamed the attack on Facebook. Although Facebook was quick to remove the video, other platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, were not so quick to do so. The authors of the paper are upset with Amazon because it allows customers to purchase books that perpetuate the hate and terrorist ideals. They are upset with Twitter because the company continues to allow President Trump to tweet on their platform. Facebook was mentioned many times in their paper, but they are upset because anti-Muslim posts are not removed from the website.
Over all, the ACER organization is upset because they see America leading the world towards a more racist and white supremacist society. They blame American companies and social media platforms for this movement and want them to take more action. The article touches on how they predict that America and the rest of the world, influenced by America, will continue on a path of white supremacy and anti-Muslim movements.
Khan, Aysha. “Report Blames Major US Corporations for Global Spread of Anti-Muslim Violence.” Religion News Service, 7 Nov. 2019,
religionnews.com/2019/11/07/report-blames-major-us-corporations-for-global-spread-of-anti-mus
lim-violence/.