In a Monday segment examining the impact of Islamic terrorism on French voters’ political calculus, CNN’s Chris Cuomo described contemporary jihadist murders as “flurries of terrorist activity”.
Speaking with his colleague Christiane Amanpour, Cuomom was seemingly inquiring about last week’s Islamic terrorist attack in Paris, France, and its impact on yesterday’s French election:
“It was interesting that this first set of numbers seemed to reflect that those flurries of terrorist activity last week seemed to send a flight to a calmer head. Could’ve cut either way, right? It could’ve made people even more afraid [and] want something even more extreme.”
Amanpour’s response seemed to imply that Islamic terrorist attacks in large European cities amounted to a new normal across the continent. She also attempted to distinguish Islamic terrorism originating among European residents – which she described as “gangster neighborhood terrorism” – from those directed by ISIS abroad (emphasis added):
“Well here’s the thing. I know that every time something like that happens, we all go into a massive panic and a meltdown. But if you look at what happened in Britain, we had the same kind of maniac who mowed down people on Westminster Bridge, knifed a policeman to death, and then he was shot to death. It didn’t actually change the body politic here, people understood that it was limited, that we’re living in this era, right now. And as one of the French politicians said, we’re in an era now of sort of gangster neighborhood terror. Nobody believes that this was a planned ISIS attack. This man in France was known to the authorities, he was known to the authorities, he had threatened police before, and clearly people in France took it for what it was: scary, something that has to be sorted out, but it wasn’t a terrorist attack that affected the vote.”
Last September, London’s mayor Sadiq Khan echoed Amanpour’s suggestion that Islamic terrorism amounted to a new normal across large Western cities, describing such attacks as “part and parcel of living in a big city.”
Opposition to the European Union was described by Amanpour as an “anti-Europe” position; she and other left-wing news media figures regularly use the terms “Europe” and “European Union” interchangeably.
Speaking on behalf of Europe, Amanpour said the continent wished to see Le Pen defeated.
Earlier in the segment, Amanpour described France’s National Front and its leader Marine Le Pen as “very, very far right, extreme right,” adding that it held a “barely concealed racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration” platform.
Amanpour seemed to draw from comments made by Hillary Clinton last September, in which the former first lady described a plurality of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s supporters as generalized bigots: “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
Amanpour and Cuomo both suggested a connection between the alleged bigotry of Le Pen and her supporters with the politics of Trump and his supporters.
Weeks after last year’s presidential election, Amanpour called for the news media to unify in its opposition of the Trump administration.
Amanpour presents herself as a politically objective and non-partisan news media figure. CNN likewise presents itself as a politically-objective and non-partisan news media outlet, billing itself as “The Most Trusted Name In News.”
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