Don’t Fact-Check My Vibe feat. Brian Reed and Hamza Syed
It's the free one!
This week, Nate and Hussein speak with Brian Reed and Hamza Syed of the Trojan Horse Affair podcast, an investigation into a hoax letter in Birmingham in 2014 that–despite being known to be false–kicked off an intensification of surveillance and mistreatment of British Muslims. And everyone knew it was fake at the time!
It is the official position of Trashfuture that you listen to the Trojan Horse Affair, which is available here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html
Also, this episode was recorded before the Observer decided to make up imaginary vibes-based critiques of the show (it was recorded last week).
Comments (16)
i criticise journalists coming on in the TF extended universe usually but this time these dudes are Good thanks for the ep
Your guests just got raked over the coals by The Guardian and I happened to semi agree with them. Both sides are partially right. Calling a conservative Muslim man espousing creationism and stating things like a women can’t refuse sex from her husband doesn’t make it a “grab bag” of “Islam adjacent” islamophobia. Both are true. The British media’s obsession and their political masters weaponizing it is definitely islamophobia but it doesn’t absolve the man. Plus, your host being a member of the Islamic community and having publicly taken a side on the issue shows that he has a chip on his shoulder and is clearly biased. That doesn’t make him completely wrong but it makes his biased in his focus on proving how islamophobic the British political/media circle is.
Which is why it's so shocking that the argument is entirely faultless from start to finish? I mean where are you going with this, i'm no sure they are attempting to absolve anyone but instead just talking about the reality, that the media and the political class has used issues like this to make unrelated people de-facto less safe in a country many have spent their entire lives in. If you need to completely exclude any member of the Islamic community to gain an 'unbiased' viewpoint on the Islamic community, then is that maybe a problem with how you are determining what 'counts' as bias?
Great episode.
I approve of Hussein hosting more often.
Fantastic interview very well hosted by Hussein, if you felt at all nervous going in you didn't need to. Trojan Horse is an amazing podcast and the journalist establishment banding together to attempt to rubbish it has been very revealing.
"The Anti-British New York Times" love to accuse someone's of hating because they critiqued sloppy journalism and in some case, just flat out racist right wing propaganda. The journo clicke, that is.
Good fix! Hussein nailed it as a host.
Hussein accurately predicts the defense of mainstream journalists, "We were right in a way, so why are you bothering me?" could have been the title of the Observer screed on the subject. Not sure if that's a sign of how banal the British mainstream press really is or just too much time spent staring into the abyss. Probably a little of both.
The international community has intervened in the "Free One" conflict, appointing a new Canadian host until all sides can reach a diplomatic solution.
NGL, there’s some terrible Midwest-erasure going on within the TF hosting circle: is everyone forgetting that Nate hosted the interview with Sam Asumadu?!
What's the odds that the extremely islamophobic question time hack historian Nate referred to was either David Starkey or Niall Ferguson?
Listening to it, I was thinking it was the former. But the latter is also a good candidate, now that you mention him!
Very informative interview Y'all and excellent guests, i was never aware of the Trojan horse hoax letter and how the British media acted around it. I typed in Trojan horse and there's already a guardian columnist whining about actual investigative journalism being done and "how dare you point out islamaphobia", just a disgusting response.
Brilliant!! Will there also be a podcast about this podcast?
They are probably brainstorming this at the observer...